Castle, gardens and little samurai

Hirosaki Castle in its new location

What a difference a day makes - today we woke up to a hot and sunny day and when I say hot, I mean HOT!!!!!! Whatever we did, we would have to do it slowly or risk overheating!

Tom and his staff

The plan today was to go into Hirosaki, as it is a tourism spot with a nice castle.  It is famous for sakura and autumn colours but of course we are here at the wrong season for that!  First of all though was breakfast, our host provided us with (thankfully) a continental breakfast: toast, jam, yoghurt, boiled egg and cereal - we were all quite pleased to dig in.  A nice change from our usual bakery bun.

We got ready and walked down to the Universe Supermarket and got a diddy bus towards the city centre, getting off as near to the castle as we could.  We walked slowly to the castle - boy it was hot, hot, hot.

Samuri Family

Boy on a rock

We found the grounds easily enough, but it was quite a walk to the castle, over some lovely looking bridges (it had a fantastic moat - looked like a river!) and through some magnificent wooden gates.  We then came to a massive construction zone - cranes, tarpaulins etc etc.  We were slightly worried we might come across a 'wrapped up castle' but we were OK, the castle was hiding behind a tree.

It was a cute diddy castle - just 3 stories but perfectly formed.  There was a view point, so I went to have a look and discovered that the castle had recently been moved!  It used to be directly above the moat wall, where all the construction was taking place, but had been moved, so they could repair the wall.  How?  We didn't have to wonder about this for long as we headed into the castle for a look around, where there was a time lapse video of how they moved the castle.  Basically they jacked it up and moved it on rails 75 meters onto a new concrete platform.  It was amazing, guess it is easier when your castle is made from wood, but even so, quite an achievement, think it took 6 weeks to actually move it, but much longer to prepare for it.

So, we had a look around the castle, which was the usual Japanese castle: empty rooms, no furniture. It, as usual isn't the original castle - it had burned down at least once in its history (lots of Japanese castles have burnt down numerous times).  Once we were done at the castle, we went to look at a lovely view point of Mount Iwaki - sort of the Mt Fuji of the area - i.e. a proper mountain, the way a child would draw it.  It was a good view, but it had a hat of clouds on top of it - which didn't lift for the whole day unfortunately.  Still a good view.

Waterfall and bridge

Our next stop was Butokuden which was marked on the map as a rest stop and somewhere you can dress up as lords and princesses.  Tom was keen, so along he went.  It wasn't long before he had two ladies dressing him up as a Samurai: a hakama - sort of wrap around trousers in a stiff material, a black under cloak with long sleeves and on top of that a grand embroidered sleeveless waistcoat.  He looked very grand.  He was then given a sword, and to top it off a chonmage (top knot wig).  He looked fab and loved lording it around, being upper class comes very naturally to him - hummmmmmm!

We had a good rest at Butokuden as it was very well air conditioned, bought ourselves some apple mochi - this area is famous for its apple production, so there are apple products everywhere you go.  Makes a nice change from red bean paste - which I can't get on with at all.  They seem to favour French style apple pies - i.e. with flaky pastry lattice works etc which is great.  They also make 'cider' with them.  We bought a can of their 'cider' today from the supermarket knowing it would be bad, but feeling we had to give it a go.  We gave it a go, it was bad, REALLY BAD!!!!!

We then walked around a lap of the grounds, through the cherry tree tunnel and to the botanical gardens.  We did a quick tour of the botanical gardens, but it was hot and we weren't really up for walking aimlessly so we cut our losses and went in search of lunch and air conditioning to cool down.  We headed to where we saw tourist information on the map and was very pleased to find that it was in a huge air conditioned building with a restaurant, bingo, we headed in.

There was just the one restaurant and it was tourist prices, but it was too hot outside to go looking for something more reasonable so we stuck with it.  As seems to be the norm in these places, Tom opted for the full sized adults katsu curry and hoovered the whole thing down, I went for teriyaki chicken-don and Matt went for katsudon.  The curry and the katsudon both came with a liberal sprinkling of mushrooms, the teriyaki chicken didn't, so we swapped. It was very good, but a bit larger than we would like.

Temple

Once eaten, we had a good look around the souvenir shop (just enjoying that last whiff of air conditioning) before plunging back out into the heat to find the Memorial Gardens.  These were very nice, what you would call typical Japanese gardens - with lovely landscaping, layers, bridges, a waterfall and even a water cave!  We sort of went round and round in circles trying to find the water cave, turns out to be a water source with a ladle.  You ladle the water onto some stones and then you hear the water hitting things below, so the cave is below what you can see.  It was quite pleasant - is supposed to remind you running water and cool you down.

We found a lovely waterfall and a red bridge crossing over it and some trees beginning to turn autumnal colours.  All in all a lovely place, we finished off our visit with an apple sorbet cone, very very sweet apple sorbet but refreshing and cold.

We then walked down to where we were told there was a line of temples.  We were hoping it would be a tree lined avenue with gates and temples set back.  It wasn't, they were all working temples / monasteries and very much gave off the appearance that they weren't for tourists - more places for locals.  As it was so hot, once again we decided not to walk too far and ended up getting the bus back to the station.  Here the boys had a donut each, I passed and then we got the bus back to our B&B.

A supermarket feast!

We popped into the supermarket - it was huge, we looked longingly at the take away food - huge boxes of sushi for next to no money, Tom's new favourite - pasta salad etc etc.  Then off to the beer section for Matt to get his craft beer, and a couple of sample ciders, some big bottles of soft drink and then to the snack aisle for rice crackers etc.

Then back to our B&B for a rest before tea.  Wow, our room was hot, but we have air conditioning.  We put it on but of course we have a big room, so it took a while to cool down.  We had showers and then started to discuss tea, neither me nor Matt were that hungry - big guts Tom of course was!  After seeing all the lovely food at the supermarket we decided to go there and get some bits and pieces - we have a huge seating area in our room to be able to eat it.  Everyone agreed so we went back, it was much cooler outside which was nice.  On reaching the supermarket a lot of what we had seen had gone, but we did somehow ended up with a feast, including half a pizza which used egg mayonnaise as the base sauce?  Why not!

We got back and ate as much as we could, Tom woofed his huge pack of sushi, pasta salad and ebi fry down, I had ¼ pizza, a salad (vegetables - hurray!) and a dollop of potato salad, all very lovely.  Then a bit of baseball on the telly and bed.