Approaching the
castle...On my last free day in Japan, my friend Angie and I decided to visit one of the most famous landmarks in Japan: Himeji Castle. Many castles were built during the feudal period but few remain today. Himeji Castle is one of the best preserved and most beautiful. The castle started as a fort in 1333 and was completed as seen today in 1609 by Terumasa Ikeda, son-in-law of the Shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa. We left Osaka by train to travel to Himeji and along the way we passed through Kobe. Many buildings in Kobe were damaged by the earthquake a few years ago, and everywhere you look you can see the signs of construction. One of the interesting things about building construction in Japan is that the buildings are wrapped in a protective covering, usually blue in color, as opposed to here in the United States where buildings are usually left exposed.. I'm not sure what the cover is supposed to protect--the inside or the outside--but they are a common sight in Japan. Maybe they are just there to hide the "ugly" sight of an unfinished building. Angie told me that Kobe looked much better at that time compared to how it looked a year before I was there. Earthquakes are a fact of life in Japan, four noticeable quakes happened during the summer. One of them occurred very close to the lab where I was working and we really felt it in the old building we were in. Luckily it wasn;t a severe earthquake, but it definitely got my attention.
Approaching the
castle...
The main tower as
seen from the West Bailey...
Roof detail...
The five stories
of the main tower...
Art deco arrow
holes...
The old and the
new...
The main tower...
At the top of the main tower there is a small shrine which was on the site before the castle was built. Originally, the shrine was moved to a different location but people felt the move caused bad luck so the shrine was put in the top story of the tower. The view from the top is spectacular but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who has a fear of heights. Even inside the structure I was a bit nervous about getting too close to the windows. Something about the slope of the roof of the story below makes the top story seem dangerous. But on a clear day you can see...well, pretty far.
The surroundings
as seen from the top of the main tower...
Me and my friend
Angie pose beneath the main tower...
As Angie and I posed for our photo beneath the main tower of Himeji Castle, I relaized that my stay in Japan was coming to a close. Tomorrow I would be taking the train from Osaka to Tokyo and then to the airport at Narita. All of a sudden it seemed like the summer had rushed by, although a few weeks ago it seemed like it was going so slow. Funny how things change. But I didn't have a lot of time to think about it then. I was more concerned with not missing my flight back to the USA--and that meant catching a bus, the subway, the shinkansen, picking up my luggage in Tokyo, catching a train to Narita, and not missing my plane. As I went to sleep I hoped that somehow it would all work out.