Summer Vacation 2014: Himeji Castle and Koko-en

Now that I'm back in Himeji, I of course had to show my brother the almost-fully-finished Himeji Castle and the Koko-en. With Typhoon Halong coming in tonight, the weather has been pretty icky here; but fortunately, it stopped raining during the afternoon, so we were able to enjoy ourselves in the nice, cool weather. And even luckier for us, due to the bad weather the cranes were kept folded down, so they didn't interrupt our view of the castle!

A lot of people have been commenting around Japan about how white the roof of the recently renovated main castle is compared with the roofs of the other buildings. There is a logical explanation, however: this is what the roof originally looked like when the castle was first built, with its white clean lines. However, after repeated buildup of soot from air pollution, it will eventually turn as dark as the roofs on the other buildings. For now, I will enjoy the clean, unpolluted roof!

So, some of my favorite photos from today of the garden and the castle:

The castle cats were out in force this afternoon, enjoying the cool weather and the break in the rain.

Some of the trees are already showing a slight change to autumn colors, even though it's the beginning of August!

A lone lotus blossom was open in the garden, it looked stunning!

Everything was still wet from the rain that had only ended an hour before.

Caught this cat at just the right instant as it looked back at me! They're rarely so photogenic for me.

It's a bit difficult to photograph the castle on an overcast day, but I did my best. At least there were no pesky cranes in the way!

With a bit of creative angling, you can photograph the castle now without any of the construction equipment showing. However, it won't be fully finished until March 27th, 2015.

Comments

Autumn Leaves and Castle Cats

Here's a bunch of long overdue photos from the last two weeks! The autumn leaves have been absolutely stunning! The mountainsides are turning all sorts of colors, which makes them even more stunning than usual. I did my best to photograph the one that you can see from Shirasagi's garden, which is right outside of my apartment. The leaves are finally starting to fall from most of the trees these days, but the colors were beautiful while they lasted! Below are a bunch of photos of the bike paths next to the Himeji Castle Moat, which were surrounded by trees in stunning shades of red and gold. This is definitely the scenic route to get to downtown in Himeji! Unfortunately, I'm still not quite sure of all of the twists and turns through neighborhoods that it involves to get to the back entrance of this pathway, but once I'm on it I can orient myself via the castle. This area is always full of joggers, bikers, and... cats. Stray cats, for t

Typhoons, Sports Day, and Elementary Schools: One Week Condensed Into a Single Blog Post

It's been awhile since my last post, for which I apologize! Things got rather hectic after I made my last blog post, and it's really taken me until now to feel settled down--and to acquire some videos to share with you all! Let's start with a picture: the entrance to Hirohata Junior High School. I'll have more photos coming soon! First off, let's recap a bit of what happened last week. I wrote about how on Wednesday, I'd be having my first lesson. That was a lie. Instead, I had my first day where the weather was "bad enough" for even teachers to have to leave school early. We had something of a "super storm" that day, with a typhoon making landfall at the same time as a storm front was moving through the area--and rather like Hurricane Sandy, but on a (fortunately) smaller scale, a hybrid super-storm was born. Thankfully, this typhoon had downgraded to a tropical depression by the time it hit Himeji. The weather was still pheno

A Snowy Day in Asago

Yesterday, February 11th, was "Foundation Day" in Japan, which meant that there wasn't school that day. A few of us Phoenician ALT's got together and split money to rent a car, and we drove out to Asago to see the Takeda Castle Ruins . When we left Himeji at 6:30am, it was just starting to snow; by the time we had driven north to Asago, the snow was falling much more heavily, with easily several inches sticking to the ground. We could see the Takeda Castle at the top of the mountain, and I could have sworn I could see what looked to be the specks of people walking along it, but due to the snow the route was closed. However, we did climb up as far as we could go, and saw a few shrines and a temple along the way! The snow was well worth it, though none of us were overly prepared for it, considering the forecast had said it would be sunny. We didn't stay in Asago long, and ended up driving to Kobe to go shopping at the Costco. Japanese Costco's aren't

Daley-sensei's Adventures in Himeji, Japan.

Search This Blog