Well, I must say, we are enjoying this Zen pace of life.
Today we had a leisurely breakfast, navigated the Osaka train system in order to change our return tickets to Tokyo (to an earlier train) and made our way to Osaka Castle Museum. The Castle has been completely renovated, not in the same way previous castles may have burnt down a few times, this one had seen the lot - floored by earthquakes, fire and war then rebuilt several times over…not a single pice of the original interior, or exterior, remains. You could almost say that the gods really didn’t want this castle to survive! However, it is a very pretty recreation and it has a lift, to the 8th floor!
[This blog post is being interrupted…]
Whilst walking up to the castle we had a revelation. All the way though the trip we’d been told that the design of all castle walls was so that it was hard for the enemy to climb up. If that was the case why weren’t they vertical? Instead they were angled down in a fan shape, shallow at the bottom and steep at the top… Didn’t make sense to us. But whilst walking up to the castle it dawned on us. It had nothing at all to do with climbing the walls! All of the castles had clever little openings on the inside so that they could drop stones onto any intruders trying to gain access. The walls needed to be angled so that when the stones dropped they fell outwards - smashing the intruders! Clearly the Japanese historians guessed why the walls were not vertical and came up with their own idea - ignoring simple physics!
[Returning to your usual service…]
The exhibits tell the story of Hideyoshi Toyotomi and they helped tie together the places we’d visited all over Japan. It was however the hottest day we’ve had and, despite stopping for ice cream, our desire to be out and about wained after a few hours. Fearful this expedition was beginning to effect our state of Zen we returned to the hotel. Luckily, that was around 3pm and just in time for the free afternoon tea.
Afternoon tea consisted of little ham and mustard sub-rolls, green salad, cheese and biscuits, cakes galore (including, chocolate cups, macaroons, matcha sponge and cream roll and pink madeleines) tea and coffee. After eating our fill we retired to the room for a rest and found that the hotel staff had left us a honeymoon towel swan presentation - very thoughtful.
Now we are back in the Executive lounge for happy hour, free drinks, Sushi and dumplings! Our Zen state has been restored - truly we have transcended.
- Hippie -
