Suffering Himeji

Himeji-jo is an ancient Japanese castle, built at some point a long time ago and refurbished by various lords up through the Tokugawa area, with each occupant adorning the building with his crest. It is one of 3 major Japanese castles that has survived from antiquity, existing in its original form (most such structures in Japan are concrete reconstructions, like Osaka-jo).

As I mentioned in my previous post, I all-of-a-sudden realized that I was rapidly becoming short on weekends in which to go places other than Osaka, which made me antsy to get out for some day trips to take advantage of my central location; Tokyo is a fun city with a few daytrip possibilities like Nikko and Yokohama (yay, Yokohama), but Kansai, and central Honshu for that matter (3-5 hours north of Osaka), are areas with a wealth of destinations worth visiting. So while I’m here I’d like to take advantage of the opportunity and travel around a bit. After realizing that I miscounted the number of weekends I had left (4 rather than 3, including the 5-day), and remembering that I can’t see every place I want to and would rather enjoy the exciting city I’m living in a bit than travel every weekend, this need to get out of town diminished. Nevertheless, having been foiled in my Kanazawa and Takayama plans, I was resolved to take advantage of the 5-day weekend and get out of town.

So after getting a little taste Kyoto and Nara, to return later, I thought that Himeji would be the best next choice. I considered heading down to Shirahama, a famous beachside resort city in Wakayama, but ultimately decided against it for a slew of reasons unreasonable, or otherwise.

All of the previous serves to explain why I ended up going to Himeji on a brutally hot and sunny summer day in the middle of a national holiday break (one of only 3 for Japanese citizens, you can see where that’s going). This was the day after Kyoto by the way, a Monday, and while later in the break would have been lighter in terms of tourism, the weather reports said thunderstorms and rain. They were of course wrong, but hey, who doesn’t like waiting in lines. And on the crucial point of lines, that is how I would describe my experience in Himeji in one word: Lines. Fortunately, even if it takes the whole day (and it did), Himeji-jo is really the only thing to see in Himeji. There’s a nice enough park next to it (see below), but even arriving at noon and suffering the worst crowds of the year both can be comfortably (time-wise) done. If you have more time i.e. only spend the 45 minutes the castle should take to see, there’s supposed to be a nice fine arts museum and an Indo-Japanese buddhist graveyard as well. All told, the whole experience screamed of exactly what I don’t like to do while traveling; still, it was worth it as an experience suffering through.

Getting to the point, Himeji is only an hour and fifteen bucks from Osaka by train, so it makes a solid day trip. Himeji-jo itself is hailed as one of the great surviving castles of the last two millennia, and it earns that reputation. I only had to suffer 20 minutes of lines to see the beautiful ‘white heron’ from the outside along with the castle grounds (which look like any other castle grounds you’ll see in Europe) which lead up to the main keep. The other two hours was spent laboriously making my way through the Keep’s interior step by step along the queue. Quite literally, there was a line from start to finish, and I moved step by step along that line. Amazingly, I didn’t get sunburned, I saved that particular pleasure for the following two weekends. As I promised though, it is worth it; you get a faint glimpse at life in those times (most of the castle is from the Tokugawa period and just before) through the structure that nobility lived and worked in. It’s a small glimpse, but unlike anything I’ve seen in person before,  and a rare enough opportunity.

To step back, before hitting the castle I was famished so I stopped for lunch, a somen set (ice cold thin noodles) at a small place on the way. The food was fine, but I only mention the place because I was sitting at a table with a couple from Hiroshima visiting Kobe and its environs for the 5-day weekend. They were interesting enough, but kind of green in a cute way. The experience was notable only because I was pleased to find that I could carry on a light conversation through lunch with them. Recently the limitations of my language abilities have been frustrating and tiring as I interact with those coworkers I’ve come to know fairly well. It’s nice to know that at least shallow, simple speech is within my grasp, even if deeper expansion is not.

Anyway, as I said Himeji-jo was one long line that took me through the grounds and up the keep where I got a nice view of, surprise, mountains and more mountains like every other view in Japan, and then came back down. Once I finished up with that unpleasant bit of business though, I had just enough time to take a walk in the park before it closed. Kokoen, as it’s called (koen means park), is a modern garden in that it was built recently as a pleasant additional attraction to Himeji-jo. It provided an interesting contrast to Tenryu-ji’s garden yesterday. It is indeed very beautiful and carefully designed, and it follow the same design features of a traditional Buddhist garden. Nevertheless, it can’t hold a candle to the real deal. There are a thousand little intricacies in the gardens I saw in Kyoto that you don’t even notice but combine to make a world of difference. Ko-koen is like Tenryu-ji’s or Daisin-in’s gardens in form only; despite it’s impressive execution for a modern product, it lacks the subtle depth of the aforementioned, and in this fails to move you in the same way.

As a final little observation, it’s interesting that around the world castles, shipwrecks, and other remnants of war are now tourist destinations. It’s just funny that we fear and condemn war and the experience of it, but we are fascinated by those preserved wartime places where it was once conducted.

Incidentally, the train ride back along the coast and through the hills from Himeji to Kobe is beautiful.