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Japan trip
Day 6 - 11th June - Himeji jo (Part 3)
To make the inside of the castle tower less dark and boring they should have refurbished it with stuff. But that would mean hordes could not be accommodated.
Some plant in a wall alcove somewhere
They claimed that the curve of the walls made it hard for attackers to scale them. To me it looked like it made it easier.
Bonsais they were showing off
Main tower blurb
Garden with mini-bridge (which I'm quite sure has some significance)
Besides the main tower of the castle, there was also a West bailey.
Blurb
As you can see, the interior was much more interesting-looking than that of the main tower
Draining holes for rainwater
Corridors
A disguised CCTV I also waved to
Ladies in waiting blurb
"Vanity tower" used by Princess Sen, who came here to marry into the family (gotta love the name)
Mockup of princess and lady in waiting. They seem to be playing pick-up-stones.
More about Princess Sen
More shots
Outside the walls of the greater compound
Me
I was running to catch the Shinkansen back to Kyoto so I could see one more temple before going on a later-afternoon tour, but was distracted by various weird bronze statues, including:
I call this: "Jailbait and jailbait after she got knocked-up" (in between there was a statue of her in pants, looking in between these two statues in age)
Nude saxophonist. Maybe he was the one who knocked her up.
Side street
A few blocks before the train station, although I was running I noticed an advertisement for a basement selling Himeji specialities, so I decided to heck it and visit temples another day.
Since I didn't have to rush to catch the next Shinkansen anymore, I sat at a corner of the basement and witnessed almost all of the staff doing this:
The variation in bowing upon entering or exiting the customer area was large, from proper bows to a perfunctory nod of the head.
"Pick up gift" - In Japan you can use dried mushrooms to pick people up. Wonderful. Then again, these mushrooms cost Y5,250 (>S$65)
Snacks, and mystery fried fish thing (fishcake with salmon flakes in cheese) I had
Japanese keropok
Jap chewies
More sweets
After checking out the basement, I went to the station.
There was a stack of shinkansen timetables, and a sign in English about taking them. Inside, I found that there was no Romaji inside (English? You must be kidding. I was never hoping to see English inside), not even for placenames. Gah.
JR "Lady's Seat". I wonder if it costs more.
I speculate the women are thinking: "No chikan!", "Ah, this seat has an ATR" and "Damnit, it's good to be a girl"
Bento sold at train station. Notice the "Women's favourite" set ("女性人気")