Shinkansen wa Himeji to Hiroshima ni ikimashita

Friday 1 July 2016

Today we said goodbye to Kyoto, leaving with a feeling that we had really only caught a brief glimpse of this amazing city, 

and hopped aboard the Shinkansen heading for Hiroshima, but with a stopover in Himeji to visit is famous castle. 

Despite mixed advice on availability of luggage lockers at Himeji Station, we had no difficulty finding large and medium sized for our suitcases. Plus there were machines to change money for 100 yen coins needed to rent the lockers. 

Himeji Castle is imposing - you barely step out of the station and the castle keep stands before you in all its might. In contrast to the opulence of Nijo-ji, Himeji Castle is all about war - defeating invaders and surviving any challenge to its defences. (Even as recently as WWII, when the rest of Himeji was razed to the ground by allied bombing raids, miraculously the carefully camofuged castle survived).

Himeji Castle, a world heritage site, is a beautiful white wooden structure on a stone wall base. The main keep rises to 6 stories (and also has a basement). The expansive castle grounds, a number of keeps and towers, and inner white mud walls with shooting holes (for arrows and guns) are all surrounded by high stone walls with thick iron-reinforced wood gates watched over by guardhouses.

Fortunately these days the "guards" are friendly ticket sellers, who were very forgiving of my attempts, in very poor Japanese, to ask for 3 adult (san-nin), 1 student (hitori gakusei) and 1 child (hitori kudomo) tickets and we were soon through the gates and climbing a steep path to the main keep, which was a bit of a challenge as the sun was out and it was quite hot.

Shoes off at the front door, then we were allowed in to climb the main keep all the way to the top (6th) story. It is an amazing wooden structure with huge posts and beams but with all the trappings of a castle built for war - double locked doors, weapon racks, hidden chambers for warriors to ambush any intruders, rock throwing platforms and window grills to repel arrows and bullets. The view from the top floor was expansive and inpressive - hard to sneak up on this castle! All very interesting!

The guidebooks suggested a 90 minute visit for the castle - woefully inadequate - but we where there for over 2 and a half hours and still didn't go to many of the outbuildings or grounds. It was hot and we were very hungry, so walking back to the station we stopped off at a little teishoku, despite the slightly dodgy window display, for a very late but delicious lunch (ordered in my poor Japanese and much finger pointing, as the waitress didn't speak any English and there were no English menus either). 

We were back to the station in plenty of time to reserve seats on the train (this is proving to be very easy to do with the JR rail passes) then a moment of panic as we tried to remember where the locker bay we had stored our luggage was located in the busy Himeji station (Of course Joel remembered). Then back on the Shinkensen bound for Hiroshima. 

About an hour later we arrived in Hiroshima then spent several disorientated minutes trying to find the train route to our apartment, as per the instructions that had been emailed to us. We needed to get to Tokaichi-machi but no trains seemed to have a station with that name! Confused, we managed to find the information office and an English-speaking assistant who explained that we needed to take a streetcar. Aha - trams we exclaimed and, laughing, explained to the assistant that, as we were from Melbourne in Australia, we understood about teams/streetcars. She pointed in the direction of the streetcar terminal and explained which routes we could catch to get to Tokaichi-machi and that it was a set price fare of 160 yen. 

With a sense of familiarity, and more than enough yen in the purse, we set off to ride the Hiroshima trams. Unlike Melbourne trams, the longer Hiroshima streetcars have a conductor. The conductor on the tram we boarded, quickly summed us up - confused foreign tourists - and explained that we paid the  fare on alighting at our destination and confirmed that the streetcar was indeed going to stop at Tokaichi-machi. 

Off we went but, being peak hour, the streetcar quickly filled with passengers, and we foreign tourists, with our bulky suitcases, stuck out like a sore thumb!  Arriving at Tokaichi-machi, the conductor marched down the central aisle of the car to clear a path for us. We were very grateful but I suspect he was just glad to have us off his tram!

It was a short walk to our comfortable apartment. We quickly settled in, then off to the nearby supa to hunt up supplies for a curry and rice dinner.