Tag Archives: Castle

Himeji and Hiroshima Japan 2015

Japan is crazy awesome.

After Tokyo we headed to Himeji to see a recently re-opened castle and cherry blossoms. We were very lucky because we ended up getting great weather, saw some awesome cherry blossoms, and we were able to tour the castle without having to wait the 2-4hrs that everyone else did. The coolest thing that happened had nothing to do with those things; we ended up having an awesome experience with a local Japanese man when we went out for supper. This man was called by the restaurant owner to come talk to us because he knew English. So, he arrives, strikes up a conversation and by the time the night was over he had paid for our meal, brought us to his home to meet his dog, I drank all of his beer, he gave me a bottle of sake and a book about samurai. He was super friendly; he said he was very happy to meet us and was happy to speak English with us. Very cool experience.

The Himeji Castle was just re-opened after five years of restoration work. Combine this with cherry blossoms and it turns out everyone and their uncle was visiting the castle. We bought tickets and quickly realized it was 2-4hr wait to get into the castle so we decided to skip the castle and walk around the grounds. At 3:56PM we were pretty much alone, everyone had left, so we made a dash for the castle to find that there was no line and we were the last people to be admitted before 4PM. We didn’t have to wait and we took our time. The staff let us stick around until 5PM when they told us “sorry, castle is closed”.

Hanami, or eating / drinking while watching cherry blossoms, is a really big deal. Everywhere we go there are groups of people having hanami. We attempted our first hanami, bought a bunch of food and found a beautiful garden to enjoy our lunch. We were wondering why no one else was having hanami and thought it was great we had the place to ourselves. Near the end of our lunch a security guard came RUNNING and told us we could not be eating in the garden. It turns out, eating and picnicking in that garden was strictly forbidden. It may not seem like a big deal but this would be equivalent to eating in a Smithsonian garden.

Hiroshima was neat. The atomic blast dome and the peace park were all really interesting. We spent a lot of time walking around and found many streets, rivers, and water features lined with cherry blossoms, it was beautiful! There’s a very large underground shopping center in Hiroshima so it was easy to get around. In general, the infrastructure in Japan has been absolutely amazing. The trains and subway run on time, there’s mass transit to everywhere we need to go, and most everything is very walkable.

We are in the Kyoto / Osaka area now and we’ve been enjoying it. Unfortunately, we’ve had quite a bit of rainy weather so there’s been fewer outdoor activities :(. That said, the cherry blossoms are just as beautiful in the rain and our experiences here have been just as awesome as the rest of the country!

Enjoy the photos!

Chris W.