‘Jo’ means Castle
Japans castles don’t give the impression of stubborn resistance that the Welsh castles gave me. Japanese castles are too… preetty, I guess. They are striking buildings of beauty that give few clues of the battles and butchery they must’ve seen. To me the oddest feature is that the Donjon (inner keep) is made of wood, which is surely asking to get razed to the ground – and exactly what happened to many of them.
I visited Hikone with Michelle, an Aussie who arrived in the ‘land of the red dot’ when I did. The cherry blossoms weren’t popping then but the town and its castle were definitely worth going out of your way for. The donjon of Hikone-jo stands in beautiful elevated grounds behind the outer walls and castle moat on the highest point in the town. I had some trouble appreciating how the defences would’ve worked here – the sloping stones walls, curved roof and manicured gardens were probably working against the fierce and booby-trapped defences I though they should have. But looking at the castle on google maps (scroll down to hikone) I can see they’d thought out the location rather more strategically. Maybe a little disappointing is the absence of decoration or carvings inside the donjon that I had expected from the graceful exterior. The view out to Lake Biwako (japans largest) with falcons circling above still made the climb up the steep steps inside worth it. (remember shoes off 
So now that cherry blossom season is bursting out I took a short train out to Inuyama site of Inuyama-jo, japans oldest standing castle (1537) still in original condition. But first I was blown away by the fluffy pink strip of cherry blossoms that lined the river path and pink lanterns hanging in the trees. I bought a few skewers of unknown food from a street stall (it wasn’t meat. Surprisingly.) and looked over my Hiragana that I’m making an honest attempt to learn. The castle is up a path past a temple where I tossed all the 1Y coins I’d accumulated and repeatedly failed to offload (think kiddie play money as just as worthless). Inuyama-jo shared many of the features of Hikone-jo and even Gifu-jo though it did feature some pretty outrageous armour of the times. And how small were the characters that got into that gear?
I swung into a museum in Inuyama old town that housed some of the rolling floats that get polished up for local festivals. These are amazing multi-multi tiered rolling wagons laden with lanterns and hauled by men – I’ve got to get to a festival like this- unfortunately I’ve already missed Inuyama’s.
Untitled-project RSS