A Trip to Osaka Castle

Matt and I headed to Osaka this morning in hopes of catching the temple sale. Someone had told us when the temple sale falls on a Sunday (it always is the 21st of the month), the sale will also be on Saturday as well. However when we got there this morning, the temple was completely empty. It was a beautiful day, so we decided to check out the Osaka Castle.

Osaka Castle is one of Japan's most famous castles, and played a major role in the unification of Japan during the sixteenth century of the Azuchi-Momoyama period.  The castle grounds, one kilometer square in size, were beautiful. All around were trees with changing leaves, beautiful flowers and small ponds.

As we got close to the actual castle there were food vendors, artists and men dressed up as samurais.

The original castle burnt down in 1868 during the Meiji Restoration and was rebuilt in 1928. The main tower was damaged in 1945, during WWII and was restored again from 1995 - 1997. The castle today  is a concrete reproduction of the original, however the inside does not resemble a Japanese castle at all.

When we got up to the booth to pay to enter the castle we were greeted with a big surprise.

Inside was more like a museum, with different artifacts from the original castle, and lots of history videos and information. We climbed 8 flights of stairs to check out the view from the top.

Walking up all those stairs must have made Matt tired as he fell fast asleep on the train home.

So all in all a good morning and another checkmark in our "Adventures in Japan" book.