Since this weekend finds me and my friend Chris B in Japan together, so we met up in Osaka and decided to go see Himeji Castle. I met up with my friend Chris B on Sunday and we hopped the trains to Himeji.
When we got to Himeji, we walked to the castle, taking a lot of photos along the way.
Himeji Castle is one of the few original castles in Japan that haven’t been burned down in an earthquake or firebombed or atom bombed, etc., which made it worth seeing for us.
Chris and I wound our way though the iron clad gates to the main keep and climbed all the way to the top (6th) floor and looked out over Himeji.
At the top they have a Shinto shrine that seems to include praying to Geikikakan Sake 🙂
After climbing to the top and then back down, including some really short ceilings on the stairways that made me think I needed Hermes Conrad’s limbo skills, we got back down to the bottom and took some more really cool photos. Then we found the Harakiri (ritual suicide) area which was probably about as nice a place as one could find within the castle to decide to disembowel oneself….
After that we bought some souvenirs and headed back to Osaka.
I’m always glad you post pictures so that I can live vicariously through you more efficiently. 🙂
So, what happened to the other two moats?
The remains of the second moat can be seen as you approach the castle (it appears to have been filled in, but parts of the walls are still there near the streets), but the 3rd was completely filled in I think.
[…] Once again I am in Japan. This is trip number 18. Flew into Nagoya and then hung around there for a few days on business before heading north on Wednesday. Kaz, JC (other JC) and I found ourselves with an hour to kill in Matusmoto while we waited for a train, so we decided to go to Matsumoto Castle. It and Himeji Castle are two of the oldest and best castles left in Japan. Matsumoto Castle is the oldest castle in Japan that has not been burned and rebuilt. It was originally built in 1593 and this is still the original castle, although with some additions. Unlike almost every other castle in Japan, Matsumoto is black in color, giving it the name “The Crow Castleâ€. We pretty much had to run through it since we only had an hour. More photos up on Flickr soon. […]