Japan: Himeji, the white Heron castle

From Kyoto, we took the Hikari train, one of the Shinkansen high-speed trains, to get to Himeji in just 45 mins.

After we got out of the train station, we immediately saw the castle from afar, as the city's main street, Otemae Street, was a large avenue between the station and the castle.

The street itself was also nice to discover with its bronze statues, sometimes depicting naked men and women.

Next to Otemae St, Himeji offered several covered passages full of shops and restaurants.

Once we got closer to the castle, we could not be more amazed by its beauty, much more imposing than Matsumoto or even Osaka Castle, because you could see the whole complex at a glance. The grounds are smaller than Osaka Castle but more visually appealing.

The Castle itself is called white Heron castle in reference to its soaring keep and its white plaster walls. It is one of the oldest surviving castles in Japan as it was built in 1601 and was never attacked, not even during WWII, when the rest of the city was destroyed. I guess the Americans wanted to keep the castle intact 🤔

The Castle's main keep has 7 floors and is 45m high - it is one of the highest in Japan. It's surrounded by fortifications creating 2 baileys (fortified courtyards) where the Lady of the castle used to live. And each wall had slits for archers and gunners to defend the castle. We didn't count them but it seems there were almost 1000 all around the castle.

We visited the freezing west bailey quarters and then the main keep in our socks. You could imagine people wearing big coats, scarfs and hats but walking in their socks? 🤔

We could appreciate the wooden structure of the castle, like Matsumoto but much bigger and, unfortunately, crowded.

But the highlight of the castle was the number of passionate people that were wearing ninja or samurai outfits, roaming the grounds of the castle, waiting for a challenger to fight them 🤪

Next to the castle is the Koko-en garden, which you can visit with the same ticket (1050 JPY). This space is an ensemble of beautiful Japanese gardens, with small bridges, ponds with carps, stone lanterns, beautiful flowers and trees.

Unfortunately, the cherry trees were not yet in full bloom (only 1 week away) but we could still see some starting to open up.

We also enjoyed a tea ceremony (500 jpy) in the garden's traditional tea house, which included a cup of matcha and a delicious cherry blossom sweet. We now know how to properly drink matcha tea.

We finished the day by trying the Pachinko game. It's such a popular game, that you can find it in every city in Japan.

Pachinko is a mix of vertical pinball and slot machines. The goal (from what we understood) is to fire little steel balls into a specific area, using a round knob to control the strength of the shot.

Obviously 99% of your steel balls will fall on the side or come back to your pot. But if the ball goes through the payout target, it will trigger a slot machine game for the possibility of a payout in small steel balls. We saw a person get 3 buckets of those steel balls! 😲

But personally, we are not sure we understand why Japanese are so fond of that game. But we guess it has the same appeal as slot machines.

That's it folks! Next stop is Hiroshima!