Part 2 – Kumamoto Castle

Part 2 of my Christmas to New Year travels in Japan.

The 26th of December dawned a bright and sunny day, albeit cold, and what better way to spend it than by visiting Kumamoto Castle. This is only the second castle I’ve been to in Japan.

While it may look impressive, it is a little disappointing that most of the Castle was rebuilt in 1960, with restorations beginning in 1998. The Castle has the two main towers, 49 turrets, 18 gates with turrets and 29 additional gates, and was this version of the castle was originally built around 1600AD.

This tower/turret, however, is quite a bit older and was quite scary to walk in. The floorboards kept bending as I walked on them, and creaked quite ominously.

All the doorways were also ridiculously low, standing at maybe 1.5m tall.

The castle would look really, really good in Spring, when the Cherry Blossom trees were in bloom. Unfortunately, in winter, all I get to look at is the barebones of trees.

The castle had high walls (you can see a person in the pic for comparison)

It also had a moat.

And lots of windows for shooting arrows and guns out of on unsuspecting passerbys (or enemies) =p.

The castle has a good surrounding view. In this picture you can see (at 10x zoom) Mount Aso in the distance.

The castle, while looking nice, was pretty much designed for tourists when they re-built it. There are concrete stairs throughout the centre of the castle, and all the floors are exhibits. This contrasts to Himeji Castle, which I quite prefer.

The Honmaru Goten Palace, recently rebuilt, is so new and sparkly, you can even SMELL the new wood. It’s almost scary how new it is. It is, however, faithfully reproduced, and even uses traditional techniques for joining the wood and such.

And some, what I believe to be preserved versions, or more proably replicas, of some of the door designs.

Traditional New Years decorations. You’ll see these all over the place in Japan.

After walking through the Castle and a few of its turrets, I went for lunch =) Fried Oysters.

And I finished it pretttyyy quickly.

Kumamoto Castle was nice, but all-in-all, I prefer Himeji Castle. Perhaps it wasn’t the best thing to go and see the top-rated (or one of) Himeji Castle in Japan first, but there you go. Probably not the most fascinating blog I’ve done, but it’s an important cultural part of Japan, and much of the Castle area is World Heritage (13 buildings).

After leaving Kumamoto, I went for a sushi-train dinner with the family, and then went to Tokyo. More on that soon!

Stay tuned~