Articles with himeji

HEAVENLY HIMEJI

After a rest day at the World Cup yesterday, the action returned on Tuesday in Kobe for an encounter that was both a mismatch and a dead rubber. As expected, the Springboks crushed the Canadians with the minimum of fuss, running in ten tries to take the game 66-7. However, the Canadians did do well to restrict the South Africans to three tries in the second half and to score one themselves with a man disadvantage.

We had a look at Kobe itself last week, but Himeji, home of Japan’s largest and most famous castle, is just a little ways down the train track. I visited the city myself in my first summer in Japan, and I think it’s fair to say I was a little taken with it reading back the blog I wrote then. I wonder how I’d feel now after seeing so many other castles.

The Japanese themselves have nicknamed the castle either ‘White Egret Castle’ or ‘White Heron Castle’ due to the brilliant white that the castle regained after renovation in 2015. But it seems there’s no pleasing some, as it is now perhaps most famously known as ‘Too White Castle’.

A quick word to the wise on my experience of Japanese castles in general. With few exceptions, the exterior is far more impressive than the interior. If you want to just walk around the grounds, it is most often free, as they normally serve a double function as a park for local residents.

The Japanese love numbering and ranking their attractions. Himeji is one of Japan’s “three great castles”, alongside Kumamoto (mentioned yesterday) and Matsumoto. There are also “three great gardens”, which are located in Kanazawa, Okayama and Mito. I’ve been to all three of the castles and one of the gardens. They were all worth it.

Tomorrow is a day of reckoning for Scotland. They need to beat Russia, and they need to secure a bonus point. Even if they do manage that, it’s going to be a tall order facing the tournament hosts just four days later. Wales will also have the chance to all but secure first place in their pool against Fiji in the late game.

Today’s Match
South Africa 66-7 Canada (Kobe Misaki Stadium, Kobe)

Tomorrow’s Matches
Argentina vs USA (1345 JST) (Kumagaya Rugby Stadium, Kumagaya)
Scotland vs Russia (1615 JST) (Shizuoka Ecopa Stadium, Shizuoka)
Wales vs Fiji (1845 JST) (Oita Stadium, Oita)

Expression of the day
白すぎ城へ行ったことがありますか ? (shiro sugi jou e itta koto ga arimasu ka)
Which means…
(Have you been to “Too White Castle”?)

Previous Day Next Day



Himeji

August 2015

There’s pretty much one reason that people come to Himeji and it stands there right before you at the end of a long broad avenue as you exit the train station. On the steamy hot (mushiatsui) summer’s day I came here, the six white storeys of the castle’s main keep set against a backdrop of majestic blue skies and white clouds were simply breathtaking.

On the long train journey back home to Shizuoka afterwards, I kept looking with almost religious reverence at the photographs I had taken. This was a building it was possible to entirely commune with in mind, body and soul. In fact, it was so perfectly conceived it was barely of this world, seeming to exist on another plane entirely, perhaps halfway to heaven. If you only see one castle in Japan (a highly improbable occurrence), make it this one!

As uplifting as the views of Himeji Castle were, the actual sightseeing was more of a hard slog. Visiting during Obon, the impossible number of visitors meant that the whole trip into the castle, up the wooden floors to the small shrine at the top and back down again consisted of one massive queue. The best part of the trip was, in fact, at the very end, when the attendants were no longer urgently ushering you on and it was possible to enjoy the edifice in (relative) peace.

The hostel I stayed at was Himeji 588. It was reasonably priced by Japanese standards (2700 yen) and had free coffee, tea and water, a godsend in hot weather. The beds in the dorm were Japanese style mattresses in small cubby holes one up one down and the showers had free soap and shampoo. There was a bar downstairs and a small area to meet other guests, which I did. The one downside was that guests are asked to leave from 1000 to 1600 for the staff to do cleaning, not so great if you were partying the night before.

For dinner, on the recommendation of the hostel manager, we headed down to an area just northeast of the station where there was a cluster of izakayas in one of the colonnaded shopping arcades. I was joined by some other hostel guests and after being told they were full up in most places (it was Saturday night), we finally went down a random set of stairs and found a great little underground cavern bar. The menu was only in handwritten Japanese, one of the hardest things in the world to decipher, so I just asked the staff if they had this or that and what they recommended (‘osusume’) in Japanese.

We then went looking for another place and came across a Latino bar with a suitably cheesy name, ‘Bar Tropicana’. Drinks were not free. I had a chat in Spanish to the friendly Peruvian owner from Cuzco, who had married a Japanese lady. There weren’t too many people there, but there was one young Japanese guy, who for some unknown reason was keen we took our shirts off. The Swedish fellow I was with happily obliged, despite or perhaps because of his massive girth.

We left as soon as we’d finished our drinks, but the owner said it was his birthday the next day and encouraged us to return. I was sceptical as to whether that was actually true or not, but my holiday had come to an end. It was time to get back to Shizuoka.