late - karatsu

Don't you hate it when you forget to switch an entry from 'private' to public? and then you wonder for two days why no one left any comments. :-P

Case in point:

Yesterday I went with Yo-chan to the nearby city of Karatsu (唐津). Its about an hour away to the west.

The reason I wanted to go was to see their castle. You can read a nice text review of it here.

Yo-chan poses from the bridge that crosses the mouth of the bay that this castle used to protect.

It was pretty sunny so i administered healthy amounts of sun block.

We wimped out and took this weird elevator they have installed in the back of the castle. For $1 you can avoid having to climb up the 350+ steps in the hot July sun. But this elevator is a little weird, it goes up at a slant, not straight up and down. The arrows show the direction of movement. The door (visible in the mirror) has windows in it and you can see the walls of the shaft moving diagonally past.

I made a 3 piece panorama from the upper level of the Castle grounds. A great view of the bay. despite the sun, the weather was nice and clear.

The castle itself is pretty small compared to Kumamoto castle or Osaka Castle. It also is a rebuild of the original, built in the 1600s.

Unlike my last visit to Kumamoto castle, no ninjas hanging out front of this one. But they did have this in the museum inside. Not sure if its based on actual historical events or not. But I'd put my money on the ninjas.

A few musty suits of Samurai armor too. The first 3 floors of the castle are now full of display cases and pictures and what not.

But the real reason to come is to enjoy the view from the top floor. Nice cool breezes up here. That's the bridge we took the first two pics from down there.

After we finished with the castle, we drove (actually /I/ drove) to a place further down the coastline called Nanatsugama, which means 'Seven pots' or something like that. I wasn't sure why it was a tourist attraction when we went, but we went anyway:

Not the reason people come, but this kitten was there at the parking lot.

But the reason this place is noteworthy is because of these interesting geology and the natural caves that have formed along the rocky shore.

It was getting late so we didn't get to see the whole place though. There are some better pictures here from some Kayakers.

On the way back through Karatsu we saw tons of people headed down toward the castle. I think they were having their summer festival fireworks that night (it was 'Umi no Hi' that day, which is a national holiday in Japan). As is traditional, most teenage girls wear yukata.

We got some great views along the coastline as we drove back. We took the coastal road to avoid a toll road. it was weird. there were a bunch of creepy abandoned hotels along the rocky cliffs. I'll have to get some pics next time. :-P

We were originally planning on getting world famous(?) Karatsu burgers from a roadside stand, but they were sold out by the time we got there. We then decided to go for some jiaozi back in Fukuoka, but the place was closed! (cause of the holiday I assume). So we ended up at a Okinawan place near the university. I didn't like the food all that much, but they were showing Starsky and Hutch on the TV....