With our cousin Harumi we had decided to take a day trip from Osaka to Himeji, primarily to see Himeji Castle. Renowned for being the most intact of the major castles in Japan, we chose it to represent our castle experience here…we learned years ago that visiting every castle we come upon gets boring. We pinned our castle hopes on Himeji.

A short train ride via Shinkansen from Shin-Osaka station, this beautiful, open, modern city, much smaller than Osaka, Kobe, etc., welcomes visitors with a spectacular view of the castle directly across, maybe 10 blocks away, from the station. It’s a wow moment, and also produces instant concern that it is awfully high and how in heaven’s name does one get up there?

We set off to find out, walking this wide, boulevard with perhaps the most beautiful manhole covers we had ever seen, bits of statuary, and inviting shops. As we approached the castle grounds there was a small set of permanent food stalls with covered picnic tables behind—especially convenient and friendly. We stopped to inspect one of the offerings and laughed that it was okonomiyaki on a stick! We continued on.

You enter the castle gate by crossing the moat on a lovely wooden bridge. Sakura—cherry blossoms—everywhere. I mean, everywhere. And they were in full bloom everywhere. We have been extraordinarily lucky to see this beauty. I hadn’t considered just what it means to be here in cherry blossom time. Well, it’s pretty great.

We wound our way up the castle grounds amidst the many tourists of all nationalities, lots of little kids running around, and enjoying the endless blue sky and vistas of mountains. Up and up we went, a slowly moving parade of visitors. A very Asian appearing young man struck up a conversation with us. He was from Texas, and traveling alone because his buddy bailed on him for some girl. After a considerable climb we entered the castle building proper and we all laughed to read the sign—we had made it to the castle basement! A few more rooms and we were in a staging area with a guide repeating “please remove your shoes on the brown mats” and we did as we were told. Plastic bags—recycled—were offered and everyone is now carrying an extra bag. We rejoined the parade in our socks (never travel in Japan without wearing clean socks), navigating slippery, centuries old wooden floors and stairways that were virtually ladders. Everyone follows the signs and barriers and slowly we all continue, up and up and up. It was, frankly, grueling, and also exciting and scary.

The trek tops out at the top—the sixth floor—where a small family shrine sits in the middle of the room. Many Japanese visitors, including Harumi, bowed, clapped, as is the custom of respect. Then we embarked on the descent, again, in SOCKS down, down those ladder-staircases. At least on the down direction they have put narrow treads so it wasn’t as treacherous as we had feared. Nonetheless it’s tricky because each step is so narrow one must turn sideways to fit one’s foot. I don’t think I have ever been so glad to get down from a climb. We continued on to the castle grounds, surrounded by sakura and filled, now it was midday, with kindergarten aged kids in their uniforms running around, families on blankets, older people (like us) sitting on rocks in the shade.

Lunch! We earned it. There was a lovely arcade street back toward the station (note: do NOT go into antique stores in Japan—everything is authentic, many very old bowls and cups come with the original wooden box…so tempting) and came to a noodle/ramen shop where a young woman stood beckoning us in. Harumi and David had soup ramen, I had the dipping ramen. Dipping broth was way too rich for soup but delish to drag the noodles through. Yum! It is refreshing to find hundreds, thousands of independent enterprises which in our experience are always good.

Satisfied, we decided to find out how to get to the gondola that would take us to a large forested area of shrines and halls. You can imagine how tired we were after the castle climb, and this sounded relatively easy. I mean, don’t gondolas take you to the tops of things?

Not always. We had 2 1/2 hours before the last gondola down (tourist office lady: DO NOT MISS the last ropeway down) and from the map it looked very doable. 30 minute bus ride to the gondola/ropeway, 5 minutes up to the site, then a wander through the woods to as many shrines and halls as we could manage, back in plenty of time. Well, Shoshazan Engyoji is an enormous space, with many pathways and much of it a steep climb. When we got off the ropeway they asked “Bus?” Of course not! Off we set, naively, to climb, and climb, and climb…a path through the forest with Buddhist deities every 5-10 yards, wonderful and, as we got further away from our starting point a bit worrisome. Finally we realized we were never going to see everything, and found, luckily, a shortcut back to the ropeway. We headed back down at 5:30 a bit wiser. Wouldn’t have missed it, though.

A quick train ride back to Osaka, aching and exhausted. After an adventure of several hours, repeatedly getting turned around (Google maps for walking in crowded, narrow streets are less than reliable) trying to find a particular restaurant, we landed in a crowded but of course quite good little place where we three raised the average age by several decades, ate, and wandered back to the hotel in a daze.