Various and sundry pictures (finally)

So, sometime ago I went to Hikone Castle. (Was it three weeks ago? A month? Meh...) Without any further ado, here are the pictures.



This is the gate you walk through as you go towards the outer moat and the road that will take you to Hikone Castle. The outer moat circles the center of Hikone, and Shiga University is on the other side of it.



This is a memorial marker for a nobleman who lived here. He was like the 14th of 17 children or something...talk about getting the short end of the stick. His house is behind the marker, and you can see part of it in the picture.




This is just cause I like Shiga Prefecture's mascot. You go, cute little white samurai kitty-thingy. At least, I think it's a kitty thingy. Since it's got whiskers.





This is some of the (many) steps that go up to the castle. The steps are purposely rough and uneven so you have to concentrate on your steps. One of the many tactical maneuvers that went into building the castle.

(By the way, that's the tour guide and the back of Dr. Meier, our resident director's, head. Dr. Meier looks a whole lot like Colonel Sanders. I kid you not.)




The bridge that goes not quite to the actual castle. It goes at an angle so that you can't see directly in front of you and people can hide and attack. That's smart...


The castle, at last. It was smaller than I thought it'd be, but it's pretty, isn't it?



Yay, pretty little Japanese garden next to the castle. Several parts of the garden were inspired by several beautiful views in China. This is one of them.




Sign in the top floor of the castle. When I asked the tour guide what it meant, she explained that it says that in case of fire, you should tie the ladder stored around here around one of the posts and climb out of the window.

....Bit too extreme sight-seeing for me.




Oh, this was cool. This is actually a picture of the roof. You can see a tiny little stage here. The nobility could watch performances from here. A ninja could also hide out here in case of attack and totally pwn you. Really, that's what our tour guide said, paraphrased.

...That's so cool....



Finally, I leave you with the stairs of doom. There were two sets of stairs inside the castle that were more like ladders. It was crazy. I wanted to get a picture of people coming down these stairs so you can see just how steep it is.

Next time, moon-viewing festival. And I went to Shiga University Friday, so I have a few pictures from that too.