kyoto, day 3: hikone, genkyuen, jisso-in

[hikone castle]

There are hundreds of castles in Japan. A number of them are ruins; a number have been rebuilt recently. Twelve still have their original keeps; Himeji is one. Hikone is another.

We took a train to Lake Biwa, to see Hikone Castle and the neighboring Genkyu-en garden.

First we visited the castle museum (shoes off). There were screens painted with battle scenes from Sekigahara (heh, wikipedia has a picture of one). We also stopped to watch a video of Noh theater that had been recorded in a stage in that building. I hadn't realized how much Noh tradition I was already familiar with, mostly from Kurosawa's films.

Then, we walked to the keep, where there was a crowd gathered around a white cat mascot (that we had seen in the various stores walking up to the castle, in plush, paper, and ceramic. Maybe even tombstone; not sure about that, but we did see a Hello Kitty tombstone earlier).

I was curious, so I did a little googling.

Of, course, Hikonyan! How could I not have recognized the character that businessmen commissioned an artist to create for the 400th anniversary of Hikone Castle in 2007!

Cute little bugger, too. With his own copyright infringement lawsuit.

The castle itself was kind of pretty, too.

I also took the opportunity to justify bringing my IR camera.

We then went inside the keep, which was quite obviously built to be fortifiable, not comfortable. The stairs were steep; maybe a foot in height and six inches deep. We navigated these while holding our shoes in bags in one hand, the handrail in our other hand, as the crowd slowly pushed forward. There wasn't a whole lot to see; the archery and gunnery holes were sealed, the windows covered in plexiglass, and the dim interior packed with people.

We were glad to find ourselves at the end, ready to put our shoes back on and head to the Genkyuen garden, which was peaceful and pretty.

[jisso-in]

After our Manshu-in adventures, my father was reluctant to go to another distant light-up spot, but I convinced him we should go to Jisso-in.

We were again kept inside, and not allowed to photograph the interior of the temple. There was a famous room, with the autumn leaves visible through (and framed by) the rice paper screen doors, and reflecting on the shiny hardwood floors, but photographing that scene was expressly forbidden, though you could purchase images of that room with cherry blossom and autumn leaf and show covered branch exteriors.

Still, it was beautiful. I don't think my photos captured that well enough.