Himeji Castle

Today we did a day trip by Shinkansen to Himeji Castle. It is a fair distance west of Kyoto.


The city of Himeji is quite fond of statues. This is one of maybe a dozen we passed down the main street from the train station to the castle.

A bridge leading to the entrance.

A map of the grounds. The bridge in the picture above is the one at the bottom of this map. Note the large white castle at the top.

Yes, the one that looks a lot like this.

It seems they couldn't decide what shape to make the gun ports. There were circular ones as well.

After climbing to the sixth story of the castle, the view (and the wonderfully cool breeze) was quite excellent.

 The castle interior.

 There was a shrine on the top floor.

The castle; Bram for scale.

We also went to another keep within the castle (the other one was just the main keep)

It had nice grounds.

 An interior corridor.

 A display they had of Geisha playing cards.

This keep had a nice view as well, though it wasn't nearly as tall.