Music and castles

I always start posts short and then they grow like tapeworms. So I thought I'd keep this one to a mere threadworm for a change. A couple of weeks back I had a couple of nice, low-key days I thought I might tell you about. I have action-packed posts on Tokyo, Mt. Fuji, sumo, tissues, foot peels, tiny plastic bags and much more waiting in the wings, but we cannot do everything at once.

A couple of weeks ago I went to Inuyama for work. Inuyama is known as the home of the oldest original castle in Japan. 'Original' is a key word here. Despite being stalwart-bordering-on-stubborn when it comes to tradition, Japan has an odd habit of...moving its prized historical buildings about. Castles, temples and shrines get rebuilt and shifted about every now and then, perhaps to evenly distribute the magic all over the country, perhaps just for a laugh. I'm not sure. Whatever it is, any time you pick up a tourist pamphlet for a beautiful piece of architectural wonder, seemingly frozen in time and quietly proud in its longstanding majesty, there'll be something in there about it being moved from some other place on wheels in the 1920s. Like Springfield in that one episode of the Simpsons (the one from the season where you finally stopped watching). 

So Inuyama's quite special. I went there for a festival back in April, which involved blokes in trad clothing heaving giant wooden carts full of children in between sips of Asahi. (You can read about it here, on my gentleman companion's blog.) That time I didn't get to explore much, what with trying not to get crushed by floats, but this month I ended up spending the day there for work reasons, so I took the opportunity to enjoy a little after-school excursion.

Wasn't quite the same without the doom-floats this time, but still perfectly nice.

The old town streets feel calming, and since they lead towards the castle and several shrines, they seem to build a sense of anticipation and purpose within you as you walk along them, like the path towards the final boss in a videogame. At one point I walked past a building with a couple of dozen people hanging round it, looking inside. The door was open and inside were a bunch of people watching a guy with a clipboard telling jokes to a few other people on stage. Haven't got a clue. My bafflement punctured the final-boss effect a bit. A few blocks down, I came across a couple with a giant dog which I was too afraid to take pictures of. Inuyama means "dog mountain", so I can only presume he was the city mascot/security guard. Fortunately the house a couple of doors down had a front yard full of small cats, so the balance of the universe was restored. Great trip so far.

The castle itself was closed, but I didn't mind. I just like looking at them and picturing myself in a big crown. I enjoyed taking time to walk around with no real goal in mind. I also found this rather attractive series of gates, at the end of which was a bunch of love notes written by visitors on wooden pink hearts:

I was too chicken to put my dead-spider handwriting all over one.

Inuyama, there.

Then I just returned to the station, down quiet streets featuring the occasional unexplained steampunk statue:

and went back home. The next day was even nicer - I went to a gig featuring some all-girl pop-punk bands - but I can't think of much to say about that apart from that it was brilliant and fun. (This lot. Also this lot. Recommended.) This was all after a few weeks of being ill and doing nothing with my life so it was good to get back into general being-aliveness again.

That's it really. Coming up, my trip to Tokyo last week, then maybe I might have to face going into my backlog of stupid shit I didn't write about but meant to.