We visited two major local attractions today, the first was Noji Castle.
The castle itself was quite nice, it is a former residence of the Shogun, from back when Shoguns were a part of the ruling structure of Japan.
You were not allowed to take pictures of the inside of the building, so that will have to be left to the imagination, but I can describe it in brief for you. It was an old building, they asked you to take your shoes off before entering in order to preserve the floors. The castle lacked furnishings, however the main attraction were the paintings on the walls. All of the interior walls of the building were covered by paintings; even the ceiling tiles were all painted in patterns. Half the rooms inside seemed to be waiting rooms, presumably there was a long wait to see the Shogun.
The grounds, like those of seemingly all of the important cultural places in Japan, was extremely well tended.
A private pond featuring a waterfall.
An impressive array of trees among the castle's defences.
Like Nara, there were tourists and school kids here as well, though not quite as many.
The rain relented for pretty much the exact duration of our trip to Noji Castle; it started raining again moments after we left.
We also visited the Imperial Palance in Kyoto, however that was mainly because it was not out of the way. Unfortunately, the palace is undergoing renovations, and visitors cannot enter it.
It was raining, so we didn't stay very long; we took a few pictures of the main gates, then proceeded to leave, making our way to our second major stop: The International Manga Museum.
They again didn't allow pictures to be taken inside, so again I'll describe it. It was half museum and half library. When I first bought my ticket, I wondered why they would offer yearly passes. Upon seeing the inside however, that became obvious. There were rows and rows of books, and an abundance of people reading them, even on this miserable rainy day. There were close to 55 years of manga publications here; they claim to have 300,000 titles on their shelves, many of which were said by Matt to be very hard to find.
A small selection of the English section by the door.
A sign outside the museum. It seems in Japan, everything needs a cartoon mascot, and the MM is no exception, theirs is the pen-tailed creature on the bottom right of the sign.
After that, we had dinner at Mos Burger, then went back home.
I'm not sure what was in it, but we were assured by the lady that it was vegetarian. We had Melon Soda, White Grape Soda, and Coke for our drinks.
No comments:
Post a Comment