The plan was to wake up nice and early, jump on the local train, get through the gates nice and early and be rubbing shoulder with Mario and Luigi at Super Nintendo World by breakfast.


Except a few weeks beforehand, knowing how addicted we are to going to UNESCO sites and disappointed that it wouldn't be on our trip, we decided to visit Himeji Castle. So, still an early start, onto the Shinkansen for 30mins straight to the city of Himeji.

Himeji Castle to the Train Station

As soon as you arrive at Himeji Train Station, look north, you see the castle. Less than 1km of walking and you end up at the castle moat.

So, having paid our entry fee, we spent the next 4 and a half hours walking around, first Himeji Castel, and afterwards the included and difficult to find Kokoen gardens (which we eventually worked out was next door but on the far side of the moat.

In a freak encounter we ran into one of the guys on our cycling tour in Osaka, exchanged some words and then carried on. Himeji Castle was simply stunning and more importantly the inside wasn't a converted museum, but the original architecture, stairs running upwards as each floor became smaller towards the top. Of course no shoes, which made gliding across the polished wood even more fun.

After the castle, we popped into the gardens, got all zen and then wondered why there were 6 helicopters circling above us. Must have been something G8 related.

Himeji was very impressive

After Himeji, we jumped onto a local express train, destined for Kobe for some Kobe Beef. Except there was a problem, we looked and looked and...felt a little bit poor. Especially so early on in our trip. So we ended up walking into any old restaurant and having an excellent meal whilst conversing with a fully non-English speaking staff. We filled up, jumped back on the train and headed towards our last stop of the day. Sunset at Kuchu Teien Observatory on top of the Umeda Sky Building.

Basically two buildings bound together by two doughnuts top and bottom plus walkways through the middle and a fairly aggressively priced observatory. We tend not to get lucky with our sunsets and whilst this wasn't a complete failure, it was pretty underhwelming.

Part of the money printing factory of course was the chance for customers to buy love locks from the souvenir store and then mounting them on a custom made love lock money machine mount.


Next stop Osaka...on foot.