Stop One - Himeji

After leaving Kyoto, i stopped in Himeji first, to take a look at Himeji Castle 

Not a castle... but these are pay parking spots. You back up over the plate, and then it pops up under your car. This prevents you from leaving till you pay to get the plate to retract.

The castle! the main keep is undergoing renovations, to there is a large scaffolding around it. 

The castle moat

There were lots of black kitties running around while we were there.

The main keep again, and the open field in front of it.

This is what most of the castle looks like. Huge stone walls with white buildings in top.

The roofs are very cool, and have a bunch of details on them.

One of the main walls. There are a few sets of walls, this  is the 2nd or 3rd inside. 

This was sort of a cool plaque on how the walls are setup.

This is a close up of the roofs. The style of shingling is sort of unique to this castle, as they use way more plaster than other castles. The end caps have a variety of different patterns.

This used to be a secret entrence to the castle, its right under and beside the main gate.

One of the gates. These things are super thick, with metal covering the wood.

Massive hinges to hold the gates up. The pin is probably forearm sized.

On top of the roofs there are statues like this one. They have changed a bit through the ages, so there was a cool display of the different styles that have been used. They are supposed to protect castles from fire.

Since they are renovating the roof, they had a bunch of the details on display.

This is a really old plaque, that should be a butterfly. One of the households that ran the castle for a bit had a butterfly as their crest, so there were a lot of butterflies around.

This shows a selection of the roof shingle end-caps. Many of them represent families that had something to do with the castle. 

The end-caps again.

Inside the castle they had a room with a bunch of the old armor  that was used.

More old pieces of castle.

I liked that there were so many little things like this.

More roofs, there is one of those fish-like things. I think that they  are called Shachihoko.

Looking down on the main square in front of the castle.

The showed how the roof is put together

Here are some of the nails used in construction, compared with what they called "western" nails.

Just a guy re-roofing a castle. 

These are all the layers that go into making plaster walls. There was also a plaque that described how each different layer was made. They all have slightly different make-ups.

An old map of the caslte

There were a number of little models of the castle complete with little people, used to explain the work being done on the castle.

More castle

The stone in the cage is a rice grinding stone donated by an old lady. It was her only grinding stone, but the lord was having a hard time finding sones for his walls, so she gave it away to him. After hearing her story, many people donated stones and the castle was finished.

This is a special wall, as it is made of sand and clay kneaded with rice glue. It repels water and is bullet proof. It is over 400 Years old.

One of the main exits... the tunnel is just over four feet tall, so you have to duck to get out.

The castle walls have arrow slots in them. They have a variety of shapes. Some of them taper all the way to the outside, some taper till the middle, then open back up. Many of them have a little trapdoor that can be closed on the outside as well.

Not sure if this is a miss-translation or what.

An then i left for Hiroshima! a bullet train... woot.