The White Heron (Part 2)

The entire tour took about 1.5 hours, and you follow it up through the fortifications, through one of the long buildings that would have been housing as women's quarters (and for defense when needed), up past various storage buildings, through the large inner courtyard, and finally up through the castle itself. I took a bunch of pictures of all the fortifications and details inside the buildings, but it would take me forever to upload everything, so I'll just include the main shots right now.

First the bridge aross the outer moat.

The castle from up close.

Looking down at the fortifications and city from the top floor of the castle.
From a different window...

A model of the city as it would have been when the castle was in use.

After finishing at the castle, I came across a pottery fair/festival going on in Himeji, so I hung out there for a bit. I decided there wasn't much left to do in the city, so I got my train ticket to Nara. I got a bit lost along the way in Osaka, when I took the wrong train by accident, but eventually got everything figured out. I wandered around Nara a bit today, but didn't do anything very exciting. I hadn't slept in a couple days, and I was starting to get extremely sore from lugging around my laptop, backpack and coat around everywhere, so I got a hotel room to relax in while in Nara. It was pretty cheap (about $40 cdn/night), and while it's compact, it's really hi-tech which is fun. Going to get up early tomorrow morning and go siteseeing after breakfast.