Day 5 - Hiroshima to Kyoto by way of Himeji

We hopped on another Shinkansen and headed for Himeji.  Rough Guides had listed an Edo era castle there as a "top x" sight to see, so expectations were a bit high.  Sadly, it turned out that the main castle building was undergoing renovations and is closed until March 2015.  However, we were able to tour the grounds and go inside a long building that had been used as sleeping quarters for servants, storage, and so forth.  Sounds pretty lame compared to a castle, but it was still pretty interesting and had information about how they were doing the restoration.  Anyhoo...I thought the castle was pretty stunning, and so took too many photos of it...

The main strip of Himeji, with the castle in the background.

Himeji loves its street plaques.

The bridge over the moat.  I guess that crane next to the castle could have served as foreshadowing.

C&C on the bridge.

Castle with sky, or vice versa.

Pretty impressive.

...from many angles...

Along the right hand side of this shot is the building we actually toured.

After a spot of lunch we went to the adjacent Japenese Gardens, Koko-en.  These were great, divided into 7-9 separate garden areas with different themes.  Also, there was a tea house and we awkwardly and somewhat dojo shamingly engaged in tea ceremony.  The kimoned hosts did not seem to take offence at our efforts and they brought out chairs so we wouldn't have to kneel at the first sign of trouble (which was early on).  The tea was nice, too...maccha, I believe.

The Autumn colours were coming out.

We could just see the top of the castle from the gardens.

The rest of the day we spent travelling by car to Kyoto, but got in a bit late for any significant sight-seeing.