Unfriendly Castle Cats

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Ate our quickmart breakfast on the way to the train to Himeji. We once again took a commuter train there, it took about an hour, and we went through Kobe. If you didnt know Kobe is where all the fancy beef everyone goes apeshit over. The train however did not go past herds of cows, or even enough grass that could feed cows. The train hugged the coast of the bay, Im guessing the cows hangout more inland.

Finally getting to the town of Himeji, you can see the castle immediately upon getting out of the train station, assuming you use the right exit



its about a 1.5km walk. once you get to the outter keep, it has a moat, with pretty plants ringing the outside. getting inside you see some pretty open grassy spaces with great vistas of the Himeji Castle itself.



The outter parts of the castle are free, which other than photo ops of the castle itself, is pretty unimpressive, there was some kind of bonsai festival, maybe affiliated with the one in Ueno Park?



There were also castle cats, though they were very unfriendly.



Once you pay, you enter the inner keep, and make your way up the castles interior to the top, which has some fantastic views of the city and surrounding countryside. at various points in the climb, and descent you can spot some interesting angles of the castle,



that third one is a model of the castle and its surrounding town at its height. If you look real hard you can see the surrounding town is fortified as well. This is very similar to its European contemporaries.

The castle, beyond its foundation is made of wood, with some of the beamsnearly 1m in thickness, I was impressed they could find and move trees that big.



It was a very impressive castle, defensively very similar to the castles of Europe, which i am more familiar with. There was very little direct contact between Europe and Asia in the 1600s, so wither the static defensive strategies are universal, or one slowly crept into the other regions playbooks. there were arrow/gun slits everywhere, murderholes above gates for dropping rocks or burning things, gates, and stairs that uniquele benefitted the defenders (read that as REALLY steep steps). The upper floors had very hgh windows to help clear all the gunsmoke from the blackpowder weapons.

But one thing has yet to be explained to me, Why not build the WHOLE thing out of stone? They do a good job of fireproofing the wood, with a thick facade of lime/morter/hemp/seaweed slathered on the outside, and thick clay tiles for the roof. I also appreciate that wood would be more prone to surviving an earthquake, and repairs could be effected more quickly. But I think stone would mean less danger from fire, and more protection from projectiles. The only explanation I can come up with is the various states of Japan never developed heavy siegecraft, not cataapults or trebuchets or cannons, that were the response to castles in Europe.

The first fort was constructed here in the 1330s, it was really just a hilly area with wooden pallisades. and over the next 250 years it grew into essentially the castle seen in my pictures. Hideyoshi was the one that turned it into a real castle, the same guy involved with the Osaka Castle from the other day. And when the Tokugawas took over Japan, it was handed over to Tokugawa leyaso son-in-law who turned it into the large wooden castle you see today. Some deaths and political alliance shifts later and Honda Tadamase took over. He added some more buildings, including a special tower for his daughter, Princess Sen who has her own interesting stories.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Sen

Also for more info on the castle itself

For an extra 40 yen we got access to the Gardens next door. The koko-en gardens are not original to the Castle town, they were built in 1992, but they are modeled after an Edo period garden. The gardens are built grown on what historians are pretty sure was the estate of a Samurai.

It was a walled area, with a Tea room, a very expenive restaurant specializing in eel, and 9 gardens all interlinked. There were water features abound, filled with koi, some of these koi were huge, like nearly a meter in length. The koi pictured below looked to be made of china, a white fish with blue accents.



and then a representative picture from the gardens.



Fall is here, so the colors are changing, most days are in the 50F, nights in the upper 40F. In Osaka there arent many trees to see, so the gardens were very nice.

We went back to the train station to go home and hopped a Shinkansen, which are the highspeed rail trains, as opposed to the commuter trains, it turned the 67 minute ride into 32 minutes, and dropped us off at a more convinient train station, so we got home quickly.

We hit up a few shops so laura could do her shopping for cosmetics, apparently Japan is famous for their great cosmetics products. Unfortunately, like my interests Lauras are so incredibly specific and discriminating it is hard to satisfy. We spent a good 90 minutes digging up reviews, and google translating packages trying to figure out the ingredients and such.

Then we got dinner, a rice bowl place, very Japanese-take-on-Korean food-y. It was very good, the vending machineyou got your order ticket from was confusing, and we got the meals instead of plates. The advertised price was 690yen for pork loin bowl, and 780yen for skirt steak. But when we got to the machine it was asking 1000yen and 1280 respectively. the extra 300/500 yen apparently went into this chicken broth soup. The soup was chicken broth a sprinkling of green onions, and a single egg dropped in. I dunno, i felt kinda cheated, but then remembered, we just ate dinner for <25USD, so its ok.

We wandered around and got more Takoyaki, oh man, we learned what the hype was about. The stuff we had our first afternoon here was a ball of molten batter, i think i like the more traditional method: crisping the balls. With the outside crispy and solid, the inside cooks to a great consistency and it brings out the flavors in the spices beyond the wet batter flaver of the first one. So we plan on chasing more down in the coming days.

We grabbed some more tarts, an egg, an apple cinnamon, and maple, they were pretty tasty too. Laura did some laundry, and i passed out.