Time for the ultimate castle in Japan. The big one, the ultimate bit of eye candy. This is the castle on all the postcards. We parked, we walked through the gate and onto the grounds and....what the? The castle was under a giant building with a picture of the castle painted on the outside. It's like going to see the Lincoln Memorial and instead of seeing Lincoln, you see a tablecloth with a stick figure with a top hat draw on it. So, it was somewhat disappointing. The castle's main keep is under renovation until 2015. We decided to make the best of it and still go exploring, which I am glad we did. The grounds at Himeji castle are by far the best castle grounds in all of Japan. The castle is enormous and the grounds were so cool looking. There were so many different mazes, moats, and walls. The kids had a great time running around. Fortunately, you could take an elevator to the top of the renovation building and see the roof of the castle. It was neat to see it all so close up. I was impressed to learn that the reason so many castles have fish tails on the roofs is to prevent them from catching on fire (didn't work in Osaka). We also got to go inside the castle, which was pretty cool because Himeji is crazy big, crazy old, and crazy intricate. Though it was a bummer that you couldn't get the cool view of the outside, Himeji still stands as the best castle in Japan. Truly an incredible place.
