November 8th.

It was a Thursday. Today was touring around Himeji castle day plus going to The Syosya arts and crafts museum. In the morning we had to regroup at Miki SHS and all of the Malaysian students came with their host and the two teachers came as well. :P When the bus arrived to pick us up we all boarded and off we go sightseeing. So our first destination was Himeji-jo, or Himeji castle, the world cultural heritage. I got that from the brochure. So basically Himeji-jo is a huge castle that has a beatiful scenery not to mention the very high tower. urrrgh. We had to climb all the way up through seven floors if I'm not mistaken. It was very tiring but a good exercise though. :)
Here are pictures of Himeji castle before we went into the premise. :P

This is the moat/river/lake surrounding the area.

This is the entrance into the castle's area. It's a very big gate.

This is the map of the whole area. It's a pretty big place. sheesh



After we entered the gate there were lot's of gardens, beautiful gardens and this picture of me and Narmatha in front of cherry blossoms if i'm not mistake.

This is a view of the castle tower from one of the gardens in the area. As you can see the big one is the main tower. :P

This is a picture of the main tower upfront. Tall isn't it?

Around the area outside the castle there were lots of traditional japanese buildings. According to the brochure ;P the castle was built by many families and especially the royal bloods. And the picture above are symbols or crest tiles that represents the families that helped. Beautiful.

So after that we went into the castle, the main tower. It is a tower with seven floors. Two are underground and five are above. The interior design are very traditional and mostly made out of wood. So we toured around in the tower and we climbed until the top. It was a gruesome challenge not to mention tiring but of course it as fun. Oh i forgot to tell you that before we can get in the castle we had to take our shoes off and wear "uwabaki's"/ slippers while carrying our shoes around. urrgh, i wish they had an escalator though. eeheheh. On top of the tower was located a shrine/ "otera". Here are some of the pictures, enjoy.

These are weapons that were kept inside the castle in case of emergencie or what not. ;P

This is me in front of the shrine which is pretty weird don't you think putting a shrine on top of the tower.

this is the view from uptop. :D sugoi!

So it was a pretty cool experience getting to visit a real actual japanese castle, although meeting naruto would be nice but it's okay ;P. Then after touring we had lunch at a park situated just in the premises of the castle. In front of a souvenir shop. :)

After having a nice lunch we headed to the Shosha arts and crafts museum. We made masks and played gasing! surprising that japanese peaopl plays gasing but i'm sure they call it something else though. I made a hyotokko, i guess thats what it's called. :P

So this is taken before we went into the museum and some of us are out of the picture as you can see. I'm always the center of attention :P

Me making a hyotokko, beside me is Shige, tanoshi.

So which one looks good?

After we made the masks and waited for it to dry we snooped around the museum and took sme pictures, The above photo is of me surrounded by small buddhism statues that are scattered araound the museum. Very beautiful. After visiting the museum we had one last destination which is the bridge in the city, ahahha yeah i totally don't know the name of the bridge but what i know is it is the largest suspension bridge in the world , amazing huh. yeah i thought so. :P

This is us in front of the suspension bridge. It was freezing cold. brrrr.