Okayama Castle

Hello again!

I wanted to share one of my first adventures from living in Japan today, primarily my first trip to a castle, specifically, the Okayama Castle. I went in the middle of winter, so the weather was clear and crisp. No snow, but cold enough for it. I ended up taking a bus since I didn’t have a real map or internet access and didn’t want to get lost, but I found that it is possible to walk there from Okayama Station (岡山駅).

Okayama Castle or 岡山城 (Okayama-Jo) is known as one of Japan's famous "Crow Castles" due to it's black exterior. There were also many beautiful young ladies dressed in 着物 (Kimono) for 成人式 (Seijin Shiki; A Coming-of-Age Ceremony for young adults who reach the age of 20 and gain full rights of citizenship within Japan) when I went with beautiful white, fur wraps. In contrast to the castle, they stood out like beautiful white pearls.

Okayama Castle’s exterior, from what I've been told, has a high resemblance to its original design when it was first built. The interior however has mostly been redesigned like a museum, housing many things from the era of Okayama Castle’s glory, a beautiful view at the top, and a small little gift shop inside. I was slightly disappointed by this because I really wanted to see a castle with a preserved interior as well, but there was one thing that made up for this. One of my favorite things about the Castle was the top, where you could look out over all of Okayama. You also could see a wonderful view of the mote/river and Korakuen (後楽園), a park adjacent to the mote, which I visited after my visit to Okayama. 

While it wasn’t technically the season for Korakuen, it was still very beautiful and scenic.

One of the things that I remember most about Korakuen was where I first saw the covers around trees that protected against birds and bugs trying to destroy the trunks. There was also a small little area with beautiful birds that you could see and in the pond, you could clearly see the massive Koi fish.

Okayama was a very interesting place itself. From the window of my hotel, I could see Bullet Trains or Shinkansen (新幹線) coming and going from Okayama Station (which by the way, had my favorite waffle shop Manneken that everyone needs to go to at least once when you visit Japan). You could go shopping many malls and there were back streets you could walk down and find good food in wherever you went. 

(forgive my low quality iTouch photo here)

Okayama was also the first place I experienced the beauty of Fabric stores in Japan. They even had the impossible to find metallic gold bias tape, which, if you sew, you know that can be a hassle to find in the States. In many shopping malls they also had jewelry making supply shops, something I didn’t expect. I’m not much of a jewelry maker, but I was so amazed by it I had to take a picture of one of them.

Finally, much like in the States, there was always a book store to be found nearby. However, unlike stores in Japan, they also had nice little displays of Black Butler (黒執事 ) related books in prep for the upcoming movie at the time. Marketing done right.

And those were my adventures in Okayama! Overall, a very nice place to visit with a beautiful Castle (and who doesn’t love a castle?). See you next time!