Stop Two - Hiroshima

So its been a while... but im gonna throw the rest of the pics i took up anyway. The second stop i took was in hiroshima. The bullet trains are sweet. 

Hotel room view. I had no idea that Hiroshima was such a river city. This river runs through the center of it, and sort of splits a few times so the city is sort of sitting on a huge set of deltas. Anywhoo, nice hotel view!

This is the annoying hotel key. Its like a bathroom pass.

When you get in the room, you have to turn it on. This is the room switch.  Im not sure what it says, but if you dont put your roomkey in, nothing in the room will turn on.

Hiroshima has a large castle as well. This castle has a cool moat  and a sweet bridge that i apparently forgot to take a picture of.

One of the coolest parts of the castle was that its in the middle of a city.

There were lots of underground tunnels like this for pedestrians, covered with tile floors and walls. 

A train stop in the middle of a busy street. A sort of awkward picture to take as you have to stop in the middle of a city street and stand on the tracks... which seems double unsafe.

There is a huge peace garden in the city. This is a picture of  the city after the bomb hit.

A-Bomb dome from the back. This was the old chamber of commerce building. It was one of the only buildings left standing after the bomb. After the attack, many residents wanted to clean up all destruction, while some felt it was important to remember these things. So while most of the structures have been cleared away, A-Bomb dome stayed as one of the only reminders of what the whole city looked like.

Plaque!

Front of A-Bomb dome, Lots of school groups visit this site, you can see one in the lower right. They keep shouting at you "Welcome To Hiroshima!" and "HELLO!". It made me sort of uncomfortable to be an american in hiroshima with people shouting at me.

More of the dome. There is fairly high security around it, as people used to try and take stones from the building for souvenirs.

The have propped up the building a bit so it will stay around. It sits right on the edge of a river, theres a large drop off right behind me while i take this picture.

Memorial tower to the students mobilized during the war.

There is a button to push on the bottom of this memorial that starts playing a loud audio track telling you about the 6000+ students involved in forced labor in the city when the bomb struck.

A-Bomb dome from across the river, with the new city in the back.

Children's peace memorial, dedicated to Sadako Sassaki, the little girl who famously tried to fold one thousand cranes. The glass cases in the back are full of cranes, like packed full no room. They are pressed against the side to make patterns.

The Bell of Peace, which sits in a nice lilly pond.

There is an atom right where you strike the bell, which i though was a neat touch.

The memorial mound mentioned above.

Interesting as its not something that i had ever thought of before.

The monument mentioned above. 

One of the main monuments, taken from the wrong side as i cant read the japanese directions and no one else was around. It looked much better the other way... so there are pictures of that below.

Super long monument. There are a number of plaques at the bottom of this (on pictured below) which sit in about 3 inches of water.

Plaque for the above monument.

Part of the city from peace park.

Everything had cranes on it. Some school children stopped me and asked if i supported world peace (i said yup!) and so they gave me a crane, which i left on one of the monuments because it seemed the thing to do.

These are across the road from the main memorial.

You walk through the arches, which have words written on them and look like they light up at night.

This tree had a large scar all the way up the side, caused by the bomb. Its healing over, but can still be seen.

Plaque for above tree.

Hopefully you can read it... :)

One of the rivers and one of the bridges. Notable because there  is no railing between the lower sidewalk and the upper one. Lots of little things like this give everything a different feel. Its as if the japanese understand that if someone does something stupid its their own fault. "Dont walk off the ledge" is a good enough reason not to do so in japan.

Another of the rivers from the center of one of the bridges.

One of the cooles stores, called "Yellow Submarine" i think. Full of anime figures and playing cards. Awesome.

Hiroshima again.

One of the neat ways to park. You pull up, and it lifts and stows your car in a car-cubby. Then retrieves it for you later. This is the back of one of these car lifting parking things, seen while i walked one of the rivers in Hiroshima.

Time to go, next stop is Matsumoto!

Taking pictures from a bullet train... the train is too fast, so you get shearing from the relatively slow scan rate on  the iPhone camera i was using.

Super nice insides of the bullet train. Soon a lady with a food cart will walk by saying "thank you" over and over again.

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.