I Went to a Castle!

Greetings readers! I cannot believe that it has already been one month since I arrived in Japan! Is that crazy or what!? Time sure has flown by here. Though I haven’t done anything crazy exciting, I have done a few cool things outside of my school life, which is what these series of posts will be dedicated to.

Adventure #1: A Trip to Matsumoto Castle

On my second weekend in Ikusaka I decided to adventure down to Matsumoto to go see the castle with an ALT friend of mine from Australia. It was my first time taking the train into Matsumoto by myself, so I was a bit nervous, but it all worked out fine. We met by the train station and found a bus that went over to the castle, which saved us around a twenty minute walk in the blistering heat. Thankfully we arrived relatively early, so the lines weren’t too long to get into the castle. We first had to buy our tickets, which were only ¥600, which is about $6. Once we got into the castle grounds, we had to go line up to get into the castle. Thankfully, they had benches to sit on under some tents so people wouldn’t die in the sun. We waited around 30 minutes, during which I slightly eavesdropped on a French family behind me (finally, a foreign language I could actually understand!).

The castle itself was pretty cool. You have to take your shoes off and put them in a bag while you are in the castle, so I’m glad that I decided to wear socks that day otherwise I would have felt so gross. There isn’t too much to look at inside the castle, as only the structure itself was preserved. However, once you got to the top, you had some pretty nice views of the city and the surrounding mountains. I worked up the courage to talk to the French family walking behind us, which resulted in a nice little conversation. It is honestly so nice to actually be able to communicate with non-English speakers in a language I can understand. I honestly I never been so quiet in my life because I cannot communicate with most people here. I am definitely grateful that I have made some English speaking friends here or I would not be doing well.

Anyways, after exiting the castle we took some nice pictures of the exterior, then walked over to the large mall to do some shopping and get some food. The return trip to my village, however, was not as fun. Instead of putting in Matsumoto as my departure station, I put the station I was going to as my departure point, so I mixed up my train times. I already had been waiting 45 minutes for the next train, and did not realize my mistake until after the train had already left. I then had to wait another hour for the next train, which then caused me to have to wait another hour for the next bus into my village. What should have been a 45 minute trip turned into over 3 hours. It sucked, but I thankfully was still able to catch the last bus into my village. I would have been freaking out if I had missed that bus, because I would have had no other way to get back to my village.

Overall, it was a nice little adventure, even though I had the little transportation hiccup. It was cool to see something historical, and the castle itself was very beautiful. I hope that I get to see many more cool historical sights while I am here! I will leave y’all with a nice little photo gallery from my trip, and stay tuned for the next post!