Himeji

7/20 - Fantastic Castle and Tom Cruise

Through the magic of the bullet trains, we arrived early in Himeji and went straight to the castle – but not forgetting to admire the road construction barriers.

Side note. Everyone talks about how clean Japan is, and it is. But what I really found interesting was in the details of its cleanliness. Road cones, street railings, subway straps, trash trucks… all spotless.

Himeji castle is “regarded as the finest surviving example of prototypical Japanese castle architecture” (stolen from Wikipedia). The presence of a castle on the site dates to 1333, but the truly imposing structure that sits there now is from the early 1600s. It is a 7(?) story wooden structure built on a stone base that has survived 400 years of earthquakes, fires and wars (including extensive bombing in WWII – the placards in the castle note that they citizens covered it up during the war to keep it from being a target for bombers). Inside was fascinating as well. We spent a few hours exploring the main castle and a few other of the buildings on the ground. Unlike the truly terrible English guide from the Tokyo National Museum, they had a free augmented reality app that you could use to learn more about the different part of the building – including a ridiculous samurai picture maker (which Sam continues to use well after the trip). I highly recommend this as a stop on any trip to Japan.

For way more pictures with Himeji Castle, click on the image

More, and better, pictures of the Koken Gardens by clicking on the image

After lunch at a nearby place that served freshly made udon noodles, we went to the modern – though crafted in a traditional edo-style – Koken gardens on the castle grounds. The garden was separated into different sections that all had different themes. It was really quite nice, but due to the string of incredible gardens we had seen, didn’t resonate with us in the way some of the others had.

At this point we made a bit of a last minute decision to head to Mt. Sosha where the Engyoji

Click on the image for more of Engyoji Temples

Temple complex is. You take a ropeway tram up the hillside and follow that with a short walk to reach the main complex grounds. The travel guides are all certain to point out that much of the completely, and 100% historically accurate film The Last Samurai, starring Tom Cruise (the one where an American soldier is the last samurai in Japan somehow) was filmed. That aside, my biggest regret in going is that we didn’t leave ourselves enough time to really explore and do so at a proper place. Most of the paths are not paved, and some are barely even paths. The result is a walk into history. The temples are gorgeous (though you can’t go into most of them). And their settings all seem to be taken from a movie – it’s pretty obvious why you would film here. And we were pretty much on our own as we wandered. We hustled back to take the last cable car back, though apparently you are able to hike back (we weren’t sure about that until after -wasn’t keen on being stranded again). A bus ride back to the train station and we Shinkansen’d it back to Kyoto.

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