Sunday, October 19, 2008
Himeji
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Today, we went to Himeji.
Woke up in the morning at about 0800 JPT. I'm a lazy bum in case you can't tell. Washed up and my friend wanted to have ramen breakfast at a place listed on a map provided. I have this thing going on with my friend. I make her read the map and find the places where we're supposed to go. She can't read maps, see. So anyway, we set off and she went in the wrong direction so we ended up eating at mac's.
She had a McGriddle and I ordered an Egg McMuffin. Turns out that they gave me a Sausage McMuffine, but I thought that I had just pointed to the wrong picture on the menu, the sausage patty is much nicer than singapore's. It has a lot less of the stinging taste. I think it could be pork. After some time, one of the crew came up with an Egg McMuffin and tried to explain to us that my order was filled wrongly and I was given the Sausage McMuffin instead of the Egg McMuffin by mistake. I tried to ask if I should top up money, she said no and gave me an Egg McMuffin!
Wow! Japanese MacDonald's is way cool!
I planned to have that McMuffin for dinner, but in the end I ended up having Dan Dan Men (Dan Dan Noodles) for dinner. So that McMuffin became supper.
With breakfast finished up, we walked to the JR Kyoto Station where we were to take the Special Rapid Service to Himeji. The ride took about 90 mins. It was quite crowded until Osaka where a whole bunch of people got off and then we managed to get seats.
At Himeji Station, my friend went to buy some food for lunch. She bought a pack of chocolate sandwiches. It was a straight walk northwards for about a kilometer to get to Himeji Castle (Himeji-Jo). Had my friend lead the way again and as we moved, I notices road signs telling us how far it was to the castle. At the second road sign, my friend noticed it too and this was when we were about 400m away from the castle. As we got nearer to the castle, I could see the castle in the distance. My friend got anxious because the latest road sign that she saw had every other location that were previously on the road signs, except Himeji Castle. I joked with her that the castle has disappeared...
We went on to Himeji Castle and boughht admission tickets to the castle. The tickets cost 600 JPY. I was a little disappointed because I did not notice the ticket vending machine that accepted 10000 JPY notes as I could have broken up my larger notes into smaller ones at the machine.
Inside the Castle, was a lot of walking. It's quite large and can take easily 2-3 hours of walking if you walk the grounds outside the castle keep itself. The keep itself was 6 levels high and it was built on high ground with extremely convoluted pathways meant to make invaders go through the longest route possible, thereby exposing themselves to archers. The walls along the pathways were lined with little windows which the archers can shoot arrows out of but would protect the archers from enemy fire.
One thing about the place, the stone steps are very high and the doorways are rather low. This means that you have to stoop down to pass through some of the doorways. Taller caucasians would probably be doing the lambada to pass through some of the lower arches that arc over some of the stairways.
They also had an area named the Harakiri Maru. I wonder if anyone every did Harakiri there. I guess probably yes. My friend didn't want to go there, so I went over by myself. It's a courtyard about the size of a basketball court. At one of the sides, there was a little stone staged that was raised about 5 cm from the ground. There was also a well, which was supposedly for washing the severed head.
After we had explored the castle, we went passed by some chrysanthemum exhibition before heading off to a 100 Yen shop that we had seen on our way to the castle. My friend bought a couple of socks and then we went off to the manga section. I bet this was probably considered a smallish collection in Japan, but they had alot of manga! If you thought you could never get that manga cos it's been too long, think again! They probably still have it somewhere. Didn't buy anything at the manga section obviously because I can't understand them anyway lol.
We popped over to the games and music section. I saw the PSP-3000 that was released on the 16th of October and it costs about SGD 300. As comparison, the PSP-2000 is selling at about SGD 260.
Did more strolling all the way to Himeji station. My friend was very hungry so we went to find some food. There was an underground shopping are where they had some stalls selling food.My friend wanted to eat noodles. Since we don't speak Japanese, we used our fingers and pointed to the pictures on display lol. Crude but effective. My friend didn't have enough to eat so I gave her some of my noodles, since I still had a McMuffin. I didn't want to buy a dinner actually, but finally decided to buy some noodles. The noodles were pretty good. Dan Dan Men, I guess I could have tried to read it in mandarin and they might have understood me, instead of just pointing fingers.
I thought I was smart by choosing the simplest option with no other selection for them to ask me, so I was thrown off when they continued speaking. I was like, do I have to choose something?? They then asked if I spoke english and then told me the price in english, lol. I was all prepared with the cash in hand but I had no idea they were asking for it >.>
After finishing dinner, we initially wanted to go to Kobe, since my friend was saying that the night scenery in Kobe was nice, and I said that it was just nice to go for the night scenery. While on the train though, she changed her mind and we decided to go to Kobe tomorrow instead. So we headed on straight back to Kyoto on the train at 1757. We were lucky that both times today, we managed to get to the train platform just a few minutes before the special rapid service was due to arrive.
Once we reached Kyoto at about 1930hrs, my friend wanted to do a little shopping, so we went to the shops that were at the base of the Kyoto Tower. I spotted a Yukata on display and pointed it out to my friend, who was always saying that Yukatas are not available outside of summer. She tried on a couple of the Yukatas and bought one, at a cool 5250 JPY. Ouchies.
After that, it was back to our hostel to wash up and rest.... and plurk.. and blog... lol. My friend is so tired that she has already fallen asleep after putting her clothes to wash in the washing machine. I wonder what will happen to her clothes if I were not here with her....... We haven't even settled on the waking time tomorrow, so I guess we're waking up tomorrow at the same time as today...
Total monetary damage for me today: 1605 JPY (~ 25 SGD)
Total monetary damage for my friend today: 8253 JPY (~ 125 SGD)
Kobe tomorrow!
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