A masterpiece in wood

Moat, one of the many defences

Dangerous blokes

On the way up Ken, our tour guide showed us
lots of tricks the designers used to send any attackers
on the wrong path

The scrum to get to the top (6th floor),
all carrying our shoes in plastic bags

View from the top

Structure is 90m tall

My lovely tour buddies, left to right,
Gail (Aussie), Charles, me, Melanie and David (USA)

Koko-En Garden, fitting to find a heron

There is no rest in Japan, too much to see. We are at the station and on Shinkansen platform 12 bound for Himeji. 45 minutes whiz by, the mountains getting closer and closer and we are here. I wonder how do we get to the castle and before my eyes it becomes obvious, there is a wide street and at the end perched on the hilltop is our destination.

So along the avenue, we go with excitement mounting at every step, Himeji Castle is shining in the sun and surrounded by cherry blossoms. We arrive at the first slope. What do we do first? Take photos of cherry blossoms, run up the hill, gaze in awe at the castle? Ken keeps us in check and guides us slowly but surely in the right direction through the labyrinth, pointing out all the features along the way. He tests our knowledge of how to attack castles and shows us all the tricks the designers used to send attackers in the wrong direction and to certain death with u-turns, boiling water drop zones and choke points.

Now there is a whole lot of announcements in Japanese and plastic bags, ah, we get it. We must take off our shoes and carry them in the keep. Now the hard bit starts and there are ladies here that look like they are 100 years old scurrying up the steep steps quicker than me. Ken keep us occupied and each level with stories about the two great wooden pillars that support the structure, how the plaster is made (I still can't get over this castle is made of wood) and the restorations that take place each 200 years the last one in 1958 when the entire castle is dismantled, reviewed/renewed and then put back together. The site is now world heritage and had an extensive renovation and reopened in 2015.

As we go up levels in the keep, its gets narrower and narrower till at the top it is like a scrum. There are lots of tourists and locals. Locals come from all over the area to see the blossoms and this is the first nice weather day for a while. It's a party atmosphere and everyone is happy to be here. Finally, we make it to the 6th level and are rewarded with views of all the flowering trees below.

On the way down we are treated to yet another rare occasion, blossom snow. The trees are starting to loose their petals and 1,000s of pink dots are floating in the wind. Beautiful.

But wait there is more, next door is the Koko-En Garden with bridges, waterfalls, massive koi, bamboo and fir trees my camera battery is dying and my senses are on visual overload. There is a group of people hanging around a pond looking excited, what is going on? It's a heron at least a metre tall going about its business feeding in a pond getting annoyed with all the tourists that have decided to take its photograph. Gail gets the photo of the day and manages to get quite close. It seems fitting that we see a heron, as the nickname for the castle is the white heron.

Going to need a sit-down and a cup of tea soon. But Ken comes to the rescue and digs out another treat from his froggy bag to keep us all going. Eventually, it is time to go and we head back to the station.

Little known to us Ken has another surprise in store for us we go up to the platform to take us back to Kyoto a little bit early. There are three tracks, the middle one is for shinkansen (bullet trains) that do not stop we post lookouts to watch either way and within minutes the first bullet train approaches and zooms through at 300km/h. Much cheering. Another zooms through, yeah better video.