Kumamoto

About halfway down the west coast of Kyushu is Kumamoto, a decent sized city, and home to Japan's third largest castle. While this claim may come across as a little unimpressive ("No, really! I visited the 7th largest flea market in all of Ft. Lauderdale!"), bear in mind that practically every city, town, and village in Japan--islands included--have castles, and the only larger ones in the entire country are in Osaka and Nagoya. The grounds remind me of the Tower of London in terms of size, but the castle and surrounding turrets are significantly more massive. On a random note, the local delicacy is "basashi"--raw, thin slices of horsemeat covered in crushed garlic. It appears bright red, and it smells exactly like you would expect. It's times like these that I am thankful for vegetarianism.

That's no dunce; it's a statue of Katou Kiyomasa in front of one of the castle's turrets. He was granted lordship of Kumamoto Prefecture for his support of the Tokugawa regime in the early 17th century. He erected this castle in 1607.


The castle theater, home to many a Nou performance. Those stone walls were constructed before this region had the capacity to cut stone bricks, so each oddly shaped boulder was wedged between others. The grounds are surrounded by 13 km of outer wall, and divided by 5 km of inner wall.

A view of one of the castle's many turrets across the moat.


And yet another turret, this one across a field from the castle.


And finally, the castle itself: