Day 1: Himeji castle
For our first adventure,we decided to visit the farthest place in our itinerary so Himeji castle it is.
Himeji castle (Himeji-jo) is widely considered to be the number one castle in Japan. It survived wars, earthquakes and fires and what we saw is the original form of the castle.
The sky is clear and the heat is quite intense but compared to the humidity in the Philippines,this is tolerable.
We walked for like 30 minutes from the Hanshin Sanyo-Himeji station. From Namba, we used the subway to the Umeda station and changed lines there to the Hanshin limited express. The trip from Namba to Himeji-jo could take almost 2 hours actually.
Entrance to the castle grounds.
After buying the tickets,we entered this gate.
The entrance fee is 1,000 yen and there's a huge crowd of local and foreign tourists,after all, the restoration of about 6 years has just finished on March so a lot of people are eager to see the castle again.
Prepare comfortable shoes because the hike is definitely exhausting. Aside from that the interior has at least 6 floors so expect sore legs later in the day.
This is another one of those gates that has a kind of light effect against invaders. When you enter this, it suddenly dark so your line of vision is impeded and as you exit the sun rays strikes your eyes and invaders will have a difficulty in adjusting quickly.
There's a constant flow of tourists but it's not that crowded die to excellent crowd management.
Himeji castle complex in a miniature scale including the surrounding town.
Expect lots of stairs in the castle,haha.
We're up high into the castle as there's a good view of the town. The free wifi here is super fast and the best one we encountered in all of our stay.
Some original parts of the castle that were displayed.
This is a picture heavy post so I cut it into 2 parts ;)