Nijo Castle

This was another place we hadn't planned to go to, but it work out very convenient to stop here before heading to our hostel for the night. The castle had the same style fort as the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, same walls and same look out towers! We were surprised that we couldn't see the castle from outside the grounds. You know... you think castle and you expect to be able to see it!!!

Also, you have to bare in mind that we had only had a couple of hours sleep on the bus the night before and we had been up since 6am and now it was about 4pm, we were getting vvvvvvery tired by this point!

This is Karamon main gate to the Ninomaru Palace. The detail is incredible!

And here is the main castle... no wonder we couldn't see it from outside... Apparently there are very big/tall castles in Japan, this however is not one of them!!!
We were allowed  to go inside... so we went in and took off our shoes, we followed a queue of people walking very slowly around the building. There were Japanese tatami rooms, they were huge and they had intricate gold paintings across the sliding doors. Some of the rooms had models of people who would have been allowed in each room, it was extremely obvious that there was a diffinate class system in old Japan, within the men and women! The best thing we took from our experience of Nijo Castle was that when we were walking through the corridors of the castle there was a high pitched bird noise, the builders constructed the floor so that when people were walking in the corridors, the floor boards would squeak like birds as you walked on them. The floor is called "nightingale floors". This was so that if any ninjas or assassins managed to get into the castle the noise would alert the occupants of the castle! Phew - there's a short history lesson for ya!

We walked up to the look out point, the view was AWESOME!!!! we could see all over the Nijo Castle's ground with the beautiful autumn leaves colours and then the mountains in the background! It was so calm and relaxing!

After Nijo Castle, we got on a train thinking we could manage one more thing in the hour of daylight we had left... but still we had no idea how big Kyoto was, it was very hard to judge how far away something was on the map because everything looked quite close...!!! We ended up walking a LONG way!!! And we finished our nice day in Gion Town which is where the Kyoto night life is and also where you can maybe see some geisha!