{"id":3244,"date":"2016-03-19T08:00:28","date_gmt":"2016-03-18T23:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/voyapon.com\/?p=3244"},"modified":"2020-03-27T11:39:10","modified_gmt":"2020-03-27T02:39:10","slug":"takeda-castle-hiking-hyogo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voyapon.com\/takeda-castle-hiking-hyogo\/","title":{"rendered":"Takeda Castle Ruins, the Macchu Picchu of Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hyogo prefecture’s route 312 bears north through a valley, scooped from a clay fistful of ancient ages. This road cleaves into the ground as a long-dead mammoth race on a migration path. It is old, it is green. Within this valley is Takeda castle.<\/p>\n

The castle town’s Bantan JR station tracks south parallel to a road, and where the houses fall away, we had a crossroads where one option ran hillside into the wilds. A stairway marches into deep summer green and a powerful tori gate frames the natural world.\u00a0 This sight marks the ascent to Takeda castle.<\/p>\n

Takeda castle was still high to the heavens, yet forest divinity caught us on the breeze with our first passage into shrine grounds. We rounded left of the sphere of shrine, where the path builds a steep way towards the Takeda hilltop.\u00a0 A small group of young friends bow-leggedly wobbled down.<\/p>\n

\"Takeda<\/a><\/p>\n

After hiking a short climb, we found an opening with saplings. Looking back towards the valley, one is spoiled by a premature verdurous splendor. The stairs staggered like my breath.\u00a0 Keeping \u00a0even footing and turning around, the sapling space tapered into higher forest like a gorge.<\/p>\n

Thirty or forty minutes on our way from the base, we stood at the ticket kiosk for the stroll of Takeda\u2019s hilltop grounds.\u00a0 Attendants were elderly, with a glow like the sun they were close to in their little room.\u00a0 They spilled over with enthusiasm, asking my Australian friend and I about our home countries and to prick the corresponding locations on their physical map with a pin. We received our tickets for 500 yen and strode up the remainder of elevation change to Takeda castle.<\/p>\n

\"Takeda<\/a><\/p>\n

The first area had great, old trees I like to call \u201ctrees of life.\u201d Trees of life:\u00a0 burgeoning, hulking breadth of bough bushing over a firm trunk.\u00a0 Shade was ample with these lords over the lower forest.\u00a0 From this pleasance, valleys widened below and municipalities merged by a bridge here and a bridge there.<\/p>\n

\"Takeda<\/a><\/p>\n

The small way to the next stage was broad, as castles go.\u00a0 The grandeur of the castle itself was reduced to its walls. They seemed like the chiseled countenance of the mountain; like the natural granite rock faces in my home state of New Hampshire. The stone fanned from each crest of rock wall. These were features that once were levels of an impenetrable castle but now seemed like the sentient stone of the Earth itself.\u00a0 The ramparts regressed to nature\u2019s own.<\/p>\n

\"Takeda<\/a><\/p>\n

We soon caught up to a couple of women speaking a Slavic language.\u00a0 We kept unintentionally walking alongside them, and presently we all passed a bifurcation of the pathway marked by another rampart.\u00a0 Though we couldn\u2019t even communicate with a similar language, we were caught together in the universal patterns of aesthetic that Japanese architects of old had schemed up upon this green hill.<\/p>\n

\"Takeda<\/a><\/p>\n

Congregating clouds added a drama to the next tree of life, a single seed of the southern reach of the Takeda castle remnants.\u00a0 The abrupt end of the clearing and subsequent drop opened the view to the receded reach of the green valley where the old route stretched southwards. \u00a0Vivid green obfuscated the lower grey world; we were with the heavens.<\/p>\n

\"Takeda<\/a><\/p>\n

We rounded back along the posted path.\u00a0 An elderly attendant prevented us from returning to the first of Takeda castle\u2019s spaces.\u00a0 We begrudgingly had to scale down the green away from the massive scale of Takeda\u2019s open altitudes.\u00a0 Clouds closed above and sheets of rain closed in.\u00a0 My mind opened like the porous roadway near Takeda’s ticket kiosk as we made a circuit back to the ticket booth.<\/p>\n

The attendants were having an exchange with a man who seemed oblivious to the downpour.\u00a0 They remained warm, as did the weather, but we needed to save ourselves from a soggy sock-bogging.\u00a0 A courtesy bench abutted the close-quarters kiosk, under the slight rooftop. After one attendant asked for a picture with us fun foreigners and we had a brief exchange, we knew waiting out the rain that we could re-enter the Takeda castle grounds. (The website mentions that one entry to the Takeda castle grounds costs 500 Yen \u2013 we were able to enter twice on the same ticket.)<\/p>\n

\"Hyogo<\/a><\/p>\n

After the summer shower, our soles slammed to the wet stonework and up we went.\u00a0 The panorama, moments earlier under a yellow sun, was a changed thing.\u00a0 Dressing the valleys below, drifting down from the bust of mountains, were wisps of fine mist.\u00a0 Chancing a Takeda visit during July\u2019s \u201ctsuyu<\/em>\u201d rainy season of Japan, here cradled in the middle of the Japanese islands, was a fruitful dalliance.\u00a0 Peaked on the nexus of this natural array, we gazed onto a living and changing land mass.<\/p>\n

\"Takeda<\/a><\/p>\n

Rounding back to the ticket gate, we found our descent route.\u00a0 It went through thicker forest than our way in.\u00a0 The path was muddied up and we galloped down.\u00a0 We stepped out into a clearing like deer, hooves planted in the wet grass.\u00a0 We were soon back in Takeda town.<\/p>\n[cft format=0]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hiking in Hyogo a short way from Himeji is the spectacular nature of Takeda castle, Japan’s Macchu Picchu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":3247,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"pgc_meta":"","_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[24,23],"tags":[1305,1286,1343],"class_list":{"0":"post-3244","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-activities","8":"category-sightseeing","9":"tag-castle","10":"tag-hyogo","11":"tag-mountain"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nTakeda Castle Ruins, the Macchu Picchu of Japan<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Hiking in Hyogo a short way from Himeji is the spectacular nature of Takeda castle, Japan's Macchu Picchu.\" \/>\n<meta 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