1 May 2009

Since checkout for Toyoko Inn was at 10am, we met at this time in the lobby to walk to Himeji Castle together. The walk took about 15-20 minutes, so it wasn’t bad at all. Since my knee was still strained on the outer side, I had my friend Jeff tape it for me to provide extra support. Once we arrived to the Himeji Castle gates, Don paid for our tickets, then we were free to explore at our own leisure. Himeji Castle was really tall, and we were able to go all the way to the top. This involved many flights of very steep, wooden stairs; this wasn’t the best thing for my knee, but I wasn’t going to miss out on this opportunity because of such a slight injury. I mainly stuck with Blake, and we made our way to the very top and enjoyed the view over the city of Himeji. After walking all the way back down to the bottom of the castle, we proceeded to our next stop: Kokoen Garden. It was a three minute walk west of the castle but still on the same parcel of land. Kokoen Garden was composed of multiple smaller gardens within its walls. The gardens that I visited were Oyahiki-no-niwa (garden of the lord’s house), Nae-no-niwa (garden of seedlings), Cha-no-niwa (tea ceremony garden), Nagare-no-hira-niwa (flatly landscaped garden), Natsuki-no-niwa (garden of summer trees), Matsu-no-niwa (garden of pine trees), Hana-no-niwa (garden of flowers), Tsukiyama-chisen-no-niwa (garden with a hill and pond), and Take-no-niwa (garden of bamboo). It was really interesting to walk through so many different types of gardens in the sequential way in which I did. Some of the ponds also held the biggest koi fish I have ever seen! It was unbelievable.
After finishing up at Kokoen Garden, Blake and I walked about 15 minutes to the Himeji City Museum of Literature. The museum consisted of two buildings, Literature I and Literature II, both of which were designed by Tadao Ando. Upon arriving at the museum, we ran into Norio, Derrick, Scot, and Zach. Blake and I weren’t originally planning on entering the museum, but Norio talked to one of the workers and found out it only cost 200 yen to enter both galleries, and we were allowed to take architectural photographs of the interior. We rarely get the opportunity to take interior photographs of famous buildings, so 200 yen was quite the deal. After walking through both buildings, we continued onward to the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of History, which was designed by Kenzo Tange. We weren’t interested in going inside, since the exterior of the building was just so-so, but it was nice to see another one of Tange’s projects.
We had originally planned on going to Osaka if time permitted us to do so, but it was a little too late, and we didn’t want to risk missing our Shinkansen from Kyoto to Tokyo at 7:56pm. Instead, Norio, Derrick, Blake, and I took a taxi back toward our hotel. Norio got off at the hotel, but we continued to ride the taxi to a small Endo Shuhei project located south of our hotel. We weren’t quite sure where the building was, since it was really small, and our taxi driver didn’t seem to know either. Surprisingly, we found it fairly easily, and it only cost us 373 yen each when we ended up splitting the cost. The building was the Piping Workers Center, and the aesthetic fit Endo’s style of architecture. The interior looked even nicer than the outside, but we didn’t dare to go inside since we couldn’t speak Japanese to even ask if it was ok. Oh well. We still had some extra time, so we decided to make the 30 minute walk back to the hotel. My knee hurt, but I still wanted to walk rather than pay the fare of a taxi again. We stopped along the way to get McDonalds. Blake and Derrick both got meals, and I just enjoyed a small Coca-Cola for 100 yen.
When we finally got back to our hotel, we were still an hour early before Don planned to leave with the group. We decided we would leave Himeji on the Shinkansen an hour earlier, since Derrick wanted to go back to one store in Kyoto. The three of us got our stuff and caught the 4:44pm Shinkansen to Kyoto Station. Once in Kyoto, Blake stayed in the weekly mansion to pack his stuff, and I accompanied Derrick to the store. We made it back to the weekly mansion just in time to see Don, get our luggage, pick-up McDonalds to eat on the Shinkansen, and board the Nozomi bullet train at 7:56pm. The ride to Tokyo from Kyoto was a little over 2 hours on the Shinkansen. I pretty much slept the entire time. Once in Tokyo, we boarded a separate local train to get to our hotel. We are staying at the Toyoko Inn again, and this time we have our own rooms again. It is really nice. We didn’t get checked-in until after 11pm, so today proved to be a really long day. Since tomorrow starts the weekend, I will definitely be sleeping in late.