(A view of Mastumoto Castle from the moat.)
The Takahashi's have been planning today for quite some time. Sensei wanted to take us to a castle, but not just any castle, one that wasn't refurbished with metal. So, we all piled into the Takahashi family van for a "2 hour" drive to Matsumoto, which is about half way across Japan in the Nagoya prefecture. Before we left the house this morning, Mrs. Omura left us
a little note.
Two hours,
yeah right. We did get to see
Mount Fuji from a distance, so I can't complain.
Two hours and we reached a
small resort town. And, on the way there, we were having a little too much fun leaning into the curves, and
pushed Tomo so hard she popped her window. Thankfully, because it's safety glass and designed to break easily in an emergency, no one was hurt. We were all surprised and alarmed, but nobody was injured. Hey, at least it wasn't a rainy day!
So we stopped at the resort and had lunch before heading to the local
onsen. We took
some great pictures on the way through the hills. You could
see for miles. We went to one of the
top rated onsen in the country. This time it was real hot springs and built into a side of the mountain. The guys got daring and even climbed down to the river. It was different thank the usual thing, and kind of plain, but it was built next to a waterfall! We all enjoyed it.
And then the trek continued for another two hours as we went to Mastumoto castle. Here's some of the pictures:
The castle and it's grounds are pretty big
They had exhibits on every floor of the castle, including some samurai armor
Windows and the rooms were build small and defensively
At the peaks of the roofs, they had a kind of guardian fish motif
This is a view of the city from 22.7 meters up (the 6th floor)
The grounds were large
Taking a nap on the sixth floor
It was really awesome, but we were there a little late and got kicked out by the park staff at 5:30 PM. We went to Skylark (like a Denny's) for dinner then took the expressway all the way home, which made it a much faster trip. Oh, and we saw a little
Engrish on the way home.
Commenting is closed for this article.
