You can normally stop and see the castle in a couple of hours, but we stayed most of the day, as Himeji appears to be ground zero for the cherry blossom festival. as you can see from our isolation in the middle of the field, all the best spots under the cherry blossom trees were taken by about 5 am, but the whole place filled up by the afternoon, and there's a little carnival at the entrance and lots of food and drink stalls. Somchai couldn't stop eating the giant squid on a stick, but I could. We hung out at the party for a few hours, then took the train to Kurashiki en route back to Kyoto.

This is sort of a catch-all post before we move on to our last Kyoto post! At left is a very cool but very unphotogenic temple, Sanjusangen-do. It's really a big wooden barn with not much garden or anything surrounding it. But inside (the cool part where you can't take pictures) is a big statue surrounded by 1,000 smaller statues standing guard, each unique. You're supposed to come here and look for resemblances between the statues and recently departed loved ones. This could take a very long time with so many statues, but I was pretty sure I wouldn't find a match so it was a pretty quick stop. In the evening, we had an elaborate Japanese meal called kaiseki. Kaiseki is famous throughout Japan, but Kyoto is the most famous place for it. As expected, it consists of large numbers of microscopic dishes, served with a very elaborate ritual. It's a set menu, and it has to change with the seasons, and, uneconomically, all the silverware and plates have to change each time and be exactly matched to each course. So a restaurant has to have huge numbers of specially made china and utensils each season, then throw them out every three months. It was interesting, although after the twelfth hour of ritual eating, interest waned a bit.

Oh, I've been saving the close up photo of the cherry blossom this whole time, figuring I'd use it at the end as a bit of a dramatically Zen finish to my Kyoto writing, but I've lost patience so decided to chuck it in now.