Exploring temples and castles in Japan

Japan around the turn of the year

I have for many years tried to travel outside of Thailand at specific times of the year, particularly during the April New Year or Songkran celebration, and at the end of December into early January. The trip in April is so I can miss the entire rowdy, drunken water-throwing festival – I know, it’s so much funnnnnn…. Actually, it is fun, for about one day, but for me the fun wore off long ago, and so I turned to traveling abroad for that time period, and I have enjoyed my trips immensely. The other time of the year has been at the height of the ‘festive season’ and again, as a means of escaping “Jingle Bells”, which seems to incessantly blare across hill and dale from about mid September until early January (only to be interrupted for two days by “Sawasdee Pee Mai Leow” – but that song, and the local outlet of Tesco-Lotus, is another story. In short, I travel for the holidays and have always enjoyed myself, and it was for the New Year holiday that I decided to join a friend and travel to Japan, starting in Fukuoka, make our way up the island of Shikoku, cross back over to the main island and visit Kyoto via Osaka, then cross the island to the west coast, across the mountain range, and make our way down the west coast for a stretch before crossing back over to Fukuoka and heading back to Thailand. The grand adventure was to involve me driving a car all that distance – thank goodness that traffic in Japan does not move as fast as Thailand, and that drivers are very well-mannered and adhere to traffic laws.

A lot of the trip was on an ad-hoc basis – the plane tickets had been paid for, so we knew we were coming and going, and I had even managed to sort out the first night’s accommodation, but everything else was going to be left up to the element of surprise or last-minute planning, and all-in-all it worked out really well; except for the unexpected snow, ice-bound highway, and the language, and…. But I get ahead of myself.

The ferry from Fukuoka, looking back at Beppu

Self-drive with Japanese GPS

The low-cost airline flight was ok, except for the fact that I felt like I was in a fresh market the entire trip, with incessant announcements promoting the possibility to purchase food, drinks, collectibles, duty free items, seat belt zones, non-smoking, tray tables, upright seats, and and and… if you’ve ever flown you’ll know what I mean. The arrival went smoothly, and somehow we managed to find our way to the rental car outlet in the city near the train station. The staff were very helpful, even though they were a bit surprised to see a non-Japanese-speaking person wanting to rent a car and drive – I got a GPS map, all in Japanese, and it took us four days to figure out how to get it into English – but I had my smart phone and the map system on it helped out where I really could not make sense of the Japanese map. The first stretch of the route was punched in by one of the helpful personnel at the car rental desk; the destination was to be Beppu, on the northeast coast of Fukuoka, where we would catch a ferry to cross over to Shikoku, and then proceed to drive from Yawatahama to Matsuyama. I like driving, and so I undertook a circuitous route to get to the final destination, and by four p.m. we finally arrived at the hotel in Matsuyama. Along the way we had managed to find something to eat for lunch, but dinner was going to be a challenge. We had no intention of eating at the hotel, and so we set out to find something to eat within a reasonable distance from the hotel. There were small places, indicated by a small light and sign, nothing too fancy, and certainly nothing large or ostentatious. Having walked a few miles in a circle around the hotel area we finally decided to simply try our luck with one of the first places we had passed earlier – it looked good, and it seemed to be a favourite with the locals as the place was nearly packed when we passed by the first time – but the menu was all in Japanese, and there were no pictures, so we passed it up initially.

Matsuyama Castle keep

Ordering dinner doing mime

Upon entering we were met with a very cheerful “Good Evening – Konbanwa”, and a menu was presented. We sat down, stared for a few moments, and then signaled to the waiter – we were ready to order. With a bemused expression on his face he first looked at one, then the other of us, and proceeded to I suppose ‘ask’ what we would like. We stared back and forth for a few moments before blurting out “rice, chicken,” (as I’ve written before, chicken and rice seems to be a staple in any country, so it’s fairly safe to assume that something similar is available in most restaurants). Unfortunately, we had ended up in a seafood restaurant, and “chicken” was not on the menu, but after a few minutes of waving hands around and trying a variety of words, the waiter nodded that he understood, smiled, wrote something on his order pad, repeated it to us, and proceeded to inform the cook what we had ordered. It was obvious when the food arrived that he hadn’t understood a word, that we didn’t realize what type of restaurant we were in, but that he had made an executive decision that a: we were hungry, b: we would probably be ok with semi-bland food, and c: that he had had so much fun that we were not going to be gouged for the price of the food. And so we had a wonderful meal of rice and seafood dishes with a traditional soup, and all in for less than similar meal would have cost in Bangkok or New York. We finished dinner, thanked the cook and waiter profusely, and wandered back to the hotel for a well-deserved rest before the plans for the following day. Our hotel was not too far from the Matsuyama Castle, and it was this sight that we intended to see the following day.

A view from above over the city.

Exploring the past in Matsuyama

Constructed between 1602 and 1628, Matsuyama Castle is one of twelve “original” castles that survived the post-feudal period from 1868 onward. Constructed on Mount Katsuyama, the castle is one of the most complex and interesting castles in Japan, and a few hours of exploration is certainly called for. Although the castle has suffered from lightning strikes which destroyed the original five-storey keep or castle tower (now replaced with the three-storey keep), and from bombing during the Second World War, the local government has been funding restoration work on the castle since 1966. As Mount Katsuyama is 132 metres high, certain areas of the castle provide excellent opportunities for taking panoramic photos of the city below. Access to the castle is easy, including a cable car system, or for the more physically fit minded, a 15 minute hike up the mountain to the main entrance. In April, the cherry trees blossom and add a wonderful splash of colour to the castle and the mountain.