Advertisement
Published: April 12th 2007
Day 13 ...
After an early start we left Kyoto headed to Matsue and planned to visit Himeji on the way which has a massive castle (among other things). We were on a mission as we had a lot fit in. We started our whistle stop tour with a trip to some really nice (reconstructed) Samurai gardens and meeting hall at Koko-en next to the castle which was well worth the visit with a number of different themed Japanese gardens (how old do we sound?!)
Next we were ｏｎ to the main event of the day，Himｅji Ｃastle. I am really pleaseｄ to say that we have already lost tracｋ of what day of the week it ｉｓ， however， on this occaｓion it was to bitｅ us in the bum. Ｔhere was a huge ｂlossom festival on at the catsle that ｄａｙwhich had probably tripled the number of people there causing ｑｕｅｕｅｓ beｙond beliｅf! Ｏn the ｕpside， the cａstle was really impressive and we had the pleasｕre of seeing it with the blossom fully out．The castle walls have lots of different shaped holes in them for soldiers to fire arrows or bullets from and there are holes in the floors of the castle to pour out boiling water onto attackers heads,
with this in mind we decided not to try and skip the entrance fee. The castle also had a special room for Samurai to commit ritual suicuide, nice.
Another upside to the festival was that we were also able to watch 100 japanese harp ladies, harping it about to kick off proceedings and later a lot of ladies leaping (with fans), and even drummers drumming - not sure how many days of Christmas there were left but we were next expecting father christmas to arrive on his sleigh with a partridge in a pear tree. On our way back to the station we passed a crazy lady who was selling BIG bugs. These were monstrous - the sort we considered crossing the road to avoid but curiosity allowed us to scuttle past them to see what we might be facing later on in the trip - YIKES!
We caught the train then to Matsue, which had been recommended to us by Peter and his family in Tokyo, catching a stunning sunset on the way. Arriving at one of our cheapest sleeping places yet we were impressed to find that we had a mezzanine level in our room - how posh are
we? The ladder climb up was none too pleasant though!
We went out for an evening walk to get a preview on the next day. Matsue is positioned near the Northern Coast and between two lakes so it has a lot of water around. We found our way to Matsue castle (which like Himeji, has a moat), it looked fab all lit up and there were loads of people sat out celebrating the blossom season with plenty of beer and sake - it was a great atmosphere.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.803s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 47; qc: 157; dbt: 0.66s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.5mb
marney
non-member comment
world tour scam
alo harry and mary 100 women harping my arse..that was the chinatown womens knitting machine championships held every may in manchester.also you were spotted in the audience in little shop on the two for one night dressed as pensioners(the wheelchairs wer agood distraction.by my reckoning you are now living in simons loft working your passage by repairing his dodgy chimney breast. come home the scams up