Day 2 in Japan: The Cherry blossoms of Himeji Castle

After eating breakfast close to our hotel, we walked down to the Namba Yasaka Shinto Shrine, a place of worship dedicated to the spirit of the sea and storms, Susanoo. The shrine is famous for a building shaped as a giant lion’s head which holds, in its open jaws, a stage where locals perform rituals memorialising Susanoo’s story. We spent only a few moments at the shrine before walking onwards to Shitenno-ji. We passed by a number of other temples on the way but only entered one that we saw from afar and thought very picturesque for having a blossoming sakura right in front of its entrance gate. There was nothing very notable about the interior (and the bathroom both Ciaran and I wanted to use was closed) except for a stone statue of the cartoon character Doraemon. He had apparently been elevated to the ranks of a venerated spirit.

Shitenno-ji is Japan’s first official Buddhist temple and state-sponsored institution. Founded by Prince Shotoku in 593, it is dedicated to the Four Heavenly Kings and was initially built to popularise Buddhism in the largely Shinto country. The original structure was raised by carpenters from Baekje in Korea, though of course – being made of wood – it has been rebuilt multiple times over the millennia. One of the Korean carpenters went on to establish the Kongō Gumi, a company specialising in constructing temple buildings and the world’s oldest company until its purchase in 2004.

We were enchanted by the temple’s turtle pool and its sakura-surrounded ponds. Inside the temple, we visited the shrines with their seated statues of Buddha Sakyamuni and (I believe) Buddha Maitreya, climbing all the way to the top of the pagoda only to find the view perfectly obstructed by the bars over the windows. From Shitenno-ji, we took the metro to Osaka Castle, which we had visited briefly the day before. Now, in broad daylight, we strolled around its moat lined by cherry blossoms and from the front to the back of the castle, weaving our way in and out of ever larger groups of tourists.

Osaka Castle was founded in 1583 by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the second of Japan’s three unifiers. It was built to resemble the castle of Oda Nobunaga, Hideyoshi’s predecessor and former lord, but to surpass it in size and opulence. It took over ten years to finish the castle, and Hideyoshi died a year after its completion. In 1614, Tokugawa Ieyasu laid siege to Osaka Castle but was repelled by the much smaller force of Hideyoshi’s son Toyotomi Hideyori, who was but twenty years old. In 1615, Tokugawa’s forces succeeded and burnt the castle down while Toyotomi Hideyori committed seppuku together with his second wife Yodo-dono. There is a small monument in the garden just north of the castle commemorating this tragic death.

We dedicated the afternoon of our second day in Japan to visiting Himeji Castle. We got there on a local train that passed through every single tiny village even though we had boarded it very confident in the idea that it was an express. On my instigation, we had also bought little bento boxes thinking we would eat them on the train to save time, only to find that there were no folding tables on the backs of the seats. Still, the long ride was not completely wasted: I used it to catch up on my diary and Ciaran used it to take a half-an-hour restroom stop that he blamed on the scarcity of fibre in Japanese cuisine. The whole escapade did lead to some embarrassment for me, though, as I found myself alone with a bunch of bags next to me that looked like my own, and I must have appeared very rude to all the local commuters.

We ate our bento lunch when we got off the train in Himeji, after which we continued our walk towards the castle. The skies were cloudless, and the giant white bastion glistened above the sea of pink cherry blossoms. Himeji’s foundations date to 1346, but the structure was completely overhauled by Toyotomi Hideyoshi and then rebuilt by Tokugawa Ieyasu’s son-in-law Ikeda Terumasa in the 1600s. It is sometimes called the White Heron Castle for its colour and for seeming to float above the surrounding landscape – the river that feeds its moat, the surrounding city, and the mountains on its three sides.

We toured the wooden interior of the castle as well. Rather than resting on its outer walls, Himeji Castle is supported by its inner pillars, two of which have a circumference of two arm spans and are referred to as the eastern and western pillars. Otherwise, the interior is rather bare, with only a couple weapons left on the racks and a few exhibits on one of the lower floors showing statues and ornaments collected during one of the castle’s renovations.

We returned to Osaka at around seven, having enlisted a policewoman in helping us buy a ticket for the shinkansen and thus fully halving our transport time. We ate dinner in the neighbourhood of Shinsekai – a bustling quarter full of neon lights and huge advertisements made of lantern paper. At the top of the main street stands Tsutenkaku Tower, modelled partly after the Eiffel Tower and partly after the Arc de Tromphe, which completes the image of the entire neighbourhood said to have been inspired by Paris and New York’s Staten Island. Most of the food sold in Shinsekai is some form of fried fish, meat or vegetable on a stick, but Ciaran and I found a busy sushi restaurant where he ordered several platters of sushi while I had a bowl of udon with the sweet fried tofu I have come to enjoy.