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Published: September 30th 2013
Monday was my last day trip from Kyoto and I was heading out to see another National Treasure castle at Inuyama. Apparently, it is the oldest standing castle in Japan. The other National Treasure castles are Hikone, Himeji (see previous blogs) and Matsumoto (see a future one, but not yet!).
To get there I had to take 3 trains again, but I was glad that one of them was a shinkansen to Nagoya – the bullet trains are awesome. Eventually I arrived at Unuma station which is across the river from Inuyama. Again, there is a private railway that can get you closer, but it wasn’t far away and, as it turns out, it was a very nice walk. Crossing the bridge over the river gave a wonderful vista of the castle on the hill, and on the other side, the riverside walk was really nice.
Despite looking like quite a large hill, the walk up was surprisingly not too bad. Once again they had entrance ticket combos and I had no idea what else I wanted to see in town because I hadn’t found the tourist information office yet. So I went for the
Watching Where We're Going
Some of the trains here allow you to look out the front, which I really like.combo that included the nearby tea garden. The castle itself is pretty nice, but not huge. There also wasn’t much of a ground around the castle, mostly because it’s on the edge of a cliff.
I headed into the castle and had a look around. There wasn’t a lot inside, but they did have the lord’s room to show what it was like inside the actual castle when it was in use. There were a few displays, some armour and other things, but no English signs so I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. The highlight once again was the view from the top. The castle actually had a veranda around the top floor. Then I headed back down via the extremely steep staircases – I don’t know how a samurai would have done it in full armour!
After a brief stop for souvenirs and an ice-cream, I left the castle to have a look around town. I quickly found the tourist information centre and tried to ask them what was in the Shirotomachi museum. Unfortunately their English was only marginally better than my Japanese so they kept telling me how to get
Riverside Walk
On the way to Inuyama Castle there. Anyway, I had plenty of time so I decided to go and check it out regardless.
As it turns out, it was only 100 yen so there wasn’t much to lose. There wasn’t a lot in there, but it was quite well done. The main room was dominated by a massive model of the town as it was hundreds of years ago. It was quite detailed and very impressive. There were two additional rooms with various items displayed, including armour and swords. Two of the swords were really big – possibly equivalent to a Scottish claymore end to end, although these swords had longer handles.
The museum ticket also gave me entrance to the Karakuri Exhibition room across the road. I thought it was just some kind of puppet museum at first. But there was a tour group getting a talk and demonstration, so I eavesdropped on the English translator and it turns out that Karakuri are mechanical puppets that were used to deliver tea. It was quite clever, really because the puppet stops moving once somebody picks up the teacup. When the teacup is replaced, it starts moving again, turning around in
a semi-circle and heading back to where it came from. Apparently it was designed to move exactly the length of a standard mat.
From there I headed back down the hill and went to the Uraku-En tea garden. The tea room there was actually built for a brother of Oda Nobunaga (the first person to unify Japan during the Sengoku Jidai civil war) who was a master of the tea ceremony (this was actually a really big deal in Feudal Japan – the tea ceremony was often participated in, but rarely mastered). It has actually been moved to the Uraku-En garden. The garden was lovely though, and the highlight for me.
It was getting about time for me to start heading back to the train station. I walked back and had the chance to look at some of the fighter jets that had been flying over all day. I recognised F-4s and F-15s. I assumed earlier that there must have been an air force base nearby, or something. But on the walk back to the station I could see that they were flying one at a time over to the west, dropping low (very
low) and circling around a couple of times before leaving. I thought I saw some smoke rising in that direction so perhaps there’s a live bombing range there somewhere.
The trip back to Kyoto was uneventful other than the fact that I was on a train that actually left late! Sure, it was only 4 minutes and it was only 2 minutes late when it got to Nagoya, but that is by far the latest I’ve seen any train run in Japan.
Tomorrow is a bit of a rest day. I will be getting my luggage forwarded to my hotel in Takamatsu (a great service available here in Japan!) so all I have to do is catch a couple of trains. Takamatsu will be my base for a week while I explore the small island of Shikoku, with a trip back to Honshu to visit Hiroshima thrown in for good measure.
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John
non-member comment
Such a pretty country and so green.