Hikone Castle

   I visited Hikone-jo (Hikone Castle) today. With my student ID, I get in free... Unfortunately, since it is winter here, things are kind of gray and muddy. However, the view was wonderful!





 



   However, the climb up to the main castle was a haul (as it should be deduced due to the view).
 
 
   The castle was also really intimidating, but in a different way. However, the stairs inside the castle leading to the top were little death traps. They could not be called stairs because they were more like really steep ladder steps. I went up forwards...but I had to go down backwards. With my luck, it was not hard to picture myself falling down flat on my head. But here is a picture of the exterior of the castle. I will probably go again and get more pictures:

   It was a really good experience and now I am preparing to Skype with some friends from college who also did JCMU a few years ago. I also have some homework to finish, so I hope you all are enjoying the cold weather in the Midwest. It's not warm here...but today it was in the 50s, so I think that it will only get warmer from now on.
Location: Hikone, Shiga Prefecture, Japan

Comments

Post a Comment

Let me know what you think!

Popular posts from this blog

Japanese Baths

Image
   This post will mainly be for those who have never studied Japanese (language and/or culture). I apologize to those who have. However, the topic of Japanese bathing customs is always interesting when compared to the typical American bathing experience.    In America, most people choose between a shower and bath. A bath generally with a more leisurely connotation, but they both follow a similar pattern. Person gets into their preferred method, wet themselves down, soap up, and then rinse. However, the traditional Japanese bath is a little different.    I recently was able to experience a traditional Japanese bath in Osaka. This particular one was in a business hotel. First off, there was only one bathing room, so there were different times for men and women to bath. Upon entering the bathing area, there is a small changing room with lockers, hair brushes, and hair driers. Once you take off your clothes, you enter the actual bathing room. A line of stools...
Read more

Blizzard 2014: The Necessity of Fluidity in Travel

   The Midwest blizzard that occurred this past weekend (January 5-6) affected travellers and news reports internationally. I was one of those unfortunate travelers that got stranded in an airport as I was attempting to get to Japan in time for orientation and placement tests. Unfortunately, I did not make it and a combination of weather and overbooked flights prevented me from actually leaving Indianapolis until Friday morning. I therefore missed one day of orientation, all the placement tests, as well as two days of class. However, I have to remind myself to turn my life-lemons into lemonade and I got about four extra days at home. I will also have to be totally imersed as soon as I get to Japan, as there will be no guide sent by the school to get me to Hikone. I also got to experience being stranded at the airport for 30+ hours because there were no taxis working and I was still hoping for a flight that would take me to Detroit.    One learns a lot while travell...
Read more

Omikuji

Image
   Let's talk about fortunes! At Japanese temples and shrines, there are little boxes, like so:     Inside are sticks with numbers written on the end. To get one's fortune, you shake the box and then hold the box until a stick comes out from the hole. You read the number and grab a piece of paper with that number on it (some temples even have vending machines which do this). This whole process and the paper you get are omikuji. On each paper (which is different depending on the number), there is a certain degree of blessing: all the way from amazing blessing to horrible curse. The two times that I've done it, I've never gotten a curse. In Kyoto, I did a koimikuji (love omikuji). I got a "future blessing" for that. I won't tell you the whole thing, but for me, the "key to good luck" is reading...so I think I'm fine for now. The second time I did the omikuji was in Tokyo at that Asakusa Temple. I got "Regular fortune." Luckily th...
Read more