Kansai 09 - More Japanese Castles - Shoryuji Castle (勝竜寺城)

On Monday morning I went Kyoto Prefecture to meet up with my old friend Sa-chan and do some of my favorite kind of sightseeing in Japan... She lives on the other side of Kyoto so we met directly at our destination, the small farming city of Nagaokakyo (長岡京市).

今週月曜日朝、関西の旅行時、さちゃんの友達一緒にお城の観光した。僕の趣味一つは 日本のお城を見るです。今回お城二つを見た。このブログは始です：京都県の長岡京市の勝竜寺城。下の写真を見て下さい。

我的興趣之一是 日本城堡旅遊．每次我去日本我試試看幾個．星期一我在日本的関西的區，我跟老朋友看兩個．看看我的照片吧！

Its only a 25 minute train ride from Osaka.

my train passed this electric locomotive which was pulling some freight cars about half way there,  kind of cool. :-P

When we got there, we had to find the castle. We stopped at the town's visitor's bureau to ask for directions to the castle.

Fortunately or unfortunately, this kindly old retiree volunteered himself to walk us over there personally.  

It was nice except he gave us way more information about this town than anyone really wanted to know. He spent a LOT of time explaining to us how the Suntory Whiskey factory's sampling room works.  

But our goal was Shoryuji Castle (勝竜寺城).

Originally built in 1339,  What you see now is just a rebuilt version of the outer walls and moats are intact.

Although it looks big in the photos,  whats left now is actually a pretty small castle-wise.  (there was originally a 2nd outer moat and wall system I believe).  Since its a 'flatland' castle,  its not too exciting vertically either.... mountain top ones are always more interesting. ;-)

At one corner of the moat, this neighborhood lady was feeding bread to the fish in the moat. they had a LOT of koi fish, and apparently they're ALL very hungry.

I imagine this is what a piranha feeding frenzy looks like too.

Here's the front of the castle.  The building inside the walls is not actually the castle tower, its a visitors center made to look like a castle building and the center is a garden.

very nice place to chill.

The most famous thing about this castle is the fact that shogun lord Hosokawa Tadaoki married a princess named Tama of the Mitsuhide clan here in 1578.   She later became a Christian convert named 'Gracia' and according to her wikipedia entry was ultimately killed by her handlers rather than being captured by a rival lord's army.  doh. :-P

After politely telling the old volunteer guy that we've seen enough of his wonderful town and we didn't need to stop by the tasting room of the Suntory factory,   we made our way back to the station,  but not without contributing some tourism dollars to the local economy by getting some lunch:

2nd castle coming up soon!