Peaceful Moments – Koko-en Koi
Japan – Day 15 (Himeji)
Today was the opposite of yesterday, I guess I forgot to close my window before I fell asleep last night so I woke up at 5am freezing and with the morning delivery truck making noise outside. I couldn’t get back to sleep. When my alarm went off at 6am I went ahead and got up, showered, and out the door. I took the bullet train to Himeji, and walked over to one of the biggest and most gorgeous castles in Japan, in my opinion.
Himeji Castle is more of a spring castle, there are so many old cherry trees around it that during sakura season you can barely breathe there are so many people here, and that was 15 years ago so I can’t imagine it now! In the fall there’s not so much of a crowd, but it’s still gorgeous. I walked way up to the top floor, then back down and all around the outside, then back in to the side buildings and corridors. Then I went next door to Koko-en garden, which is definitely gorgeous during the fall with momiji, waterfalls, gigantic koi bigger than I’ve ever seen before, and mini-themed garden patches all hooked up in a maze. I hadn’t been there before, so it took me about an hour to get to it all. I walked through the shopping streets on my way back to the station, and went back to Osaka.
Since I couldn’t eat crab last night I made a reservation for tonight, and put on my comfy pants and a t-shirt and headed to Dotonbori to get fat. It was $50 all you can eat snow crab legs within 90 minutes, they also had a full buffet of other foods and you could order everything from raw crab (crab sashimi) to crab tempura. Well, 90 minutes was plenty of time, and I had to be practically rolled out of there. I’m probably solely responsible for the deaths of like 8 crabs tonight! All I wanted to do after eating that much was go lay in bed, and sleep early, so that’s the plan!
