Kansai Japan 日本關西

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Japanese Castle usually has two moats. The inner part of the castle was the living place of Shogun, Honmaru Palace (本丸御殿)

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After Nijojo, we took a 10 minute walk to see a stone plate, Honno-ji place (本能寺跡). There is a Honno-ji temple is Kyoto but the existing one was a new one. This plate marked the original location of Honno-ji where the incident of Honno-ji (本能寺之變). There has nothing special to see indeed. My wife asked why I en-routed here and I said that I came to pay my tribute to Oda Nobunaga(織田信長).....

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We would go to Kobe that night and before that we still have a few hours hanging around in Kyoto. We decided to have a short hike at Arashiyama area from Daikakuji Temple (大覺寺) back to Tenryuji-Temple. It took us about an hour or so walking......

The route was suggested by Japan Tourism Board and it went through around different temple and scenery....a nice walk indeed.....

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This is a path of soul cleaning....actually.......

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The last part of the hiking route is to pass through a bamboo path....which should be quiet and comfortable....but it turned out that the path is full of people, Chinese especially...and they are talking with Cantonese....Hongkongers are full on the path......

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We arrived at Kobe in the evening. Kobe beef is one of the cuisine that we must go for......My wife's Japanese friends recommended us to a place which offered nice food. It was a local shop with friendly chef, and customers. Even those customers we met asked us why we went to this shop......

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Yummy food.....

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I like Kobe Beef......

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On the day before we left Japan, we were in Osaka. Osaka Castle was a must see place to me. I went to this castle 17 years ago. With more understanding on the Japanese history, this time I can have a deeper study of this castle.

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The main building was rebuild in 1960s, by imitating the second Osaka castle built by Tokugawa. The one built by Toyotomi Hedeyoshi (豐臣秀吉)was demolished. This first picture was the water well that still existed in the first castle.

The main building was made into a museum now, with modernized internal fabric. Not a trace of history left. The theme of exhibit is about the change of regime from Toyotomi to Tokugawa and the two main battles about it, i.e. Winter war (冬之陣) and Summer war (夏之陣)