– The first of our day trips was to the city of Himeji as this city is known to have the best castle in Japan and was said to be worth the hour train ride from Osaka. As nothing is easy, the first challenge we had was getting to a new train station to take the bullet train and once at the train station, trying to find the right counter to exchange our Japan Rail Pass, which was the best investment for traveling in Japan. I had to buy this before I got to Japan, but in the long run, it saved us a lot of money and time hassling with getting tickets. For any trip to Japan with train travel…this is a must (look for details at www.japanrail.com).
Himeji
– Vanessa and I are really glad we went as from the moment we got off the train, the city was very charming. We started walking the 15 minutes through town to reach the castle and were greeted by the Himeji Castle which is known as “The White Heron” based on the appearance of it. This castle was surrounded by a moat (which I love for some strange reason) and had interesting defensive walls with rectangular, circular and triangular openings which were used for firing guns and shooting arrows. Very different kind of walls.
– The castle itself was very large and had eight stories (which of course we had to climb to get a view of the town). I will say the climb to the top was very crowded (with Japanese tourists and even more extremely pushy Japanese tourists). It was tough coming down the very steep stairs as I was pushed a few times and could have easily fallen…but I held my own and pushed back to make my point not to push me.
– While we were touring the castle grounds, we were very entertained with the local girls. They were wearing some silly outfits to be out sightseeing – and I’m talking about spiky stiletto heels, shorter than short mini-skirts and more makeup than a hooker would wear at night…and this is daytime touring.
– The final stop in Himeji was at Koko-en – which was the former Samurai quarters of the castle, but now is nine separate gardens with a huge pond with carp fish. I wish I had some photos to show, but it was at this moment that my camera just died. It was no longer able to take a picture and everything was streaks of color. Very sad as it was one of the most beautiful Japanese gardens.
Nara
– On September 15th, we were off for the day in the city of Nara, which was just an hour away from Osaka. Nara was Japan’s first real capital city and now is a huge park that is home to over 1,000 deer. The deer are precious here as in per-buddish times, the deer were considered messengers of the gods and today or just considered national treasures. For me….there were so many of them and they were being lazy in the park and begging for food from the tourists (yet there were many deer biscuit stands that sold food, so it must be ok to feed the deers.
– It was a long day of walking all over including seeing the famous KoFuku-Ji (or 5 story pagodas). It was so tall and surrounded by large trees and the first place we saw the deer so it was fun to watch.
– Next stop was at the Todai-Ji – which is a temple. This temple has a claim to fame as being the largest wooden building anywhere in the world and has a giant Buddha inside. Crazy as it was, the temple had burned down twice and when the current structure was re-build in 1709, it was 2/3 the size (smaller) than the original, yet it is still the largest wooden building in the world. Vanessa and I enjoyed the outside more as there were many white lanterns set up for a festival that night and as we were walking around the area, we walked in temple exit (as we didn’t see the huge sign saying exit only)…whoops.
– Outside the Todai-Ji, is the Nandai-mon – which is the largest wooded gate anywhere and quite impressive as well. I had to get a close up photo to get the scale of the wood and then one from a far and regardless…it was very large.
– Towards the end of our stay in Nara, we went to Kasuga Tisha, which is a bright orange shrine. As we approached this, there were over 2,000 stone lanterns which were beautiful and later we saw some of the 1,000 bronze lanterns around the shrine itself. We were told they only light the lanterns twice a year at big festivals and it ended up being this day was one of the two times a year they light them. Vanessa and I debated it, but in the end, we didn’t want to hang around till after 9pm when it gets dark as it was already a long day. So we just enjoyed the lanterns.
– So two great day trips from Osaka to Himeji and Nara and both were super easy with our Japan rail pass.
Logistics
– We stayed at the Crowne Plaza in Osaka (see details in Japan part 3 for in Osaka) and used our rail pass for the day trips. Much easier as neither city would be a place to spend a night. Not that much to do in either.