Japan - Day 5

Today was Shanon's 29th birthday, and it will go down in history as one of his best birthdays ever! He loves castles and got to spend the day at Himeji Castle, the most visited castle in Japan.

Our rail passes kicked in today, and we finally joined the tourist trail. We started off by taking a train to Osaka. We have green class passes, which is kind of like first class. There's not too much of a difference from the regular cars which are pretty comfortable anyway, but the green cars are generally quieter. We had pretty much a whole carriage to ourselves. It was fantastic! In Osaka we changed trains to a shinkansen, Shanon's first time on a super speedy train. He's almost as big a fan of trains as he is of castles, so by this stage his birthday was already a success. There were no green cars on this train, which was unfortunate as we found ourselves in a car surrounded by a large and rowdy tour group from somewhere in Eastern Europe. But after just half an hour we were in Himeji and able to escape them.

After popping our luggage into a coin locker at the station, we followed the crowds heading down the main street towards the castle. Our jaws quite literally dropped as we walked into the castle grounds. It was amazing! In front of the beautiful castle were hundreds of cherry trees in bloom. And underneath them were hundreds and hundreds of people having picnics. The weather was once again very beautiful and it seemed like the whole of Japan had thought it would be a great day to head to Himeji. It was an incredible place to be.

After finding a quiet spot to have a little picnic of our own, we paid our 600 yen each to go into the castle. You have to take your shoes off to enter the castle and carry them around in a plastic bag. My very sore feet (we have been doing A LOT of walking!) enjoyed the change as I wandered around the castle in my socks. To get to the top of the castle, you have to climb something like seven flights of stairs. In some parts the stairs were ridiculously steep, and the ceilings quite low, but we managed to make it up just fine. Since there were a gazillion people up there it was hard to find a free window to enjoy the view from, but eventually we were able to find room to gaze out of a few windows. Fortunately Japanese people are very polite, patient, and not at all pushy, so even though it was busy it was not an unpleasant experience at all.

Getting back down the steep staircases was a lot harder then going up them. Trying to manouvere my way down the steepest sections without banging my head on the low ceiling was a challenge which I failed slightly. As we got down to about the second floor the crowd completely cleared and Shanon took a photo of me coming down the stairs. When he looked at the photo he saw that a rather ghostly-looking blob had joined me in the photo. After much investigation to see if it was perhaps a trick of the light or something we took a couple more photos. The blob moved in each one. Hmmmm...did we spot a Japanese ghost? It's a mystery! We're looking forward to seeing what those photos look like once we can see them on a computer.

After taking many photos of the castle and the cherry blossoms we collected our bags from the station, and went to check in at the nearby Comfort Hotel. After resting our weary legs for a while we headed back out to a nearby shopping arcade which spanned many blocks. We had an early dinner at Lotteria (a fast-food outlet) where we discovered the joy of chocolate balls. These were warm balls of chocolately dough, with liquid chocolate inside. They were absolutely heavenly!

Afterwards we wandered through the arcade, which was still full of people even though it was a Sunday night, up to a park not too far from the castle. We sat and watched a group of teenagers who were dancing to some electronic/dance music for a while before heading back towards our hotel. We stopped for a while in an internet cafe where we hired little booths with extremely comfortable chairs, before heading back to our hotel for a fairly early night. Our hotel room had a big window with good view of the train station which kept Shanon entertained for quite some time.

The Lonely Planet for Japan suggests that Himeji is a rather drab town, and that it's best just to visit the castle as part of a day trip. But we actually really liked the town, and in the end were sad that we only stayed one night.