Advertisement
Published: October 6th 2013
Edit Blog Post
Sunday morning was a reasonable start time – not too early, not too late. My plan was to head over to Kotohira by train, and assuming I could get away from there by 3 pm, head over to Marugame to see the castle there. Initially, I had been planning to stay in Marugame until it got dark, but it turns out that I have left an important piece of my tripod at home so no night photography this trip!
The major attraction in Kotohira is the Kotohira-gu shrine (it was once both a shrine and a temple dedicated to seafarers). Although this is the first temple or shrine I have visited on Shikoku, the island is actually very important to the Japanese as a pilgrimage of the 88 temples. Walking around the island visiting all 88 takes at least 2 months though, so not everyone can manage it. Apparently Kotohira-gu is the temple/shrine that all Japanese people should visit at least once in their life. It seems today was the day they all chose.
Not really, but it sure was crowded. I was hoping for a quiet day when I got off the train because
not many other people did. However, it seems that many drive to Kotohira because there was a lot of parking places on the way.
Fortunately the rain from Saturday had disappeared. Unfortunately, it was quite a warm day and very steamy after yesterday’s rain. This mattered because the Kotohira-gu shrine is famous for its 1,368 steps that you need to climb to get there. I’d like to claim I climbed them all, but the last few hundred lead to an inner shrine and by the time I reached the main shrine I had had enough step climbing. Despite the strenuous journey, and the crowds, it is actually a very pretty walk. The small shrines, gardens and the steps themselves are beautiful. That is, once you get past the first couple of hundred steps which are lined with souvenir shops.
The trip back down was much quicker, naturally. But not too quick! I’d hate to fall down up there because there’s a long way to fall and I’m not sure how easy it would be for paramedics to reach you. By the time I walked back to the station I was absolutely drenched in sweat.
But it was not quite 3pm, so I resolved to continue on and catch the train to Marugame for the castle.
Again, the walk from the station was not very long, but I must confess that I swore to myself when I arrived at the moat and looked up at the keep. It was quite a way up a large hill and would have been daunting if it was the first sight I had visited in the day. As it was, after climbing the steps at Kotohira, I was not looking forward to the climb at Marugame.
Fortunately though, it wasn’t actually too bad. And there weren’t many steps! The biggest part of the climb probably should have been steps, but it was in fact a couple of very steep sloping pathways. The walls of the castle were absolutely massive, but surprisingly the keep itself was actually quite small. There wasn’t a lot on display inside the keep, and like most of the castles I have visited the highlight was the view from the top floor. Not to mention that Marugame castle is one of the few Japanese castles to have the original keep.
As it was getting on, and that pretty much seemed like it for the castle, I headed back to the train station and caught a train back to Takamatsu. Tomorrow is the last day trip on Shikoku and I will be heading over to the west to visit Matsuyama.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.095s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 11; qc: 32; dbt: 0.0657s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb