Japan 2023

February 22nd, 2023 - Day trip to Himeji

This morn­ing, too, the alarm clock rang at 5:00 a.m.. We want­ed to take the train to Hime­ji to vis­it the local cas­tle. Punc­tu­al­ly at 6:53 am, the Spe­cial Rapid to Hime­ji depart­ed. The train was very busy, so we had to stay stand­ing until Osa­ka. The entire trip took almost 2 hours.

Short­ly before 9:00 am, we arrived safe­ly in Hime­ji. The city is best known for its breath­tak­ing cas­tle, also called “white heron”. It is the largest cas­tle in Japan and has sur­vived the cen­turies in its orig­i­nal con­di­tion despite earth­quakes and numer­ous wars. The exten­sive com­plex is more than 600 years old and served as a strate­gic defense point in the west of Kyō­to. It was the first of sev­er­al fortress­es built in the 15th century.

The present cas­tle com­plex was com­plet­ed in 1609 under the lead­er­ship of the Daimyo Ike­da Teru­masa. It con­sists of more than 80 build­ings con­nect­ed by numer­ous wind­ing paths. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the sky above Hime­ji was com­plete­ly cloudy at first, so we were a bit dis­ap­point­ed - but for­tu­nate­ly that was soon to change.

We bought com­bined tick­ets for the cas­tle and the gar­dens for 1050 yen each. Because of the ini­tial­ly rather poor weath­er, we first vis­it­ed the main build­ing. It was very cold in there, which was espe­cial­ly unpleas­ant because we had to take off our shoes at the entrance and walk up the 7 floors on socks - part­ly over very steep stair­ways. In the cas­tle itself, there is not very much to see except for a few infor­ma­tion boards. Beau­ti­ful was the view from the top floor over­look­ing the city.

But we were com­pen­sat­ed once we had left the cas­tle again. The weath­er had improved con­sid­er­ably in the mean­time, the cloud cov­er dis­si­pat­ed increas­ing­ly, so that we man­aged to take some very nice pictures.

After the cas­tle tour, we vis­it­ed the adjoin­ing Koko-En park. It con­sists of nine sep­a­rate walled gar­dens laid out in dif­fer­ent styles that reflect the archi­tec­ture of the Edo peri­od. The gar­dens were opened in 1992 to cel­e­brate the cen­ten­ni­al of the city of Hime­ji. Just beyond the entrance, we dis­cov­ered a restau­rant where we ate a menu of soba noo­dles and tem­pu­ra with a view across the park.

Here are some impres­sions from the beau­ti­ful gar­den with many ponds in which col­or­ful Koi carp swam around.

At 3:00 p.m. we returned to the train sta­tion for our trip back to Kyō­to. There we will pick up our pre-ordered rental car for the rest of the trip at 6:00 p.m.. Then the next big adven­ture will begin: Dri­ving a car in Japan. First of all, how­ev­er, every­one was very tired from today’s long tour.

Here’s an inte­ri­or shot of Kyōto’s impres­sive main sta­tion. The sta­tion is con­nect­ed to the Tōkaidō-Shinkansen, var­i­ous lines of the JR West, the pri­vate Kin­tet­su Kyō­to Line and the Kyō­to sub­way. With more than 200,000 pas­sen­gers per day on JR West, Kyō­to was the sec­ond busiest sta­tion on the JR West net­work after Osa­ka in 2016. In the same year, the sub­way sta­tion was used by over 120,000 pas­sen­gers daily.

Designed by Hiroshi Hara and inau­gu­rat­ed in 1997, the build­ing is 70 meters high, 470 meters long and has a floor area of 237,689 m². Archi­tec­tural­ly, it picks up on ele­ments of futur­ism, such as the slight­ly irreg­u­lar glass façade on a steel skeleton.

At 6:00 p.m. we picked up our pre-ordered car at the Toy­ota car rental near our hotel. Luise han­dled the for­mal­i­ties for us with sovereignty.

In the pic­ture above you can see our car for the rest of the trip. A Toy­ota Corol­la Hybrid. Despite the left-hand traf­fic, which was unfa­mil­iar to us, Luise very skill­ful­ly drove it first to a park­ing lot around the cor­ner from the hotel. Find­ing the park­ing lot was eas­i­er than we thought. There are many of them, you dri­ve onto a mark­er and after a short time a bar­ri­er goes up at the bot­tom. To dri­ve away, you pay the park­ing fee and the bar­ri­er low­ers and you can leave the park­ing lot. On the park­ing lot we chose, many park­ing spaces were free - the next day we then found out the rea­son for that.

Since we had already had an exten­sive lunch in Hime­ji, we only went to a small lza­kaya in the evening, where they served snacks and above all lots to drink. Around us were very live­ly Japan­ese peo­ple sit­ting, talk­ing ani­mat­ed­ly and laugh­ing a lot. The atmos­phere was very nice. I slow­ly found a taste for sake, Simone had two Lemon Sours (in a big beer mug). It was a very nice clos­ing of the day.