Himeji and Shikoku - Castles and Gardens and Gorges

Spring time in Japan is glorious (unless you have allergies). We planned to visit Himeji Castle and Shikoku in December 2024, but our Christmas plans changed so we moved this trip to April. It was perfect timing with the Sakura season!! But poor Kimball SUFFERED terribly throughout the trip due to his allergies to Cyprus and Cedar. So take all these beautiful pictures with a grain of salt, knowing it was just about killing Kimball to be outside, all day, everyday!

We had a grand plan to use almost every kind of transportation available - Shinkansen, regular trains, buses, rental car, boats, and airplanes. Amazingly all the plans and reservations worked out without a hitch.

We started off taking the Shinkansen to Hamamatsu to visit the famous garden there. It was the high seasons for tulips AND sakura. The garden was absolutely beautiful! (side note - Kimball took this pic of Mt. Fuji from the Shinkansen window. Its crazy that we are going so fast yet the picture turns out!)

We hopped back on the train and headed for Himeji where we spent the night. Visiting Himeji Castle has been on our wish list for so long, that even though it was getting dark we decided to walk over and take a look. We were very surprised to find out that due to the Sakura blooming they had the castle open for the evening and all lit up!! It was super crowded (the end of Japan's Spring Break plus the Sakura season) but such a fun atmosphere. People were doing "hanami" - where you have a picnic under the sakura trees. This is the first time I've seen that done at night.

We went back early the next morning to take a tour of the castle and climb to the top. We both agreed Himeji Castle is impressive. Maybe the best castle we have visited. We found that one of the prominent families associated with Himeji Castle was the Ikeda family - maybe Grandma O was right, her family descended from Samurai!

So glad we went early because as we came out they were no longer letting people enter. Too full!

Next on our trip was to get to Shikoku, the smallest of the 4 main islands that make up Japan. But Okayama is right on the way and there is a great castle there as well, so we made a quick detour to see it. Its a completely different looking castle but still very pretty. There are so many castles in this area and they all seem to have been at their prime around the same time - 1600s.

The one thing we hadn't counted on was not being able to find an open locker for our luggage at Okayama Station. It's pretty hard to visit a castle with your luggage. Our final solution was to take a taxi from the station to the castle and then haul our luggage up many, many stairs to the castle entrance where they kindly held it for us while we toured the inside of the castle. Then we had to haul it back down the stairs, and find another taxi back to the station. First time with taxis since moving to Japan. It was good to try something new, but the luggage issue was unfortunate and ate up a bunch of time.

We took a special Marine Liner train that goes between Honshu and Shikoku across a giant bridge. It was a very fast and convenient way to get there as compared to taking the ferry boat. We spent the night in Takamatsu and low and behold - they have a castle too. Well, actually Takamatsu Castle is just ruins, but a few things remain (very cool covered bridge) and they have the Sakura trees and they also had nighttime "hinami" going on. Such a unique and fun tradition happening all over!

I liked the contrast of the new modern buildings in the background (our hotel is the semi-circle looking building) with the castle ruins in the foreground.

The next day we visited a famous Japanese garden. Ritsurin is one of the top three gardens in the whole country. The reason we took a picture of that tree is that it is over 800 years old!

We also stopped by a Bonsai shop but no one was there - it was open just no one around. So we looked at the trees and then left (I think it was lunch time??)

We rented a car for the second half of our trip and drove across the island to Kochi which is on the Pacific Ocean side. On the way there we stopped to see Nikobuchi Falls. Its famous for the beautiful blue/green pool of water. Recently they have modernized the access to the falls. It used to be that if you wanted to see it, you had to use a rope to help you climb down and back up. Within the past year they have made stairs - very steep stairs! Good thing we didn't try to see this before the stair were put in or I would NOT have made it.

We finally arrived in Kochi. One of the famous specialty dishes served there is called Katsuo no Tataki. It's bonito fish prepared with salt and yuzu sauce and served like sashimi. I tried it and it was quite good. Kimball got the eel (always served in a square box, not sure why that is)

Guess what?! Kochi Castle was open at night, lit up, and people were having picnics under the Sakura trees! Now ya know!

We visited at night and then again the next day. Before we went to the castle in the morning, we stopped by the castle museum. It was very interesting and had several videos explaining the history of all the castles in the area and the great battles, and all the clans....and I still don't fully understand it. But, oh well, I'm sure it all made sense at the time.

Kimball loved the various types of Samurai helmets. especially the rabbit ears.

We spent the day visiting the Katsurahama Beach Park and another great garden, Jardin de Monet Marmottan au Village de Kitagawa. This garden is patterned after the Monet garden in Giverny France. For both places - the beach and the garden - it's just impossible to show it in pictures. Pictures are great, but they don't capture what we saw. It's hard to capture the scale and scope in the pictures.

The next day we headed into the Iya Valley. This area is one of the least populated areas in Japan. It's famous for being a place where people go to hide. Back in the 11th century a certain clan lost a battle and they fled to the Iya Valley to escape and hide and no one ever found them!

The valley is long and narrow and the road that takes you into the valley and along its length is not for the faint of heart. Kimball and I both agreed that maybe it wasn't worth the risk we took to drive on it.

It was seriously treacherous in some spots. So narrow that a small car barely fits on the road, with drop offs on one side and falling rock on the other AND traffic both directions uses the same road. It was nuts!! Several time we had to do "maneuvers" to get past an oncoming vehicle (think Bogus Basin Road, only half the road width, twice as steep, and more switchbacks)

I had heard about a little town in the valley named Nagoro, that once had a thriving population but over the years the young people moved away and no one ever moved in. Pretty soon there were only a handful of people left in this little town. One of the town residents decided to make a life-size doll for each person who left and fill up the town again with people.

I found this place to be very interesting and a little sad, especially when we saw a live grandma working in her garden. Kimball thought it was macabre. In any case, its quite unique. At first you see a few dolls but after a while you notice more and more and more.

We passed through the town on our way up the valley to visit the famous vine bridges (more on the bridges below). We stopped and took pics, but then on our way back down the valley, so coming from the opposite direction, we noticed even MORE dolls. In fact, there was an abandoned school with doll kids outside and even doll kids looking out the windows from inside the school. That was a bit creepy. Since we were so frazzled from the crazy drive, we didn't stop to take pics of school, but I kind of wish we had. We will definitely NEVER be back that way again!

The Iya Valley used to have vine bridges all over the place. Today only 3 remain. We visited two of them. It turns out that in order to keep it safe (because after driving on the road to get there all your 9 lives have been used up!) the vine bridges actually have steel cables hidden in the vines. After finding out about the "modern" construction of the bridges, Kimball no longer had much interest in them haha!

Even knowing they were safe, it took a lot for me to be brave enough to walk over them.

Once we got down into the lower portion of the valley the road improved and was much more pleasant to drive on. We stayed in Oboke for the night. After checking into our hotel we had time before dinner so we took a boat ride down the gorge. Again, the water in the gorge is so clear and such a pretty color. We were also impressed with giant carp kites flying above the gorge.

There was a beautiful lookout over the lower valley and gorge. I don't know if you can see from the pictures, but the Sakura are in bloom everywhere! We guessed that the Sakura trees mixed in with the regular trees on the mountain must get there from birds carrying their seeds and dropping them.

Our hotel offered a Kaiseki dinner. The food is always so well prepared and so beautiful that I can't resist signing up for that option. However, this time one of the courses was a fish (caught in the river of the gorge) that I just couldn't figure out how to eat. Kimball ate his pretty cleanly, but mine turned into a mess! The desserts were delish - yuzu pudding, homemade chocolate and fresh fruit.

The next morning the breakfast was just as fancy - but fish again. I just gave mine to Kimball.

For some reason they had an American flag on our table for both meals. Calling us out?!

For our final day, I looked at GoogleMaps and thought we should have time to stop by and see the Statue of Peeing Boy and the Kurozo Marshland. What we didn't realize (and should have) is that both of these places were back up in the valley. They were different roads than the day before, but even worse! It was terrible. So we got the pics but hated the experience.