Trip to Inuyama Castle

I learned that one of the oldest castles in Japan is close to us in a town called Inuyama (which literally means Dog Mountain). This town is very close to Nagoya and was only about 45 minutes away by train. So why not go right? Jessica, Corey, Spring, Robert, and I all went.

It was raining that day but that did not stop me from taking nature shots. Here are pictures of the path to the castle.




As you can see from the mountains in the back, this city is farther away from the ocean than Nagoya.

First we came upon a nice shinto shrine! We love our shrines here and they are everywhere. This one was fun for various reasons which I will say later.



I don't know why this bridge was built considering you could literally jump over the little stream of water that passes through...but I like it. Maybe my yard will have one of these.


The annoying thing about living in the mountains is that every morning you think to yourself "Wow, gravity is really strong today". Its not everyday that people are "aware" of gravity. See how many stairs?

We finally found a nice little path that would lead us to the castle. We had a little trouble finding it because there were not many signs. But then we saw this very tiny rock.
The first Kanji (The Chinese symbols also used by the Japanese) is "Inu". "Inu" means dog in Japanese. The second Kanji is "yama", and of course yama means mountain (but a ditch in Russian). The last Kanji is "Jo", which means castle. However it is Jo only after a name. Alone it is "Shiro". Enough with the language lesson, here is a shot of the group walking to the castle.


Now here is the first shot of the Castle. Remember this is the one of the oldest castles in Japan, so its no surprise that it is nowhere near as large as Nagoya Castle. The price to go see this castle is very cheap. We paid about $5 each to get in.

Before going in the castle we found a little secret spot where we can see the mountains better.

For those who love us, here is a picture for your computer desktop background :-)
The mountains are not too tall. However they are very elegant, serene, and clumpy.

Another picture of Jessica and I.
Before going in the castle we had to take off our shoes, put them in a plastic bag, and wear green slippers which they provided. Now I am a big fan of slippers after getting some nice fur Ugg slippers from Jessica last Christmas. However, these green slippers would not stay on my feet. They were not too big or too small, but were shaped in a unidirectional way...if that makes any sense. Any slipper can go on any foot. This obviously made them less than form fitting. Having slippers constantly slipping would not be a problem (by definition of slipper), but I HAD TO CLIMB ABNORMALLY STEEP STAIRS!


You can see from the picture above that my right slipper is falling off. That picture was an action shot, meaning it was in the processes of falling off. After the picture was taken, it fell off.
Now it was worth it however to see this armor! Makes me want to be a samurai!


Now it may look very big in the picture but this armor was surprisingly small. I suppose Japanese people were really really really small back then. Most people think of the Japanese as being short and that is what I saw when I first came here. However as soon as school started, I suddenly found myself around a mob of very tall skinny Japanese people. The older generations are small just as I expected them to be, but the younger generation dwarfs the same generation in America. Apparently because the diet back in the old days was not so good, the height of the average Japanese person was fairly short. The diet in modern times here in Japan is very good. There are plenty of health foods and the diet is fairly balanced with many vegetables, fish, meat, fruit, etc. So to my surprise the Japanese were small not because of genetics, but because of the food they ate. I noticed here that many old women have terrible bone problems such that they have backs permanently bent at almost a ninety degree angle. But now there is more calcium in the diet of the Japanese so the younger generation should not have this problem.



Here is another picture of me clumsily going up the stairs trying not to lose my slippers.

The very top had a very nice terrace where you can see everything!



Now, the castle was basically empty except for the armor you saw above. So we were able to explore all the little areas of the old castle. Here is a beautiful picture of a window.
A picture of Jessica being illuminated by warm white earth light.

This one is for my parents. Because I think the ladies had enough.

You have to love pictures of people in front of mountains...especially dog mountains. I know I do.

This one is particularly dedicated to my friend Tyler...who was disappointed that I did not post enough pictures of mountains.

Another beautiful picture of Jessica.

After seeing the best view of mountains I had seen so far, we went down. Here is a picture of that temple I talked about earlier. Inside it had this incredible golden shrine.


The best secret of the temple were these holy chickens. They were very humble chickens which enjoyed my company. I was even able to grab one myself.

Jessica and I later had a fight that day under the watch of the shinto gods.

I hope you enjoyed pictures of one of the oldest castles in Japan. I have plenty, literally thousands, of pictures to sort through so I can post more. This is why I am so backed up on posting. Keep watch for more. I love you all. Bye Bye!


(A classic picture taken when events end)

Throwing Food Festival

One morning I woke up with a loud bang. I thought I might of been dreaming about the fourth of July but fireworks in the morning? It sounded just like fireworks I thought. So I look out the window and decide that I went back in time in Japan.

As some of you know, I live right next to shrine slash temple. It is fairly large with some very nice Japanese shrubbery. I could not figure out at first what they were doing wearing such classy gear shooting guns into the air which created a huge plume of smoke. It was incredibly loud and our good old dog Nobu was very scared. Not wanting to miss a great photo opportunity, Jessica and I went on over to see what was going one. As we approached all of the guys in uniform started marching out of the shrine over into the streets in a mini parade.



I was very amused by them. However, as they passed us by, they seemed more amused by us Gaijin (outlander/foreigner). They all waved to us with joy as they passed us by. Thinking that all of that fiasco was over, we started our way back home. On the way we were able to talk to our neighbor who was also out and they told us to come back at 16:00 o'clock (everything is in 24 hour time, so around 4:00pm) to see some more. We waited until 4:00pm and were surprised by the amount of people who have already gathered.

Past the crowd you can see some white smoke so I cam closer to have a look.
The person loaded whatever gun that is with gunpowder and then shot it into the air. You would be able to see better if it wasn't for the fact that this old ladies head is in the way. However I forgot to charge the camera and therefore had only a limited amount of pictures left to take. The crowd started to get thicker with old people and children alike.

Here is a shot of the temple building in all of its large roof glory.

We noticed that in front of the crowd was a big scaffold with bowls filled with food on top. Risky children tried many things to try to grab some. Some would jump, some would hit the scaffolding and shook it while others tried to make themselves taller....

Everyone around us had plastic bags and it became clear what was about to come. The head guy climbed up to beat the big drum which would start our "fun".

More guys stepped up next to all of the bowls filled with what we now identified as mochi balls! This would be exciting and Jessica was happy because our neighbor gave us a plastic bag!

The old dude hit the drum and a riot would ensue. The men on top started throwing mochi balls wrapped in plastic everywhere! They threw far, near, and even teased everyone with their tall order pride. We tried our best to catch as many as we can but we soon realized how difficult it would be. We thought our competition would be the kids but to our surprise it was the very quick old people. They would grab those mochi balls off the ground as though they practiced ninjitsu. I tried to grab one off of the ground but a women stepped on my arm to prevent me from doing so. So I lifted my arm to knock her over! Sure, now you must think I am the bad guy knocking a poor women over. However, you will laugh at me and see because the women got the mochi ball anyway! The same one I was after. Even after falling down, her ninja speed surpassed mine. Get mochi or die trying was the motto. You might be thinking though "how hard can it be to catch these?". Well, they were solid, not squishy. It was about the same shape, size, and hardness of a baseball! Jessica caught one on her chest but got the wind hit out of her. It was clear we were amateurs at this event. But after it was all over we were satisfied.

The sun was up, the sky clear, and a bag filled with heavy solid mochi.
Here is a nice picture of some of our bounty.


I bit into one thinking to myself "This taste like crap, and its as hard." One of the Chinese girls corrected us and told us they needed to be heated up. So we put one in the microwave and watched it grow twice the size!

With a little soy sauce and sugar we were set to go.


That was my wakeup call. Living next to a temple is not peaceful, not at all. Please leave your comments and keep an eye out for more posts. Keep in touch!