On Tuesday morning it was time to leave Hiroshima. Off we went with our bags on our backs like little tortoise! Today we were heading for Kyoto. But before then, we were stopping off for the afternoon in Himeji, home of what is renowned as the best castle in Japan, Himeji-jo. Now, I can't comprehend Japanese early history that well so all the battles, warriors etc blurs into one for me, but let me tell you this: It was a bloody important castle, it was like a fortress to penetrate, a castle has been on this spot since 11th century and the current castle is 17th century, it was used as a major back drop to the James Bond film "You only live twice" and more recently "The Last Samurai". Oh and it's extremely beautiful.
Himeji is so set up for the day tripper that it has big lockers for all your luggage for a small fee and then FREE bike hire to scoot up to the sights. Me and Ame were totally sold and whizzed up there on our cool tourist bikes...
And into the castle grounds....
Once past the moat, and through the main wall gate you could see Mr Himeji-jo himself. Very grand and official. And surrounded by the amazing cherry blossom (have we mentioned that there is cherry blossom here at all?!).
We pay our entrance few and went for a little explorer. Annoyingly, the day before the castle went into renovation for the next 6 months so the building is now closed for entry. Slightly bad timing on that one but we got some great outside snaps after walking around it's inner perimeter.
We also had a good walk around the battlements. They used to shoot arrows out of here, throw boulders and pour boiling water on any invaders. Not unlike our castles really. Isn't it strange, that thousands of miles of way, without influence on each other, we all did the same things? Strange.
We returned to the gardens within the walls and watched the locals get excited with the cherry blossom once more. We decided to have a photo competition to see who could get the most in-flight blossom in a photo. I won. Ame reckons she was disadvantaged by her photographer. I ain't saying nothing. Here's Ame's entry at number 2:
And Me at Number One:
With our Castle entrance ticket we also had a gardens entry ticket for outside the castle walls. We decided what the hey, and cycled our trusty steeds to entrance. The 12 gardens in the complex were established in 1992 and provided an insight into the gardens of Japan and their styles. I think my mother would of particularly liked this area as it is very interesting for the green fingered amongst us. I wonder if her Gardener's World Monty Don came here on his Asia tour? I digress. It was all very lovely and Ame was fascinated by the big fish in the pond like a toddler.
There were also some very good looking Zen gardens. We had a fantastic afternoon in Himeji.
We returned our bikes and were off on another one hour rail journey to Kyoto. We arrived about 17:30 and begun a bit of a walk to our accommodation. We got a little lost but some kind Tokyo man who was visiting Kyoto soon sorted us out despite not knowing the area very well. In London if you asked for help you'd probably get "No thank you" or eyes to the ground.
Our place was another lovely traditional Japanese room. We turned on our heal and got out and about in central Kyoto to get some dinner. We had an explore around by the river near the Geisha district.
One thing is certain, it's very expensive in Kyoto. You can easily finding many restaurants competing with meal sets at over £100 a pop. There are some extremely la-di-da venues here which were well out of our price range. However, we found a relatively inexpensive place for noodle soup and of course Ame's favourite dumplings. These dumplings were the biggest yet.
Kyoto looked quite hectic in the moonlight. We were understandably knackered and got a bus home to bed.
On Wednesday, we lounged about with a bit of internet and then launched into our day. Our main goal today was to cruise around the Geisha district and have a look around. Kyoto is meant to be elusive with it's history. We did find it a little harder work than usual to get started and feel we were in the right place, but once we got going it was all very good. The thing that is funny is so many Japanese pay to get dressed up in traditional clothes and walk around Kyoto. It is totally not for tourists benefit. And in fact, the Japanese are mainly the tourists in Kyoto and the whole of Japan as we've seen so far. They really love their country. As we sat amongst an old temple, we politely asked if we could take a picture of this couple: Samurai and Geisha. Everyone was at it. They looked fantastic. The girl could hardly stand up in her tight fitting dress and shoes. It was amusing watching them walk away.
We headed up to the backstreets around a famous pagoda...
Here I met my lovely Geisha. Amy rolled her eyes and took a picture of us. It must take them hours to get that done to them. They all look so fantastic.
We had a little lunch and then found the stairs down to the main park with all the temples in. We've had a lot of temples recently so our attention was more drawn to the people around them.
There are proper rik-shaw guys here too. I can't believe they pull these things miles on foot. They must be super fit. Nothing better than a rik-shaw and a couple of Geishas though...
They looked very shy in the back. I suppose they are just trying to go about their Geishary business...
So, after a few more walkies we returned to our hostel and got a train to Kanazawa. It was an all too brief visit to Kyoto but we really enjoyed our day here. I think anymore time here and we'd have been eating in and playing cards in the evening. It's certainly pricey. We may not have done the obvious temples etc but we really felt amongst it today.
We arrived into Kanazawa and got into our business hotel right next to the station. We wanted to experience a high rise hotel whilst were here. We're sitting on the 11th floor at the mo. It's like something from "Lost in Translation". We love it. We went and had Katsu at the mall opposite and then returned. Ame had a bath in the upstairs heated single sex pool and I've typed this up. Tomorrow we explore this lovely looking place and learn about Tea Ceremonies, Samurai and Ninjas.
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