Himeji Castle

---

Before we left Tokyo earlier in the week for our travels to Hiroshima and Kyoto I booked a hotel in Kyoto online. Unfortunately, we did not get confirmation of our reservation right away and I was not able to check my e-mail until a few days later. When we got on the Shinkansen train in Hiromshima for our ride back north I checked my e-mail and found that we did NOT get the hotel in Kyoto. I was concerned but it didn't seem to bother Maureen so we planned on finding a hotel when we got there. And although we had no hotel yet, we still planned on stopping in Himeji on our way to Kyoto to visit Himeji Castle. It was a strongly reccommened site to visit by my good friend Carl Anderson. I'm glad that we took him up on his reccomendation.

As we pulled into Himeji station I could see the brilliant white castle high on a hill in the distance. After stopping at the visitors bureau at the station, where we got a warm welcome from an extremely helpful staff, we locked our packs in a locker and began the 15 minute walk to Himeji Castle.

The current structure of the castle was completed in 1618 and because its main castle has kept its original design at the time of construction it became Japan's first World Cultural Heritage site in 1993. The wooden interior of Himeji Castle is one of the most fascinating things in the castle, because of its uniqueness. The Himeji castle's architecture is very unusual because it has 6 stories with a total of 83 buildings all made of wood. Feel free to search for more specific information (who built it, who lived there, etc.) on your own since it would take a lot of writing to explain and may bore some of you.

Making our way up the dirt paths of the castle grounds I began to feel like I was thrown back to medieval times. We passed large storehouses that were used to hold thousands of pounds of rice and salt in case the castle was besieged. There were also a few wells along the way.

We made it to the main entrance of the castle which brings you into the basement. The journey to the main tower of the castle comprised of impressively built wooden hallways that included artifacts from the lords and families that inhabited the castle over the years. The hallways also included plaforms and hidden rooms along the window areas for the warriors to fight from if the castle was attacked. There were also an unusually large number of storage areas for swords, guns, and gun powder. This was a heavily protected castle. After the long hallways and a few steep staircases we made it to the main tower. The highlight of this was the view that included the city of Himeji, the moats surrounding the castle, and beautiful green mountains. We spent some time taking in the views and made our way back down.

Before leaving the grounds of the castle we visited the West Bailey section of the building where a Princess Sen and her husband Tadatoki Honda spent some happy days. We also walked through the Nishi-Oyashiki-Ato Garden, built to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the city of Himeji. It contains 9 separate gardens with differnt styles which may have been a little more interesting to me if I wasn't so hungry for lunch.

After leaving the garden we walked back towards the train station along a covered pedestrian mall, found a place to eat, and began planning our next stop in Kyoto which we still had no hotel reservations for.

---

Photos

Hallway inside the castle
Those squares in the walls were holes used to throw stones or hot oil on unwelcome invaders