HAY GUYS

This is the beginning of a long trip which took much longer than
expected.












Just a bunch of photos around the entrance area.


Another tanuki statue. Kairyu had to take a picture of it since he's
obsessed with these statues and their oversized nutsacks.


Here is one of many fox statues we will see.




Needs more fox.







We both decided to pose for a quick picture before tackling this loooooooooooong path.


Map of long path.







More pictures of the pathway. These gate tunnels are absolutely
amazing.



After the first set of tunnels there were charms and other little things you could buy. These are wooden fox faces that visitors could write their name and draw a face on the fox before hanging it up here for others to see. We bought a few charms which I'll show and explain later.























Just a bunch of more pictures that were taken as we climbed this monster. We must have passed over a 100 foxes by now.



Lots of cats along the road. They're used to people and don't run at first sight.


This was a photo taken off a side path we took. You would get a really nice view of the city from up here.


This is from the JR station. The circle shows where we took the picture before this one. Yeah, we were pretty high up.



On the way back down we took a detour which led us off the path into a forest area with a dirt path. After a long walk we randomly ended up far off into a residential area (which was literally a maze). Some old guy who could speak English came up to us and offered his help. He asked what temple we're looking for and I showed him a picture off my camera. He gave us instructions on how to find our way out and after walking into a few dead ends we found the school he was talking about. From there we used a map to get to the JR station which was another stop away from where we originally got off.


These are the charms we bought. They each have different meanings. I bought one for safe travel while driving, one which should help me find true love, and another for something else (I don't remember at the moment). Kairyu bought a bell and a charm for smooth traveling and good luck. His smooth traveling failed at first since we managed to get lost on the trail. It worked later on though when we had to race the train system back to Narita.

All in all, the trip here was well worth it. I did get two foot blisters though which made the next day a bitch. After that we made ANOTHER trip to the Pokemon Center in Osaka since Kairyu loves wasting time to buy more Pokemon crap. It was worth it though because after he blew more money we got to try out a MOS Burger which had fantastic food. They even played American music inside.

http://www.mos.co.jp/english/

Just some shots outside the entrance.



Some distance shots of the castle. Won't be long before we're actually inside.



MAP SHOTS! Pretty cool~




More outside shots. Pretty soon it starts pouring rain as soon as we enter the west side. Before you enter you are required to take off your shoes and wear sandals. They gave us larger ones since Americans have big feet. The big ones they gave me were actually too big and easily fell off my feet when going up the steep stairways.



Some shots inside the castle. You can see how they attacked their enemies through these little holes.






Just a few more shots of the inside.









After that we made our way towards the center main part of the castle. Once there, it was the same thing again with the no shoes allowed rule. The main area was a tower with steep stairs to climb. Inside there were plenty of weapons and other things to look at, along with a nice view up top.








And these are some photos from the inside and 2 photos from the view you get at the top of the tower.





And a few other random photos.