I didn’t get around to blogging the photos of our trip to Japan while we were there so thought I’d do a few posts now to cover some of the places we visited.
Our JR Pass was valid for our stay in Kyoto so we were able to use it to make a day trip to Himeji in Hyogo Prefecture. We travelled by bullet train, the Hikari Shinkensen and it took just under an hour to get there.
Once we found the right exit from the train station through the underground maze of stores and food options we surfaced on the road to Himeji castle, it is flat and straight so you catch a glimpse fairly early and WOW, it is really impressive.
We liked the feel of Himeji, it was still busy but had a more relaxed sense to it than Tokyo and Kyoto. We detoured off into a few of the little covered shopping streets on the way up but it was too early, most stores were still closed so we left that for on the way back to the station if we had the energy.
There were so many people in the park on the way up to the castle and we were concerned about how busy it would be but it is Sakura and we knew that many places we went would be very popular for cherry blossom viewing at that time. A bonus was this Japanese lady having her photo taken in a beautiful kimono.
In hindsight if you get there early you’d be best to go through the main castle first when there is not many queues, we didn’t know and looked around and through everything else first then went through the castle. We spent a long time standing in line inching closer but it was a sunny spring day so it was nice to be out under the blossom trees.
Once we were inside it was shuffling room only as you followed the long line of people snaking through the castle up and down the floors. It took a good portion of the afternoon and I wondered if we should have skipped going inside as it mostly empty, just the wooden floors, stairs and partitions but when would I get the chance to be inside a real castle again, especially one of the three premier castles in Japan.
