Himeji Castle

By -
This post is kind of a big deal for me...it's my 300th blog post!

This was not the first stop on our Japan trip, but this was one of our favorites!  On our way to Kyoto, we stopped at Himeji to visit the castle there.  The shinkasen train from Hiroshima to Kyoto stops in Himeji -- it is about halfway.  We had our smaller suitcase with us, which we put in a locker in the train station in Himeji.  We were able to find space for a smaller one, but I think the bigger one would have been challenging (we ended up shipping that one ahead to Kyoto).  

The Himeji Castle is about a 20 minute walk from the train station.  We loved the walk.


The castle was quite impressive.  Throughout the castle, there were plenty of signs in English highlighting the key elements of the castle.  The castle grounds and tower were quite spacious.  We got an idea of how they were able to have 2.5M visitors in 2015.  The castle is one of the few originals still standing.  Many of the others either burned down, burned down due to earthquakes or were bombed in WWII.  

Here are a few of our favorite exterior shots:




The castle has just finished a major renovation.  You can see in the picture below, where the roof is covered, how white and pristine the roof is.  They are constantly cleaning the roof to keep the crisp white, which is this castle's trademark.



The castle grounds were designed to confuse potential intruders.  Like most castles, visibility was crucial to protection.  They never got to test the protections as this castle was never attacked.  

Inside the castle, we had to remove our shoes!  It was the first time.  We look classy!


We worked our way up the castle tower, which was only used as a last resort.  Business was conducted in the tower; it was not necessarily where people lived.  
The fish were good luck icons to prevent fire -- in this case, they seem to have worked!
After lunch, we headed to the gardens.  I liked that the gardens were broken up into multiple different themes.  It was Jason's first true Japanese garden, which he thought would take us "only" 15 minutes to go through.  So beautiful and peaceful!




This castle was by far the best castle we visited on our trip.  Very easily accessible from both Hiroshima and Kyoto.  We did pay the extra 100 JPY (~$1) to go to the garden.  I recommend the garden too!  It is not a UNESCO heritage sight for nothing!

Time at castle and garden: 4.5 hrs
Times visited: 1
Overall: A
Location: 68 Honmachi, Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture 670-0012, Japan

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cincinnati Art Museum

By -
Image
A couple of weekends ago, I dashed into the Cincinnati Art Museum to see the Treasures of the Spanish World exhibit.  The exhibit was created by the Hispanic Society and very c learly, the descriptions were written by the Hispanic Society.  The exhibit spanned the typical exhibit hall and then also one of the other halls sometimes used for exhibit too.   With my annual membership, I had free admission to the exhibit. The exhibits starts much further back than expected, which if I had read the description closely, I would have known.  It focuses on the holistic Iberian peninsula.  The exhibit is set up chronologically and has a mixture of art mediums.  The exhibit had descriptions of the art in both English and Spanish.  As i mentioned earlier, the descriptions were definitely written by the Hispanic Society as a few of them were quite complimentary about their collection and its possessions.   So I did end up taking a bunch of photos during the exhibit. A miniature of a cr
Read more

lower east side tenement museum

By -
to take advantage of the beautiful day in new york city, i thought i would try to take the lower east side tenement museum walking tour. i hustled down there and got there right in the nick of time. i have been to the lower east side museum for their tenement tours, but wanted to try this 1 1/2 hr walking tour, immigrant soles: a neighborhood walking tour . i saw some areas of the lower east side which i had never seen before. the tour guide was very good; he did a great job pointing out the interesting architecture making us think about what certain architecture features might mean. for example, a building with only three windows, what does that mean? answer: that it was meant to have a single family live there as opposed to twenty, since there was no partition splitting the building in two. he also brought up some of the different political tensions running through the LES that had not been mentioned in some of the other tours. perfect for a beautiful summer day. times v
Read more

Vatican Museum

By -
Image
After we were in St.  Peter’s Basilica, we ran over to the Vatican Museum .  While you may think Vatican City isn’t that big, it is about a 15-18 minute walk to the entrance of the Vatican museum.  We did buy tickets in advance.  It guaranteed us entrance without having to wait in line.  We bought tickets for right at opening since we had the crypt tour tickets for 11:30 AM.  What a mass of people.  All of the tours seem to get there right at 9 AM too.  We did push our way towards the front, which was allowed, but getting through the museum was crazy.  If I were to do it over again, I would have gotten them for after opening e.g., 10 AM or something like that.  While still a long queue if you had not pre-bought tickets, it seemed like the lobby was at least under control when we left. I knew we did not have a ton of time to dawdle in the museum even though we had about two hours in the  museum.  It sure did take a long time to navigate the tour groups.  We (more or less) foll
Read more