Davin Reporting!
A new day has dawned with us in Okayama. The first order of the day was to visit Okayama Castle, so we checked out of our hotel and had them store our bags and walked the approximately two miles to the castle.
[Kristin Interjection: We got to experience the back streets of Okayama on this walk. I began taking pictures of sewer lids for my collection. It is silly but one of the things I like the most about Japan is that each city has a different design on its sewer lids and they are quite decorative.]
An interesting aspect of Japanese Castles, compared to European Castles, is that Japanese Castles are made out of wood, instead of stone. As a result, most historical castles have burned down at some point or another, and very few original castles still remain.
Along those lines, Okayama Castle is a concrete reconstruction– the original burned down during bombing in WWII. Also, much of the original castle structures and grounds either burned down or were cleared over the centuries, so not too much remains besides the inner wall and moat and the donjon. The main reason for seeing Okayama Castle was to contrast it to Himeji Castle, because it has a black exterior, while Himeji’s exterior is white.
On the whole the castle was interesting to see, but being a reconstruction it was not overly impressive. There was a small museum inside, but there wasn’t anything of that much interest. There were some English signs, although they were more limited than the Japanese information– that said, I didn’t feel like we missed out on that much. Fortunately, museums in Japan are very inexpensive, so seeing the castle only set us back 400 yen each (~$4).
Having seen the castle, we walked back to the hotel. We passed by an interesting system for tandem parking involving a car lift.
At the hotel, we picked up our bags and hopped on the short 30 minute train ride to Himeji. Here we spent a few minutes looking around for a locker to store our goods, and ended up finding plenty available. One nice thing about Japanese train stations is they have plenty of lockers for storing luggage, in Britain and Europe it seems that a lot of these lockers have been removed. Frankly with rail serving such an integral part of the Japanese transportation network, they probably could not do without the lockers!
[Kristin Interjection: The weather threatened rain today so we had to wear our rain gear. This proved fortuitous because I wanted to bring Erich to the castle for a photo shoot. He fit quite comfortably inside my rain jacket which kept me warm, kept him dry, and freed my arms from having to carry him the whole way!]
Himeji station opens up onto the original main street, so as soon as you step outside you are greeted with a view of Himeji Castle in the distance. It was an impressive sight, and also it was nice that it left little confusion about how to reach the castle from the train station. Himeji Castle is known as the White Egret Caste due to its white exterior, and it is said to be one of the top three original castles in Japan.
[Kristin Interjection: On the castle grounds as you head for the main keep, there is this rock with writing on it and it is surrounded by stray cats. It appeared that they are being fed. They seemed to stay in the area of the rock. It was weird but the cats seemed special for some reason!]
Amazingly, Himeji survived WWII, when it was covered with a black tarp so that it couldn’t be targeted from the air. The entire city around it burned down, but it remained standing proudly amidst the rubble. It’s very fortunate too, as it is a very impressive castle– possibly the most impressive castle I’ve seen in the world (and I’ve seen a lot)! Seeing this castle was definitely one of the highlights of my time in Japan!
[Kristin Interjection: I liked Himeji Castle very much, and I think it is one of the best castles I’ve ever seen, but Arundel Castle in England remains my all time favorite castle!]
The roof tiles at Himeji have decorative end caps with symbols on them. Over time, the castle changed hands, and different lords made repairs, so today there are a number of different symbols that can be seen, corresponding to the lord who paid for the work. The castle has also been repaired twice, once in the Meiji era, and once again in the 1950s, when the whole castle was dismantled so failing parts could be repaired or replaced, and then meticulously reconstructed again.
The castle’s donjon was a truly massive wood structure, with huge support pillars formed by huge trees. Like with all Japanese castles, each floor of the donjon is basically built on top of the previous one, tapering in size as they go up. As part of your tour of the castle, you can climb up inside. Although the castle is unfurnished, seeing the size of the different floors is still interesting. Even the “smaller” upper floors are still large enough to hold a full sized American house (even a Mc Mansion)!
[Kristin Interjection: We had to climb to the top of the castle in our socks! Many of the ladders were quite steep! No shoes can be worn inside the castle. We were given a plastic bag to use to carry our shoes with us.
It was also quite dim in the castle. There were no lights and the windows only let in a little light.]
The top floor of the castle holds a Shinto shrine, which was relocated there from its previous location some time in the past. A large number of people were making offerings and ringing the shrine’s bell. The other noteworthy event on the top floor was fighting and jostling to get to the windows to take in the view.
As part of our tour of Himeji, we paid an extra 40 yen each to also get access to the Japanese Gardens next door. These gardens were divided into a number of individual sections, which had a different style. Some gardens were better than others, but they were all fairly tranquil and relaxing. As a token addition to the castle tour, it’s probably worth a walkthrough of the gardens.
With all that behind us, our sightseeing for the day was behind us. Now we turned our attention to the problem of finding an adapter for our laptop plugs. This actually turned out to be much harder than expected! A Japanese electronics store seemed to be something of a mythological creature (which is especially surprising given Japan’s international reputation for being a place of high technology)! We tried searching on our phones, which led to walking around the back streets for an hour, finding nothing (these back street tours can allow you to see an interesting side of a city, though).
Finally, with only a few minutes before our train ride, we ended up at a department store that had probably half a dozen in stock. Unfortunately, most of these simply would not work for our purposes! First of all the adapters were focused primarily on converting Japanese plugs to other regions, and that combined with the U.S. plug being so similar (it shouldn’t need converting) made finding a workable adapter a challenge. Fortunately, we finally managed to find one of them that would work, albeit in a somewhat clunky fashion (with the third prong just hanging in the air exposed).
We grabbed our final train for the day, another Shinkansen, that took us to Tokyo. The bullet trains in Japan are pretty awesome. I wish we had something like this in the U.S. A ride by train really shouldn’t take longer than going by car!
All in all, it was a fairly uneventful ride, and we arrived in Tokyo at around 10 PM. Unfortunately, we hadn’t had a chance to eat in Himeji thanks to the adapter debacle, and all of the restaurants were now closed, so we were forced to resort again to eating more convenience store food. Good thing convenience stores are so common (one was even connected to the lobby of our hotel), or we would have had to go hungry!
Tomorrow’s Adventure: Tokyo Day 1 (March 19, 2016)
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