Finally I have a bank account and all the necessary
insurances paid, and I’ve registered what I had to and where I had to, I can
take a little break. At least from the boring stuff coz there’s no point in
taking a break from the interesting one, while I’d be taking a bread suddenly
the year abroad will come to an end (I know it only just started, but I’m well
aware that it really will end sooner than I realise).
So I rewarded this closure of last admin stuff with a
little trip to a Shinto Oyama Shrine (尾山神社, Oyama Jinja) and the Kanazale
Castle (金沢城, Kanazawa-jō). I’ll only add that during this fairly
short visit to the shrine my calves fell victim to some bloodthirsty mosquitoes
or some other biting devils (honestly, a few minutes was enough to earn at
least ten blisters, itching like hell!). I shall leave the rest to the pictures
to tell:
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| The entrance to Oyama Jinja |
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| Oyama Jinja |
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| 絵馬 (ema), small wooden tablets where people write their prayers and wishers to the gods |
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| East entrance to the shrine which leads to the castle |
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| Kanazawa-jō seen from the West: built around mid-XVIth century, big parts of it were destroyed by fires at least five times and once by a being stuck by a lightning. It was last rebuilt in 1810 and since then it has only been restored. |
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| Call me a nerd, but I really found it fascinating how the castle's foundations look like, how they were joined together and generally all that construction related stuff. It was interesting to see what a complicated way of doing the foundations did the Japanese had in mid-XVIth century! (More construction related pictures below). |
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| The view from the Hishi Yagura (菱櫓) tower facing North |
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| The castle and the gardens in a scale of 1:1500 (I think ^.^") |
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| Model of the castle |
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| Foundations... |
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| ... and more foundations |
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| All the layers of the wall |
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| Artifacts excavated by archeologists |
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| The roof. |
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| Layers of the wall - again |
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| Rest area |
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| Kanazawa-jō seen from the East |
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| From the East again, also catching a bit of the scaffolding where they are doing some more restoration work. |
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| Ishikawa Gate (石川門, Ishikawa-mon) |
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| Ishikawa Gate (石川門, Ishikawa-mon) |
In other news: I already booked myself a flight to
Hokkaidō. I couldn’t miss such a chance, £62 return is very cheap, trains or
coaches in Japan can be similarly priced sometimes. So between February 26th
and March 5th I will be touring the northern island – yay!
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