We are out of the Buddhist monk-urary and re-entering normal sinful society.
And what could be more hedonistic than a huge Japanese vending machine!!I got a hot can of coffee from the vending machine (the monks don’t do coffee), it was a little nasty but better than nothingI just hope I don’t end up like this guy!Thus far this morning, we’ve ridden a bus and a cable car, now we’re waiting for our train to OsakaNow on our bullet-train from Osaka to HimejiReally great view of Osaka Bay as seen from the trainOur very first view of Himeji! You can see the castle itself all the way down at the end of the street, it was a very dramatic entrance to the city!Sign to a restaurant we passed on 😀I loved this ad! 😀Our very first monk anti-toxinsLunch was great! We sat on chairs and everything 😀This was our lunch restaurant, it was quite nice. Later, we learned it was mentioned in a Michelin guide!Here it is, Himeji Castle!It really is quite a pile.
We walked all around it but never bothered going in—we’d heard it was disappointingly empty, and if you’ve seen the insides of one empty castle, you’ve seen them all. We did enjoy exploring the grounds, they seemed endless and beautiful, with lots of goldfish and carp cavorting in the various moats and pools.
Then it was back to the train staton for the bullet-train to our final destination. Fun fact: I liked this picture so much that I have a two-by-three foot poster of it up in the house, takes me back there every time I see it.Can’t tell you how very odd it feels to be here
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