Odawara Castle

Well...these pictures are all in the wrong order, and I can't seem to fix it, so I'll just have to make do. Anyways, last weekend I went to the visit the beautiful town of Odawara. I realized recently that I hadn't really left the city of Yokosuka in a while, and I was feeling like I wanted some adventure. So I remember when I went through AOB/ICR (Area Orientation Brief/Intercultural Relations. It's a class we take when we get to Japan that introduces us to Japanese culture and etiquette so we don't make any social mistakes out in Japan.) that they had talked about Odawara and the fact that they have a Castle there. So I decided last weekend that I should go there.

It was about an hour and a half train ride with one transfer half of the way through the trip. The ticket was only about $10. So when I got to Odawara I found the Castle and below are the pictures I took while there. As I said they are kind of out of order, so please bear with me.

This elephant was in a pen in the courtyard to the Castle.

This was the entrance to the Courtyard of the Castle.

This was on a Saturday, and just like in the States, Japanese do lots of sight seeing on the weekends. So needless to say, there were a lot of people there!

BONSAI!!

Odawara Castle

This was the gate to the Castle-grounds. I think the big doors were used for carriages, and carts, while the smaller door is for people on foot.

Gate to the Castle-grounds.

Bridge to the Castle-grounds.

Japanese people love flowers. They had flowers everywhere! You can also see the bridge up above. Going to Odawara was a wonderful experience. I hope to take my friend Luci with me to go see it again when we see each other again.

I also discovered while there that Odawara is really close to Hakone. Hakone is at the base of Mt. Fuji. If the day had been clear I probably would have been able to take pictures of the Mountain, but it was really overcast. I'm hoping to go to Hakone next weekend, so I'll hopefully be posting pictures from that pretty soon!