Our Japan Journey

---

Day 5

This morning we got up early and walked down to Matsumoto Castle. It's a beautiful castle and the inside is a little like a museum with information panels (in English and Japanese) and all sorts of artifacts on display. The view from the windows at the top is breathtaking as it looks out over the city of Matsumoto and across to the Japanese Alps.

We returned to the hotel and had the buffet breakfast which included a salad bar! Amazing how much I miss simple food like salad and vegetables. Next we headed off back towards Osaka but had a little trouble trying to find out how to get onto the toll road. After making a few U-turns, we got onto an on-ramp but got pulled over and asked to park on the side of the road. A few minutes went by and we saw others being asked to pull over as well then the next thing that we knew, a whole cavalcade of black cars with darkened windows flanked by police on motorbikes and supply trucks went through the toll point, shadowed overhead by a helicopter. We like to think it was the emporer that we saw.

The next 3.5 hours we travelled down the toll road to Nagoya. The view is nothing to write about but it's quite a relaxing drive - at least it was until we got to Nagoya. There wasn't any real signage and the GPS was Japanese which didn't help. Eventually, we got to the centre of town but we spent an hour driving around trying to find the Mazda rental place - we actually drove past it once without seeing it and then parked virtually across the road from it and still didn't see it for a few minutes. Once we found it, it only took us a few minutes to get to the train station and catch the next shinkansen back to Osaka.

Day 6

Today we caught the train to Fushimi Inari Shrine where there are thousands of shrines painted bright orange lining the pathways - really quite a unique sight and not too far from the train station. After that, we had a look around Gion and had brunch in a very English cafe. The maps of Kyoto are quite deceptive as far as distances go - the Mariyama Park looked like it was a fair distance away from Gion but we could actually see it from the cafe and it was only about 100m away. Buoyed by this, we decided to set off on foot to Ginkakuji, the silver temple, as it looked to be only about 3 times as far away as Mariyama Park. How wrong we were! We walked up to Nanzenji Temple and then kept walking, and walking and walking until we got to the start of the Philosophers Path. The path is quite different to what I was expecting - It's a walk through a residential area, albeit a very pretty area and would be stunning in spring. Ginkakuji is at the end of the Philosophers Path but not very well signposted - we just followed everyone else. You don't get to go into the building, just the gardens but it was nice to see anyway.

I was too tired to walk any further so we caught the bus back to Gion. I'd read that Pontocho Dori was a good place to eat but not many of the menus were in English so we headed back to Gion instead. By that time, we were pretty tired so we headed back to our hotel in Osaka.

---

Photos

View from top floor of Matsumoto Castle
This floor was the "war room". From here, the Shogun could view the battleground and give orders.

Matsumoto Castle across moat
This shows a little of the base that the castle is built on. It's a lot like a stone retaining wall but the way it has been built has survived earthquakes for a couple of hundred years.

Richmond Hotel, Matsumoto
This is the hotel we stayed in - a very comfortable, western style hotel.

Prayer temple, Fushimi Inari shrine
People write their prayers on these little pieces of white paper

Entrance to the Fushimi Inari shrine walkway
There are over 1000 orange painted shrines lining this walk up to some temples. We didn't do much of the walk but it looked impressive.

Buddhist temple at Fushimi Inari
This temple is in use today and they were holding a prayer service when we were there.