Another shinkansen ride and bento lunch and we arrived at Himeji station. With some relief we stuffed our heavy rucksacks into a locker and despite the rain, decided to walk to Himeji Castle, the main attraction for us in this city.
I told Paul about amayadori – taking shelter from the rain – and the romantic connotations it has in Japan. In the UK, one might draw a love heart enclosing the intials of the two that are in love. In Japan, the heart is replaced with a stylised umbrella, the names on either side of the umbrella handle. Someone later pointed out that this is only easily done in Japan, where traditionally, words were written vertically, from top to bottom. Nonetheless, the idea is that it is rather romantic and sweet to share an umbrella to shelter from the rain. Ah, if only this idea caught on in the UK – the Brits would become a nation of romantics from constant opportunities for amayadori.
So Paul and I walked down the long and wide avenue, trying to be romantic under our shared umbrella despite our squelching, rain-sodden shoes, heading for the misty horizon out of which rose the upper levels of Himeji Castle. Its much photographed white walls and grey tile roofs tower over the city, a permanent reminder of its ancient heritage.
The castle is another World Cultural Heritage site, and with good reason. It is extremely well-preserved, the castle complex remaining as it did when it was completed in 1618. Building first began on the site in 1333, commissioned by the first ruler of the area, Norimura Akamatsu. Successive clans built further on the site – the Kotera, Kuroda and Ikeda clans – with shogun such as Ieyasu Tokugawa, lords such as the Matsudairas, the Sakakibaras and so on each making their mark on the place. The final lord to inhabit the castlewas Tadazui Sakai, who moved in in 1749. The family remained there until the feudal Shogunate system disappeared in the Meiji Restoration of 1868.
Constructed in such a way that any enemy attempting to break into the inner sanctum of the castle would be thwarted at every opportunity, the path meandering uphilll to the main part of the castle was divided by gate after gate; I imagined myself an ambitious intruder on horseback, envisioning obstacle after obstacle presenting itself to me – a series of four or five enormous wooden gates eight inches thick and reinforced with iron – once through those, having to duck and dive from the shower of arrows launched from the many arrow-holes in the walls of the six stories above, and rocks thrown down through specially designed slots on each floor. Even if I besieged the castle with an army, and those inside had closed themselves in behind the protection of their many solid gates and wallls, there was a well, and enough rice and provisions in their massive stores to keep them going for long enough to dispirit any army.
Even if I had been lucky to reach the interior of the main tower, the creaking wooden floors would have given me away – little cubby holes in every corner would have released hidden ninja to attack (that’s what they think the cubby holes were for) and I would have had to work my way up to the very top floor, climbing steep stairs up the entire six stories, fighting past samurai who had their bows and arrows, and later, guns and ammunitiion easily to hand hanging from hooks pinned into every wall.
As it was, I was glad to be a tourist, climbing up each level unhindered so that I could safely enjoy the view from the top floor – quite a sight – after paying my respects at a little Shinto shrine there. There was a shrine located on the top of the hill where Akamatsu wanted to build the castle, and so it was moved. After that the place was felt to have been cursed by nature, so it was placed back inside the main tower of the castle. It’s now said that it is haunted by the ghost of Miyamoto Musashi, a great swordsman who was killed there.
Later, we walked down long corridors in the West Bailey Buildiing, the living quarters of the Princess Sen, the eldest daughter of the second shogun in the Tokuawa government. This place felt less designed for war, and more for pleasure and peaceful living. The rooms all looked out over beautiful gardens and the many rooms off the main corridor would have been filled with the many maidservants of the Princess, all of whom, it is said, loved a laughand a gossip. I could imagine it must have been a lively place. It stopped raining and the sunlight poured in through the windows.
It seemed a good opportunity to visit Kokou-en, a ten minute walk away from the main castle complex entrance. This garden was only created in 1992 to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the creation of the Himeji municipality. Its nine gardens are so well established, however, with mature trees and moss-covered stones, that you would never think it was so new. Again, cherry blossom was magnificent here, and we wandered along meandering paths winding through boulders, across bridges over miniature waterfalls and ponds full of enormous koi carp.
A bamboo garden felt fresh and springlike, with new leaves made for a pale green mist; a tea garden, complete with traditional Japanese tea house, was quiet and contemplative. Paul and I took tea there – a bowl of deicious, frothy, bitter matcha tea and a delicate bean paste rice cake.
Which led my thoughts to other things. The garden was about to close, and although we needed to head for Kobe on the next shinkansen, I wasn’t going to leave Himeji without getting hold of some tama tsubaki, recommended by our friend Michiko san. She says it is her favourite! Tama tsubaki means peony bud, because that’s just what these sweets look like – pale pink buds. Inside there is a white bean paste; the enclosing mochi (pounded rice paste) is soft and toothsome.
Most places near the castle seemed to have sold out, so popular is this confection; but someone directed us to a department store near the station. As always in Japan, its basement was dedicated entirely to food, and there we bought ourselves a box, and a niku manju (Chinese meat dumping) as a snack. We were hungry.
A short shinkansen ride later and we were in Kobe. Like Hakata, poor old Kobe hardly got a look in. It was pouring with rain and we arrived late – tired and hungry. We had just enough energy to go and eat some of the famed Kobe beef at a surprisingly reasonable price in the hotel teppanyaki restaurant. Teppanyaki is a relatively recent culinary development in Japan – less than 100 years old, where meat, seafood and vegeables are cooked on a steel griddle right in front of you by a chef with exceptional knife skills. The meat was, as expected, melt in the mouth tender and delicious. All we could do was eat and go to bed. We did have one drink in the bar afterwards on the top floor of our skyscraper hotel. We looked out through the rain to the distant hills, lit with beacons in the pattern of anchors and ships to welcome sailors into the port. I spent some infant years here, but remember nothing about the place. I was sorry not to have had more time and less inclement weather to see it. Like Nagasaki, it is a port that has seen the influx of outside influences – Western as well as Chinese – and has a large Chinatown area. But it would have to wait for another time – we had come to the end of our journey. The next day the shinansen would take us back to Tokyo where we would spend the next stage of our trip – nearly three weeks – meeting family and friends. The two week journey to Kyushu and back was unforgettable, fabulous. But we felt pretty tired too. And so after just one drink we fell deep asleep. I dreamed about tadpoles and giant toads that lived in the sea.
