Shimabara-jo

In May, Katie, Arthur and I went to a nearby castle, Shimabara-jo (the -jo on the end just means castle). It is in Nagasaki prefecture. We drove in my car about an hour south to a ferry, took a 45 minute ferry ride, and then drove for another 45 min. south from there on the Nagasaki penisula (on the east side, Nagasaki City is on the west).

Shimabara-jo is famous for being one of last places the Japanese Christians stood their ground before being all but wiped out.

From the top, we could see easily in all directions--there was little of the standard haze. To the west is the bay, with Kumamoto on the farside--I will talk about Kumamoto-jo shortly in another blog. To the north (and a little east) I could see my area, albeit it faintly. To the west, very near, is Mt. Unzen (Unzen-san) a fairly active volcano. When it blew just over 200 years ago it created the worst tsunami in Japanese history. (I am hoping to go there this weekend--maybe I will get to send pictures!)

Outside, was the standard garden, with some bizarre statues. Not sure why, helping local talent?

The castle is pretty standard rebuilt-with-concrete-Japanese-castle, but it was still pretty cool.

After our short visit at the castle, we went for a walk. We passed by the Koi City. Inside the town, they have many small canals--not even two feet wide--which were, I assume, originally for irrigation. The town has put in a bunch of wire gates and created areas for the koi--the famous Japanese carp--to swim around in. Yes, we saw a few cats too...

Please enjoy these photos of the koi I borrowed from the web.

After, we passed through a graveyard with a large reclining Buddha. Somebody paid a lot for that. Its head is bigger than mind (I mean literally!).

Then we walked to a Shinto shrine where there were icons of all the important dieties. And more scrolls on the walls then we could care to count. The fellow who showed us the shrine talked to us briefly about how sad it was for him to know that the shrines (and Buddhist temples too) did not have enough young people interested in them to take care of them for the future.

In the picture on the right, above the door and windows, it looks like white wall paper, but those are really stacked piles of scrolls, about 4 inches long, laid on top of each like round bricks.