Narai to Himeji

We woke up to rain and clouds in our little village this morning. Breakfast was minestrone and ciabatta, and a stewed plum and coffee. Just the right amount of food.

We dashed down the main street, thankful for some eaves to shelter under as we walked to the train station. In this village, one of its defining architectural features was that the second floor jutted out further than the ground floor, and that the roof therefore provided shelter. Great planning for a rainy day!

We caught a suburban train to Nagoya, heeding the advice of the train lady and her translating device to change trains for the express at Fukushima. What she neglected to do was to sell us the correct tickets for that train, so when the conductor arrived, and we were in the reserved section and without the correct tickets, this was promptly fixed by us paying for the correct ticket and moving to the correct carriage for the unreserved seats. It didn't seem like the first time he had come across this scenario and he was very nice about it.

More train confusion ensued at Nagoya when we bought two shinkansen tickets but couldn't get through the gate. After the man told us something in Japanese about ten times, and in none of those times did it become any more apparent what we were supposed to do to rectify the issue, a lady arrived and she spoke English and took us off to buy yet another ticket because you weirdly need two different tickets to ride the shinkansen. It seems her sole job is to help foreigners work out what tickets they need.

Tickets in hand, we nabbed seats in the unreserved cards and settled in for the trip to Himeji. The train we were on topped out at about 300km/h but it didn't feel like it at all.

Our hotel is right outside the train station, so we dropped off our bags and headed off for lunch and the on to visit the famous white castle. The bargain price ticket of ¥1,050 ($10.50) got us into the castle and the garden next door. The castle ticket alone was ¥1,000 so for an extra 50c we thought throwing in the garden visit couldn't be any worse than the ridiculous rock garden for ¥300 a few days ago.

The interior of the castle was amazing! So much timber and really big pieces of lumber. The stairs inside were really steep with small treads, almost like oversized ladders. A few people were tripping or falling throughout, not made any easier by the fact we were all in our socks and the floors are well worn timber so a quite smooth. Outside the castle we came across quite a few warriors dressed up and either posing, or standing around stoically.

We came back and braved another onsen experience, indoor onsen bath first, then used the sauna (lasting a whole 5 minutes) before using the outside onsen. This hotel had the luxury items in the onsen so we sat there like a local blow drying the hair, smothering our dried out skin in lotions and potions. There was also a free ice cream machine for when you leave the onsen, so we had a snack on the way back to our room. Three is also a guest area on level two with free tea and coffee, soft drinks, sport drinks, "lactic acid drink" available in the morning (aka yakult), and after 9.30pm at night a free half size ramen noodle bowl. All for $117 for the two of us. Bargain.

We went out for dinner at a Nepalese curry house which had a 'blink and you would miss it' door on the street leading up a very steep and narrow set of stairs to a kinda grotty but good enough restaurant. A very gigantic naan was had with a very yummy curry!

Then a walk up the fairy light lit main boulevard to see the castle lit up at night. On to Hiroshima tomorrow.Read more