Adventures in Japan

More Matsumoto: This Time With Sunshine

It is amazing what a difference sunshine makes. We woke up earlier than yesterday, with less sleep, but with much more energy. We got out of the room in near record time.


We hit most of the same stuff as yesterday, but it all seemed so much better today. Brighter. Happier. We had breakfast in a place that has been around for nearly one hundred years. Had lunch there too (I had a reuben). In between the dining we took in the castle. Matsumoto caste is one of only... four(?) castles in Japan that is still mainly in its original state. It has had a few touch ups through the years, but there is stuff in there that has been there from the very beginning.


Osaka castle, to provide comparison, is all concrete. It has an elevator.

No elevator in Matsumoto castle. Just really steep, hard to climb stairs. They were built that way on purpose, you see, to slow any invaders down on their way up. I learned that factoid from a sign in the castle. It was one of the few signs I read because I was usually too busy listening to our tour guides.

On our leisurely stroll to the castle, a happy older gentleman came up and started talking to us. He was very nice. He was a volunteer tour guide at the castle. But he didn't work weekends. Still, he advised us to take advantage of the free tour guides. So we did. They were free.


And we got three of them. Two were trainees. But they were all nice, all talkative, all had some interesting things to say. Most of which I have now forgotten.

They all recommended that we go to the Ukyo-e museum. So we did. It was a nice day and we had some time to kill. Ukyo-e is a Japanese art style. Basically, it is wood block printing. But really nice wood, and really nice prints. The museum itself wasn't all that nice. And some of the art pieces had seen better days. It was all one family's private collection, so it is somewhat understandable. But still, you'd think they'd take better care of their own stuff.

There was a bit of a mad scramble to find a way out of Matsumoto, but we managed to get on our train and say goodbye.

It was a nice city. When it was sunny.


Holy crap! How could I forget!?!?!?

In between the castle looking and the art looking we passed by a shrine. A shrine with a big stack of beautiful looking dolls.


And fire.


Shrine attendants were taking dolls off of the stack and throwing them on the fire. It was odd. We have no idea why they were doing this, but we took some pictures and video anyway.


(It might take a while for the pictures to show up. This computer no longer likes uploading pictures for some reason. Fun)