Okayama Castle and Gardens

NOTE: The internet I'm leeching off of has slowed considerably, so I had to upload most of the pictures to an external hosting site.  If they don't show up, I apologize!
 
Oh hey!  Now you've got both of us posting.  I don't care that Joanna's a week ahead of me, I'm gonna post about the castle too and YOU CAN'T STOP ME!


Shortly after my last update, the other trainees and I went out for dinner and did some nighttime exploring of Okayama.  We were brave and went to a traditional yakitori restaurant, relying on the tried-and-true tourist method of pointing at good-looking things on the menu and saying “Kore o kudasai.” (“This please”).  And thankfully everything we got was edible and delicious.  For reference, yakitori is similar to a shishkabob - meat and things grilled on wooden sticks.  I didn't get a picture of the food (unfortunately) but I did get pictures of us drinking sake.

Sake to ya!

KANPAI!

Okayama by night!

After dinner we walked around the city a bit and found some cool stuff.  The highlight of the evening was when a Japanese woman our age stopped us with a “Hello!” “Oh my goodness,” we thought. “She wants to practice her English with us!” But then she did a little gesture with her hands and asked “Massaji?” That’s “massage” in Japanese.  It’s also the code word for sex.  WHOOPS!

Yesterday morning Joanna and the rest of her group left for their branch schools, leaving the company dorms empty except for my training group.  It was our day off so we decided to pay a visit to Okayama Castle and its gardens.  Unfortunately, not a single sign was in English, so I can’t give you much of a history of the place.   All I know is that it was constructed in 1573 and was mostly burned down during the air raids of World War II, but they rebuilt it.  In the end though, I think the pictures make up for my lack of knowledge.

I got really giddy making our way up to the castle.  It was like being in a Kurosawa movie!

The partially-English brochure said Okayama Castle was called "Crow Castle" for being one of the only black castles in Japan.  Doesn't it look like a scary samurai bad guy lives here?

There are these sweet golden fish gargoyles all over the place.

Inside the castle was a gallery of Edo-era ukiyo-e prints.  Allow me to be an art nerd for a moment – ukiyo-e are woodblock prints that were very popular in Japan during the 18^th and 19^th centuries.  They usually portrayed famous people (such as lords, Noh actors and upper-class geishas), ghost stories, or landscapes.  As such they were often regarded as “low” art, collected while not being seen on the whole as very valuable - basically the equivalent of collecting comic books.  There is a common story of a European buying a piece of ceramics from a Japanese merchant only to have the merchant wrap the piece in ukiyo-e prints!  At this point the European would say “Stop, stop!  Why are you using such beautiful art as wrapping paper?!” and the merchant would look at them like a crazy person.  It'd be like if someone was like "WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH THAT PRICELESS ART?!" while you were wrapping a present with the Sunday funny pages.  Absolute madness.  But long story short, thanks to the influence of Japan-obsessed Westerners, the ukiyo-e prints won a bit of deserved cultural value.

Anyway, blah blah blah, here are some prints!

A cat made of cats.  How purr-fect!

Everyone knows Hokusai's Great Wave, right?   RIGHT?!

One of my faves.  I have no idea what's going on but that skeleton is HUGE.

After the castle and the print show, we went over the Okayama Korakuen Garden, which was beautiful.  I think the pictures can express this better than I could.

Beautiful.

Gorgeous.

Stupidly ridiculously pretty.

The obligatory "Zissou Point" shot.

All in all, an awesome day!

Oh, I almost forgot this.  BONUS PICTURE: 

There's a "massaji" joke here but I don't know what it is.