Monday, 17 November 2025

So I’m in Adelaide’s sister city and what must you do when you are here? Yes visit Himeji Castle, the White Crane. It pretty much dominates the city sitting at the end of the main road that starts at the station. I had a bit of trepidation about the stairs with my right knee still giving me grief but the attempt needed to be made. The prudent thing to do was to buy the ticket in advance, which meant a timed entry, which also meant I needed to work out how long it would take to get up there. Google provided advice, so once I was ready I booked and then left the hotel. One excellent thing about Himeji is all the pedestrian streets and there is one next to my hotel that goes all the way to the castle. There are a couple of streets crossing it which are either (a) other pedestrian streets; (b) roads where pedestrians get priority to cross (zebra crossings); or (c) roads with traffic lights. So assuming focus is maintained, and you aren’t lured into one or more of the shops it’s a quick and easy walk.

In a number of locations they had pictures on the floor with spots indicating where to stand. They didn’t look like much but I took a picture of one anyway and the photo turns out completely differently.

Not being distracted I got to the end so this view

So it was time to begin and enter the gate, although there was still a walk through the park to get to the ticket gate.

Ah yes a lot of tourists. This is going to be “fun”, just don’t think of the number of steps to get to the top.

At the ticket gate it was as I predicted. QR code line, non existent but buying tickets the queue from hell. QR for the win. Next problem is timing the walk. I got to the other side of the ticket gate to see a group massing around their flag bearer. Tricky decision, try to get in front or wait a bit? I chose wait as I would be stopping to photograph now the time constraint had gone so they would probably catch me. As I learned during the day the crowd surged, there was a mass of people, then a break, and then another mass. The announcements over the tannoy kept on about crowds, crowd control to avoid pushing etc, in three languages, Japanese, English and Mandarin so I guess the ticket gate was creating the surges but it did mean that if there was a huge crowd somewhere, and there was always a huge crush somewhere, just waiting might thin it out. Anyway it was onto the climbing.

Read the signs and you discover interesting things

Still outside the keep and looking at all the kill zones.

Wrong type of cherry tree but still amusing to see this enjoy the beautiful autumn day. OK finally at the keep and it is time to take off the dirty shoes. After Matsumoto Castle I learned and brought a bag that would take my shoes and I could sling it over my shoulder, freeing up a hand.

The basement level was very dark and my camera didn’t really enjoy it.

Yes it doesn’t look very dark but it was and I had fun convincing the camera it could focus on something. ISO cranked way up and post processing asked to deal with the very grainy image. Going up you got windows, which made a lot of difference unsurprisingly.

The view is much the same as you go up, staircase after staircase, although there was no level 4 Matsumoto castle staircase so I imagine these aren’t the original (also there were a lot of them and they were wide and regular, unlike Matsumoto).

Unlike Matsumoto where the deity hides in the roof space Himeji’s has it’s own shrine.

and some info on the deity

The east pillar is big and originally was a single tree trunk all the way up.

There was a massive number of racks for pikes and rifles.

After I was down I went to investigate the west bailey, which had a lot of info on the castle and its inhabitants.

I bought a combo pass that included the Kokoen Garden so that was next. It had about 12 different gardens, including the garden of the Lord’s residence.

She seemed embarrassed when she saw that I was watching but I just smiled and though of George Bear back in my room 🙂

This shot was a lot of effort. There was a group of women around the red tree for a long, long time taking close ups of the leaves. Then there were the people walking across the bridge in front and stopping. I was nearly ready to give up when I got this, and then someone turned up on the bridge.

Then it was down and time to walk back to my hotel. I think I was out for about 5 hours.

After that I thought I deserved sushi and I found a hole in the wall sort of place with no tourists in it (not even Japanese ones). Communication via photos of the menu items on a smartphone and dueling translation apps. One of the things I was asked made no sense on their app so I used Google translate on their Japanese text to get a different English translation! Apparently they have been in business for 51 years!

Fantastic meal.

Another travel day coming up.