Himeji

Todays been a pretty great day. I woke up early, had a yogurt for breakfast, atleast I assume it was a yogurt. I couldn't actually read what it said but atleast it looked like it... Anyways, headed out to Nanba or Namba or how you spell it, an area of Osaka which seem to contain quite alot of things, there's partying and shopping to be done there if one so chooses. I was going to the Osaka municipal gymnasium though, site of one of the 6 mayor Sumo tournaments that are held each year. Each tournament takes 15 days, and for sumo people it's aparently quite a big event. Checking online I found out that the last day was pretty much sold out, however the 2 remaining days before that still had some of the cheap seats available, and that indeed you could buy those, however you can't buy them over the phone, unless you speak japanese ofc, then you prolly can reserve them. I don't speak the language though so that was not an option. Instead I headed out there, and behold, there were still places left, so tomorrow I shall watch big fat guys throw eachother around on a ring put ontop of sand or clay or something. Should be quite the event. AND if I get lucky once I get home I can watch eurosport when they send their hourlong feature from the tournament and I might see myself there watching the battles. Chances for that happening are obviously quite small, anyways that's tomorrow.

Todays main event was a daytrip with the Shinkansen, either to Kyoto or Himeji. Since I didn't really know which one to go to I picked the first line at the ticket counter at Shin Osaka, the Shinkansen station for Osaka, where JR east and JR west lines end. Since Kyoto lies on JR E and Himeji on JR W I ended up in JR Ws ticket reservation line and thus today I went to Himeji. Now, in Japan there are currently 12 big castles left. Not sure if thats including the ones that have been rebuilt in concrete or not, and of those Himeji is said to be the best, it's preserved, no Elevators and concrete in there like in Osaka Castle, and because of it's history it also never took part in any real wars, thus it's preserved in a very good way. And it's large, as in really large... They've taken away some of the moats, and basically the JR station, from where you walk about 10-15 minutes to the actual castle lies on the outermost moat of the old Castle and castle town. No clue how many people used to live there, but it's a large area that it used to cover. Now there's only really the main castle left, along with one of the larger moats, with parks and a small zoo on the inside, and some more parks just to the west of the castle. Sadly Sakura, cherryblossoms haven't properly appeared yet so there are a whole bunch of trees without leaves and anything out there, but I did find one tree blooming so I got atleast a few pictures of the castle with sakura in the pic. That's the way you should take pictures of it, and undoubtedly next week or so when Sakura are in full bloom there'll be about a million japanese guys and girls lined up with their supercamera equipment ready to take that picture...

Entrance to the whole place was 600 yen, which included the whole castle area including 2 buildings that you could enter. Of course you had to take your shoes off and carry them around in a bag, but that's part of the charm. On the other hand it meant you got a more natural feeling to the insides where all the floors are made of wood. And I realised it's not just now, they've always built in a way that looks great, is awesome in so many ways, and makes your ass freeze to death during nights unless you got air conditioning or fire or like some bedwarmers or something. The castle was equally cold as was the other building, and inside the castle they had even put just minimal lightning, instead relying on the rather small windows to bring in natural light. Prolly an aestetic idea, it looked natural and great, however parts of the place were really really dark and since there's beams on the floor and the room I can only imagine how some fat american tourists will hit their heads in there, or worse yet trip over some of the wooden frames that used to contain the movable wall parts.

I did eat some chicken bento there too, was a huge portion, and included all sorts of things to eat, including a small sausage, some veggies and an aparently cooked piece of a carrot. Oh and rice. Cause you gotta have rice. Rice is good, like really really good, atleast until you've eaten it for 3 weeks with every meal you run into. Then you start to realise how delicious a potato can be, or some fresh homemade mashed potatoes, with abit of herbs mixed in to get some extra taste, and a small piece of butter melting ontop....