Back to Tokyo, via Hikone
Friday, October 7th, 2016
Hikone is a rather small town on a shore of lake Biwa, half-way between Kyoto and Nagoya. It worth paying a visit to Hikone for its castle, one of four castles in Japan that are designated as national treasure. We thought it’s going to be an ideal stop-over on our way back to Tokyo, so we decided to leave Hiroshima rather early.
Google Maps offered us to take a Sakura shinkansen at 8:18 am, or wait until the next one at 9:53. As we couldn’t take the fastest Nozomi trains with our Japan Rail Passes, the trips was expected to last at least 6 hours and the earlier option worked much better for us. At 8:03 am we entered the station, just to learn that our train leaves at 8:06 instead of 8:18. We had to run to get on board of Sakura at the very last moment, but we missed an opportunity to buy some traditional maple-leaf shaped momiji.
The Sakura train took us to Shin-Osaka, where we took a Hikari train to Tokyo. We left the train at Maibara station, found a large coin locker for our suitcase, and jumped on a local train to Hikone station. The first thing that we noticed when we walked out the station gates was a monument dedicated to Ii Naomasa, one of four guardians of the famous shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu. Apparently, Naomasa’s sets of armour are preserved in the Hikone castle.
The main street of the town starts from the station and leads right to the castle walls. We found it rather sleepy for an early afternoon. Even the castle seemed almost empty, with very few tourists in sight.
The castle’s keep is rather compact but well-preserved. It is preserved in its original form since 1622, with minor repairs. The castle belonged to the Ii clan right until the end of Shogun era in 1868, and even today it gives one a good idea of a typical daimyo lifestyle. What surprises the most is the size of the keep. It feels really small for an important lord who would live here with his servants and guards.
The top floor offers nice views of the nearby hills and the Biwa lake, so it feels that the Ii clan lords did prefer sunning views to the spacious quarters. Without knowing much of the historic context, it’s hard to find anything of particular interest in this castle, though.
The nearby Genkyuen garden that was built in 1677 for the entertainment of the Ii lords and their guests, is designed after a typical Chinese garden of Tang era. It features a central pond with small islands, connected by bridges. The garden was full of school students, probably visiting the historic site with an excursion, so we did not spend a lot of time walking around it.
Instead, we went back to the station, hoping to catch the next train back to Maibara station, where we expected to take a Hikari shinkansen to Tokyo. However, the local train was five minutes late; then ten, then fifteen. Finally, it got cancelled, as well as the following train. We got stuck at Hikone station for an hour, and missed our shinkansen to Tokyo.
As there were no reserved seats available on the next Hikari train, we jumped on the slowest shinkansen – Kodomi. It was just a tad faster than a local train, and stopped at pretty much every station along the way. That gave us a rare opportunity to observe the landscapes while we were passing by. Shizuoka’s endless tea fields looked amazing from the slower train, but it was still challenging to take any pictures or video footage.
At Odawara station our train filled with tourists returning from a day trip to Fuji Hakone Iza national park, so the last part of our trip was quite noisy. We reached Tokyo Station around 5:30 pm and hurried to our hotel next to Ueno. After a week spent outside of Tokyo the usual evening crowds seemed overwhelming.
We had a dinner in the nearby ramen place called Menya Musashi Bukotsu, where we enjoyed probably the most fulfilling ramen we’ve ever tried. Then we went for a night walk around Ueno. We learned that Japanese people truly enjoy celebrating Friday nights, as every little izakaya we walked by was packed.
The long trip from Hiroshima was rather taxing, so we spent just an hour walking and returned to hotel to get some rest. The next day we had a cultural program planned in Tokyo and the neighbourhood, so a good rest was mandatory.
