 The castle is five stories tall and was built in the 1500s. Over the years, other rulers added to it. |
 Lisa comes fully prepared - with two cameras and two more bags. |
 The little mini-castle on the side was built years later on the advice of the Shogun. |
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 The outer gate has big huge doors and leads out to the moat and the busy street. (Photo by Lisa) |
 There is a zoo on the castle grounds, and we kept hearing monkeys screeching and donkeys hee-hawing. Kind of distracted from the beauty a little. |
 The fortress was built as a maze of walls, turrets, and guard towers. |
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 Another one of the outer gates. There were several rings of walls. (Photo by Lisa) |
 Back in the day, the whole thing was surrounded by THREE moats. They've since filled in the outer two for space. |
 Intricate roof tiling. Look closer... |
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 ...The ends of the tiles all have different round caps on them. |
 There are several different symbols on these caps, each representing a different person who ran the castle over the years. |
 The roof is in great shape, considering it's hundreds of years old. |
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 At last! One of the inner gates! |
 Lisa prepares for the ultimate Ninja Infiltration. |
 She skillfully bypasses the Guard House. (Look, man - She's so good you can't even SEE her!) |
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 Cool rooftops. |
 Dolphins on the corners of the tiles. |
 Lisa takes off her shoes and puts on sandals to go inside. |
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 The sandals were too big for her and too small for me. Mostly we went barefoot. |
 They had displays of old spears and flintlocks. |
 Look closely at the hammer and you'll see it looks like a dragon. Cool! |
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 From the castle, you can see all of Himeji. And the decorative fish. |
 This top floor would have been the headquarters for any battle. A good view of attackers in all directions. (Photo by Lisa) |
 Sunlight at Himeji. |
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 The castle is built atop a high stone foundation |
 Can't... Stop... Taking Pictures of... Castle... |
 Across from the Castle are the old Samurai Quarters and gardens. Here's Lisa on a Samurai Garden Footbridge. |
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 Our buddy Ken took this picture of us. He worked in Tokyo and was on vacation here. |
 We toured most of the castle with him, and afterwards he even helped us find a good place to eat! (Thanks, Ken!) |
 He was very cool, and spoke VERY good english. He helped Lisa read the Japanese writing on the displays. (Photo by Lisa) |
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 The castle is lit up at night - beee-yootiful. |
 Lisa's a Lighting Professional, so she went crazy over the huge banks of lights. |
 This is a smaller tower where the ruler's 7 year old wife lived until she was old enough to move into the big kids castle. |
 A very drunk Japanese man took this picture of us, and flipped out when we thanked him in his own language. He also had his wife take pictures of us shaking his hand. Probably won't make much sense to him when he gets them developed. |