Festival of Lanterns

A couple weekends ago, Saki, Jake, and I went to walk around Matsue Castle, just to relax for a bit. When we got there, we saw they were setting paper lanterns on the ground, and there was a guy dressed like a samurai!

 We thought it was cool, and continued to wander around the grounds of the castle, checking out the temples and such. Matsue castle is one of the few remaining medieval castles in Japan, as in it still has it's original wooden structure. It was built in the early 1600s. We didn't go inside, which we'll do some other day. The city of Matsue is trying to become a major tourist attraction, which means as a foreigner, I get a discount to go into the castle and other touristy places. Yay!

You can see the people up in the castle!

The castle and surrounding area was really beautiful. We passed a couple small shrines, and went to a big shinto shrine that had many fox statues. It was really quiet and peaceful. Also, it was getting dark so the picture quality is not great. sorry.

 The entrance to the shrine.

 Before going into the shrine, you must wash your hands. You're also supposed to purify your mouth by drinking the water, but we passed on that.

The stairs up to the shrine. Japan is not particularly handicap friendly.

 A place to pray at, I think... This shrine has thousands of fox statues all over it. Some of them are really really tiny, like all the little white ones in this picture.

It was getting pretty dark, so we started to walk back to the car. When we got to the castle, we saw that all the lanterns had been lit and a lantern festival was going on. They had traditional japanese music and dance, and many of the building that usually cost money to go into were free. Score!

 We each found a lantern we liked. Saki liked this one.

 Jake liked this painting style.

 There are tons of canals in Matsue. This is one of the bridges we walked across to get to another museum building.

 The canal had tons of floating candles on it.

 You can take a boat tour and see famous sights and hear histories. They have giant spotlights so you can see things at night. I feel like I'd miss a lot on this tour. When I learn more Japanese, perhaps.

 One of the outbuilding of the castle, showing castle life, I believe.

 Bamboo forest.

 Tradtitional music. The person sitting is playing a koto, which is a rather large stringed instrument.

It's a kitchen!