Saturday 10 October 2015

Tohoku! Shiroishi castle

It has already been a week after we arrived from our Tohoku trip, but I have had my hands full of the new E course and also going through all the 1 200 pictures I had taken, that the posts are coming now one by one, a little bit late! The trip itself seems now like a dream and I could give quite a lot to be able to go back to enjoy it one more time. Small detail before starting the story is that we went by car and also slept in the car. We stayd one night couchsurfing, but all the others we slept in the car. Sentos and onsens were our baths and combini parkinglots our hotels. I'm looking forward to tell you everything!

Our one week Tohoku trip started on Monday morning when we fetched out small rental Suzuki Every from Ookubo, drove back home, inserted the futon to the back of the car and and then we took off around 10:30am. We drove toll road, Tohoku Expresway so that we would be in Ooshu, Iwate, around 8pm. On our way we stopped to eat, but the bigger stop was in Shiroishi, because of the Shiroishi castle (白石城). Before we have visited the Odawara castle near Hakone, but Odawara was something very different. Odawara was a huge vastle that had been almost completely transformed to be a museum, so there was more glass vitrins to see than the actual castle. Shiroishi was the complete opposite.

1500th build Shiroishi castle stands on the 75 meters high hill in the small city of Shiroishi. The Castle is the common whie type, with multiple floors, but what makes this much more pleasant is that the small castle has a rule to have the guests take off their shoes and walk around on the wooden floors bare foot, there is no glass vitrins or omiyage shop at the top of the castle. You can enter freely to the highest floor's small balcony and enjoy the view without nets and other limitations. Setting sun colored the insides of the castle with warm orange while warm wind blew through the open windows. Outside the castle you can also visit a small shinto shrine that was one of the most beutiful ones I have ever seen. We spent about an hour expoloring the castle area before continuing our way towards Ooshu.