Today the rain was back full in force, although if the weather forecast is to be believed, the rest of the week will be sunny and hot again. I decided to take a day trip this morning to Himeji, home of the famous Himeji-jo.
Himeji is only about 50 minutes from Kyoto by shinkansen. Once there I popped by the visitor information center where I was able to procure an english language map and a nice hint on how to make it most of the way to the castle avoiding the rain by walking down a covered shopping street that ran parallel to the main street.
Himeji castle my look like Osaka castle from the outside, but the inside is as different as can be. The castle interior has been preserved and you can wander the interior of the buildings much as they were years and years ago(minus any decoration). The interior is mostly unlit and the stairs can be quite steep but that didn’t stop the tour of elderly japanese who happened to be going through the same time I was. I have to say, I enjoyed it much more than Osaka castle with its modern museum interior (complete with elevator).
The rain was pretty fierce, so after the castle I decided to head back instead of touring the gardens as well. On the way back I swung by a little noodle place where I had some scrumptious curry udon before hopping back on the shinkansen.
Once back in Kyoto I decided to take the rest of the day off and catch up both on laundry and on blog posts. On the way back to my hotel I picked up another train station bento for dinner later that contained…
a piece of salmon
a large square of sweet scrambled egg
2 fish sausage balls
another piece of white fish
a small breaded chunk of chicken
an assortment of vegetables and konnyaku
a small amount of what first looked like tiny bean sprouts but on further examination turned out to be tiny whole fish.
japanese pickles
a large number of rice rolls colorfully decorated.
All that for only 1000 yen, what a deal.