Before heading to Nara, we made a detour to see Himeji-jo, a castle about 30 minutes by train from Kobe. So we had breakfast and bid farewell to Kobe. It’s really quite a lovely city.
The day was persistently rainy, but we still had fun. The castle is really beautiful. You can see it from a distance, almost as soon as you leave the train station.
We slowly made our way towards Himeji-jo. I say slowly because Kristen and I kept stopping to take pictures – I’m surprised Lars didn’t forcibly remove our cameras.
Here I’m standing in front of the gate. The Japanese went all out when building their gates, and they certainly didn’t think small.
The castle is really beautiful. The day was rainy, which was the only down side. Himeji-jo is a feudal era castle, which becomes apparent very quickly. Almost every detail of that beautiful white structure seems to have some purpose for battle, and I guess since it survived World War II (apparently most of the town of Himeji didn’t), it worked.
There was a fortress here from around 1346, but around 1600 Ikeda Terumasa took over and wanted something more visually impressive, so he built this. It’s still pretty dedicated to defense though.
They ran out of rocks when building the wall, so they used tombstones to finish it. Himeji-jo is on a hill, so there’s an amazing view of Himeji from it.
The castle itself seemed very vertical, I felt like we went up forever, even though I think it was only 5 floors.
The top of the building is supposed to be famous I think. Of course there was also a shrine inside, in the top floor, and there was a model of Princess Sen in her living quarters.
Princess Sen is interesting because she was from the Tokoguya family and married off at the tender age of 7 to someone from the Toyotomi family, and then when the Tokoguyas crushed the Toyotomis (this doesn’t make sense the more I think about it), her husband committed suicide with the rest of his family, and then she married someone from the Honda family. I was mostly interested because of the Honda part, but apparently it’s a different Honda from the car. Also, there was a dedicated suicide corner at Himeji-jo, but it was called Suicide Corner because it looked like somewhere where Samurai would commit suicide, even though no one committed suicide at the particular location.
The day was persistently rainy, but we still had fun. The castle is really beautiful. You can see it from a distance, almost as soon as you leave the train station.
We slowly made our way towards Himeji-jo. I say slowly because Kristen and I kept stopping to take pictures – I’m surprised Lars didn’t forcibly remove our cameras.
Here I’m standing in front of the gate. The Japanese went all out when building their gates, and they certainly didn’t think small.
The castle is really beautiful. The day was rainy, which was the only down side. Himeji-jo is a feudal era castle, which becomes apparent very quickly. Almost every detail of that beautiful white structure seems to have some purpose for battle, and I guess since it survived World War II (apparently most of the town of Himeji didn’t), it worked.
There was a fortress here from around 1346, but around 1600 Ikeda Terumasa took over and wanted something more visually impressive, so he built this. It’s still pretty dedicated to defense though.
They ran out of rocks when building the wall, so they used tombstones to finish it. Himeji-jo is on a hill, so there’s an amazing view of Himeji from it.
The castle itself seemed very vertical, I felt like we went up forever, even though I think it was only 5 floors.
The top of the building is supposed to be famous I think. Of course there was also a shrine inside, in the top floor, and there was a model of Princess Sen in her living quarters.
Princess Sen is interesting because she was from the Tokoguya family and married off at the tender age of 7 to someone from the Toyotomi family, and then when the Tokoguyas crushed the Toyotomis (this doesn’t make sense the more I think about it), her husband committed suicide with the rest of his family, and then she married someone from the Honda family. I was mostly interested because of the Honda part, but apparently it’s a different Honda from the car. Also, there was a dedicated suicide corner at Himeji-jo, but it was called Suicide Corner because it looked like somewhere where Samurai would commit suicide, even though no one committed suicide at the particular location.
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