We went to Hikone Castle today, finally! Because we're JCMU students, as long as we show them our JCMU ID, we get in free. Thank goodness, because I've spent too much already. Maybe it'll be okay once I really settle in and get used to everything, though. It's my first time going to any type of castle, so it was really fun and interesting.
Side note: in Japanese, I feel like I overuse the words for "fun" and "interesting", but I guess we do use those words a lot in English too. And as a friend just said, we also don't know how to say much more than the basics yet, so we can't really describe things in a more abstract way.
Anyway, so we spent a few hours there. So many steps...It was in the mountains, though, you know. And then, there were multiple buildings, so we went up to the first one, which wasn't too bad to get to.
Side note: in Japanese, I feel like I overuse the words for "fun" and "interesting", but I guess we do use those words a lot in English too. And as a friend just said, we also don't know how to say much more than the basics yet, so we can't really describe things in a more abstract way.
Anyway, so we spent a few hours there. So many steps...It was in the mountains, though, you know. And then, there were multiple buildings, so we went up to the first one, which wasn't too bad to get to.
And then heading up to the next building, which I think was the main one.
After going up the above stairs, we arrived at the main building:
Then to the right in the above picture is a viewing area, so here's a couple of pictures from there:
So then we headed back towards the main building, took more pictures, and headed inside it.
After going up three or four floors, we finally came back down and went outside, and sat and rested for a bit. I took more pictures of the view from this area:
When we moved on again, the path led us to this tranquil little...park? Garden? I'm not sure what to call it.
Which led to yet another building, a turret I believe it said it was. Fun fact: in each building, they have a paper in Japanese and a paper in English explaining about the building.
Finally we headed back down.
Looking back from where we came out of. Also, to the far left is the road we ended up walking down to eventually find our bikes...We came out on the other side of the castle. Fun fact: we bought ice cream from a vending machine on our way back, and here's the thing--for a moment, we forgot that in Japan, you're not supposed to eat and walk/drink at the same time, so we did end up finding a bench to sit on.
We went to Beisha yet again to grocery shop after that, before heading back to campus. I think tomorrow we're going to try and get a group to go out and explore some more shops. I admit I have a weakness for really cute things (my version of cute, anyway), and I want to try going to this store shown on a detailed map we were given, that says it has a lot of cute little things. But then, I need to go back to Hikone Castle to buy a Hikonyan plushie (Hikonyan is the mascot either for the castle or the town, I can't remember now).
今日彦根城に行きました。すごく楽しくておもしろかったと思います。ひこにゃんのぬいぐるみが買いたかったですが、ちょっと高くてきめられませんでした。後で、買いたいきめましたが、もうあそこで店がありませんでした。
じゃあ、明日授業があったり、ちょとおねむくなったり、ねます。おやすみなさい。
I have class early tomorrow, and I'm a bit tired, so I'm going to bed now. Though I feel like there was one other thing I wanted to talk about, but I can't remember now. So then, I'm off.
今日彦根城に行きました。すごく楽しくておもしろかったと思います。ひこにゃんのぬいぐるみが買いたかったですが、ちょっと高くてきめられませんでした。後で、買いたいきめましたが、もうあそこで店がありませんでした。
じゃあ、明日授業があったり、ちょとおねむくなったり、ねます。おやすみなさい。
I have class early tomorrow, and I'm a bit tired, so I'm going to bed now. Though I feel like there was one other thing I wanted to talk about, but I can't remember now. So then, I'm off.