Day 7: Himeji

6th July 2007

Yesterday was my second terrible sleep in this bed. Imagine that, two inaedquate sleeps, I blame one thing, the bed! There's something about this New Comfort Hotel that prevents me from getting a good night's sleep. It could be the inconsistent air conditioning that abruptly stops halfway through the evening throwing my body temperature out of whack. Or it could be that bar fridge next to the bed making all that noise. Or the perpetual noise of the toilet. Who knows, let's just blame it on bed bugs. Our next destination on our whirlwind tour of Japan was Himeji. So far the JR pass has served us very well, well worth the $470 investment.


9:00 am: Ko-en Gardens was our first stop, we purchased the Ko-en Garden and Himeji Castle admission combo. The gardens and castle were about a 20 minute walk from the Himeji JR station. Japanese gardens have been quite impressive and this one was no different. Simple water features and plenty of green. This was also the first time we brought out the notepad and permanent marker combo. It would provide running commentary for the photographs in the rest of the trip.

Walked over to Himeji Castle. "If you only see one castle in japan make it this one" sound advice from the Lonely Planet. We got there early and had already walked through the main gates when we were lucky enough to get a Volunteer tour guide. After 7 days we had our first tour! Her name was Yoshiko Nakamura. We would later find out that she had given the exact tour to some very distinguished guests. With the likes of Bill Clinton and Anita Keating being in former tour groups. She was quite simply an amazing lady with a passion for Japanese History, in Particular Himeji Castle. Enthusiasm and love for her job made it a very enjoyable and comprehensive tour. We bumped into other tourists from the States and (saw them overhearing some Himeji Castle history) we invited them to tag along in our group.

On the way back from Himeji we made an attempt to swing by Kobe for some Kobe beef. No Beef.

The evening was spent walking around Amerika Mura, plenty of people around, pretty mediocre actually. We got very lost around here and often joked about have a GPS tracking system plotting our routes. We passed Tokyu Hands a number of times and got officially lost, being unable to match up our walking with the map. As usual we were getting sick of walking and wanted to eat. We passed numerous dessert areas. Finally settled on a noodle joint, No pictures. No English. After a few chuckles we managed to order some ramen. Also did some shopping, bought some ipods from the Apple store. Still no Yube!

That night we hopped on the computers in the New Osaka and spent some time trying to find Hakone accommodation. The strayed from Asiarooms and booked through Rakuten. That would be our second mistake, our first mistake would be Hakone. Since we had no way of finding out where to get there we snapped a photo from the website of our reservation. B&B Pansion. We actually thought it was Passion.