Himeji Castle, Himeji - Himeji Castle, also known as the White Heron Castle, is regarded as the prettiest of Japan's original castles (according to my guidebook !). It can be easily reached on foot from the Himeji Station, up the main avenue.

In my opinion, the castle is best appreciated from afar. It has that distinctive design that is stereo-typically used to represent Japanese castles in computer games and cartoons. The game I have in mind is that early Apple game called Karateka.

There is a self-guided tour that one can follow to tour the castle grounds. In my opinion, the "highlights" indicated in the tour booklet are a bit underwhelming. For example, the tour booklet points out such "fascinating" features as oil walls and guard houses. The best thing about the tour booklet is that it does provide a map which allows you to tour the castle grounds in an organised manner. Be careful though as on a number of occasions, the booklet sent us down quite a few flights of steps into a dead end and required us to re-trace our steps back up. Not too sure why it does this.

It is possible to tour the interior of the main building which is quite interesting. Unfortunately though, the interior is extremely dimly lit which gave the whole place a spooky ambience. I think the reason for the dim lighting is to preserve the artefacts on display.

There is some major climbing involved in touring the interior of the main building, especially as you reach the higher floors of the building. Anyone taller than 5'5" should be especially careful when climbing the top three floors as halfway up the stairs, there is a huge timber beam that extends across which will either render you unconscious or induce a massive headache depending on your direction and force of impact !

Nijo Castle, Kyoto - Nijo Castle has quite a different architectural design to Himeji Castle. My first impression was that it had almost an Indonesian influence to its design (see photos 2 and 3).

The interior of Nijo Castle is much more hospitable than that of Himeji Castle. It gives the impression that Nijo Castle was clearly intended to be used as a residence as opposed to a fortification, unlike Himeji Castle.

The interior walls was decorated with many murals but many of these are very poorly maintained with their paint peeling off. My other gripe is the absolute lack of English language commentary. At many points of the interior, visitors are able to listen to a commentary which explains the significance of what's being viewed. Unfortunately, this was exclusively in Japanese. There were English signs about, but they only provided a two sentence explanation whereas the Japanese commentary went on and on, which suggested that we missed out on a lot.

Imperial Palace, Tokyo - The Imperial Palace is located right in the heart of Tokyo, a short walk from the Tokyo Station. There are some nice palace grounds leading up to the castle and we even saw some plum blossom trees in bloom. The first photo shows the picturesque Nijubashi Bridge with part of the palace visible on top of the hill. While we were there, we also witnessed the changing of the guards (second photo). This was of a much less grander scale than the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace. Perhaps, the major spectacle is reserved for some other occasion.

We were not allowed entry into the direct vicinity of the Palace, thus what we saw of the Palace is what's shown in the two photos here. The Palace has a much vaunted East Gardens which is normally accessible to the public. Unfortunately, the Gardens were closed when we visited.