Shiga Trip - pt 4 - Hikone Castle

yes, I am a Japanese Castle Otaku...  も一度日本のお城のブログをした！二週前の滋賀県の旅行時、彦根へ行った、彦根城へ行った！晩いですから、あまり日本語を書きません。ごめん！

On my Sunday in Japan (TWO weekends ago already... I'm falling behind!) I had an ambitious plan - I was going to see not one, but two castles.  In the morning it was Hikone Castle,  further to the east along the south shore of Lake Biwa.  ( Google Map)

The town of Hikone in Shiga Prefecture is a small castle town along what used to be the Tokaido Road that connected the two capitals in Feudal Japan - Kyoto and Tokyo (known as Edo at the time).   Like their European counterparts,  Japanese castles were often built in strategically important areas as a way for the ruling shogun to show strength and of course to defend key parts of their territory.  Often times a city would crop up around the castle as lords and merchants moved into the area as well.

Thar she blows!  Despite the trees, the tower of Hikone Castle is visible atop the hill... 

like most self-respecting castles, its built on a hill and overlooks the surround town.

The castle was built about 400 years ago by the local feudal lord appointed to rule over this art of Japan

Hikone Castle had a pretty nice moat system.   Enough to discourage all but the most determined invading armies...

Once you entered the main gate their was a pretty significant stair way up to the inner walls and castle tower. 

At the top of the stairs you find yourself in a narrow gap between two walls w/ a bridge overhead...

Here's the view from the bridge level:

This bridge-gate thing is somewhat rare from the castles i've seen but it makes a lot of sense defense wise. 

It means if you're trying a frontal assault you have to first pass underneath the bridge then wind around and cross the bridge again before you even get to the door... leaving yourself quite open to attack. 

You can't quite see it in the photo above, but there's something interesting about the wall on the opposite side of that bridge:

Not exactly sure why, but the wall on the left side is made from a different style than the wall on the right. 　橋の反対ほうの石壁面白い、右方が作る方作る方と左方が作る方が違うよ。。。

As you can see, one side uses the smooth wall technique and the other side uses the less difficult, but easier to scale 'regular stacked-up rocks' technique (i should go look up the names for the different styles, i forgot what they are).

One thing every castle seems to have (nowadays) is a scale model diorama of how it used to look back in the day:

As you maybe can see, it used to be right up on the lake shore.  お城は琵琶湖の隣です。

I wonder who it is that makes these castle models... I wonder if there's one guy who goes around doing all of them...  or maybe they hire some model railroad people to make them. :-P

Anyway, enough talk, let's make the hike the rest of the way up to the top:　天守まで行きましょう！

What's all that commotion over there at the base of the tower? well you'll have to wait til tomorrow for that...如何して人一杯が居る？

The tower (donjon) itself is not the biggest I've seen by any means, but the key point is that it is ORIGINAL, not a recreation. This is somewhat rare in Japan (between the Meiji restoration and WWII,  there are only like a dozen or so original castle towers this large in Japan existing today (before this day, I had only visited two...)

Before we go in, here's one more:

In case you didn't believe it was really me. :-P

僕です、本当居た。。。

They let you go inside the tower, but you have to take your shoes off and walk in your socks.... (which got pretty uncomfortable between the cold wood and all the steep metal stairs. 

Also there was a line of people trying to go up into the tower.  It was constantly moving, but kind of limited how much I really enjoyed the experience, since it felt like I was in a cattle herd.

天守中あまり面白くない、人多過ぎでした。。。

Unlike most castles this one didn't have a museum inside (most have some suits of armor, old swords, etc inside). nothing much to take a photo of except for these arrow(L) and gun (R) ports. 

The view was not bad though:

The lake is not far.  Nice view... one of the perks of being a shogun lord is getting the best lakeside hilltop land for your bedroom window scenery. :-P

天守からの景色。

Anyway, back outside, I wanted to explore more of the grounds and earthworks -

On the back side of the tower there was a nice bunch of trees, including some cherry blossoms still blooming. 　桜まだ有った！

And a look back:

I guess this is actually the 'front' of the castle... the hard to get into side.

Back down at the moat level.... they had some swans:

Outside of the moat, next to the castle there was a pretty fancy pants garden that was also built a few centuries ago by the lord at the time.  It was apparently based on 8th century Tang Emperor Xuanzong's garden in China...    in Japanese its called Genkyu-En (玄宮園).

But I'm guessing Xuanzong's one probably didn't have a castle in the background.

OK, thats it for this castle....  The walls and landscaping were actually nicer than the actual tower... but thats cause they were extra nice.  worth the trip!

Here's a bonus picture:

This is an ordinary Japanese mailbox across the street from the main entrance... ordinary except with a castle on top.  I guess  for the people who are too lazy to walk all the way to the top....  これは何ですか？お城郵便箱？