Monday
We woke up in Hiroshima with the main goal of spending time in Peace Memorial Park, which commemorates the atomic bombing of the city at the end of World War II. We walked from the Airbnb with our bags in tow to the park. It really wasn't that hot yet, but the sun was getting uncomfortable, especially mid day.
Before we walked around the park, we visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. The exhibits in the museum are deeply affecting and spare no detail. I might not have taken the kids if they were still in grade school, but our kids were in high school and middle school, so they were old enough to absorb the information and it seemed especially important to understand what had happened here. The museum does an excellent job of explaining the event and it's long aftermath, initially using multimedia and artifacts, and then shifting to hundreds of individual stories. The message of the museum is very clear ... look at us ... learn from this ... never again. We all needed a good moment to take it in and process everything that we had seen before moving on.
From Hiroshima, we took the Shinkansen to Himeji, which was along our route to Kyoto. Himeji is an old feudal town and home to one of only a handful of still standing samurai era castles. The Himeji castle is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and was built from the 1300's to the 1600's. We saw several castles on our trip, and while each was unique and worthwhile, Himeji castle, and it's grounds, was the most spectacular.
Himeji Castle (姫路城, Himejijō), also known as White Heron Castle (Shirasagijo) due to its elegant, white appearance, is widely considered Japan's most spectacular castle for its imposing size and beauty and its well preserved, complex castle grounds. The castle is both a national treasure and a world heritage site. Unlike many other Japanese castles, it was never destroyed by war, earthquake or fire and survives to this day as one of the country's twelve original castles.
Himeji Castle lies at a strategic point along the western approach to the former capital city of Kyoto. The first fortifications built on the site were completed in the 1400s, and were gradually enlarged over the centuries by the various clans who ruled over the region. The castle complex as it survives today was completed in 1609. It is made up of over eighty buildings spread across multiple baileys, which are connected by a series of gates and winding paths.
I was very impressed with how much of the castle and the surrounding gates we were able to tour. And I loved seeing the intricate chambers and curved roof lines intersecting and overlapping from different angles as we walked around.
From Himeji, it was back to the Shinkansen to start a multi-day run in Kyoto and re-unite with Jamie.
