13 November 2023
Ruined sea of cloud
Takeda castle ruins day trip
It took 2 trains to get there and 4 trains to get back. 2 hours there 3.5 hours back. It was raining but not enough for me to get wet. There was a chance to run up a hill and back down in time to get a train so that I did not have to wait 2 hours for the next one that resulted in me being sweat soaked. There was a sideways train. And there were some great photos of clouds from the castle ruins at Takeda, but not the sea of clouds for which it is famous for.
Takeda is north of Himeji about 2/3 of the way to Tottori. I was fortunate in that a fairly early train departure goes direct to Takeda from Osaka station, the only such service each day (I think, it is very confusing!). So getting to the ruins was easy, take the subway to Osaka station and board my train, and sit on it for 2 hours and 5 minutes and remember to get off at Takeda. The train was quite empty as you shall see.
The weather was looking bad, but I hate umbrellas so I set off to climb the hill in the light rain. It is a loop, you can take one trail up the small hill (30 minutes) and a different one down (probably 20 minutes, I went slow as it was slippery).
There are signs everywhere saying no toilets at the castle, but there kind of are at the toll booth where you pay $5 to get in, regardless, I made sure to enjoy a forest urination a number of times on my ascent. When I arrived at the toll booth, the other people from the train were arriving on the mini bus, pfft, weak.
The actual ruins are great, and the view is fantastic, you shall see many photos of the view below. Too many perhaps. It fully stopped raining while I was inside the pay area of the ruins.
After my descent down I had some choices to make. Hang around the station, walk to the next station along the road where trains come more often, or run up the hill on the other side of the valley to appreciate the view of the station from afar, and race the clock back to the station to get the only train coming for 2 hours. Obviously I chose to run up the hill and tear ass back down at dangerous speeds, and I made it to the station with 12 minutes to spare.
Now for the pics.
This is my direct to Takeda from Osaka station Hamakaze limited express super rapid special #1. I am reliably informed Hamakaze means divine wind from the beach, which is reference to the fact that most kamakaze pilots come from the famous sand hill area of Tottori.
The inside of this train was plain, but wait for the return train to see something unusual.
Here is the station at Takeda. Fairly plain, fairly damp.
Castle ruins information centre, it said something about making movies and a recording studio, I have no idea why. The small town has embraced the castle ruins, well some people have, and turned their old houses into little cafes (closed when I got there). But there is some drama, it seems photos of the ruins were used in an ad for a google pixel phone and after that too many people came and some towns people wanted to make it harder to visit.
I had to cross the track (single train track along this train line) to start my ascent.
The streets on this side of the tracks were very nice, lots of historic buildings, more on that later.
This shrine starts the path up the left side of the castle, I did it the wrong way which required some doubling back at the top to the ticket area, you should go up the right side and down the left side.
The path up the left side was damp, but fine. Going up never seems slippery.
A view opened up half way up, but this view becomes completely redundant soon.
The ticket office. There are toilets down there on the right. I am sure I read and saw signs saying there are no toilets.
Time to go explore the ruins. It stopped raining completely.
Now we start the views from the top. Still a bit foggy for the first few shots.
Camera struggling with yellow grass again.
Make that bit of blue sky come over here.
Probably shot of the day due to the sun making an appearance.
The town of Takeda and a bit of wall.
Very nice bits of wall. The guy that sold me my ticket ($5 cash only) probably spoke no English he understood, but he did say something like 'no castle at top, only castle ruins, no refund because you no see castle!'. So obviously people have come here expecting to see a castle and were disappointed to see piles of rocks.
This was a surprise. I am standing on the top, following the route signs. You can see a group of people below, who are yelling at me in Japanese, they were really mad. So when I moved they all clapped because now they could take a photo. Rude.
Here I am where people were hurling abuse at me. Note you can see 2 people on the top. I did not feel as though I needed to yell at them. If you want a photo with no people in it, wait for there to be no people.
Time for a bit more view. Kind of looks like water is on my lense, but it is cloud and fog.
Excessive sharing of piles of rocks in photographic form.
The descent down was rather slippery.
It got slipperier, and it started raining a bit again, but I stayed upright.
Takeda low shot.
Here is a shrine and a graveyard at the bottom.
Actually a whole street full of shrines, most had info signs explaining who was buried there and how they were related to whoever built the castle. It was at this point I decided if I ran as hard as I could, I could just make a 6km round trip to the view point up the other side of the valley. GO!
I stopped up the steep road when I noticed a rainbow.
View from the top. Apparently this is a great spot for cherry blossoms and there seemed to be camping areas. I had to pay $2 to get into this viewing area even though I only had a couple of minutes before I had to run down again. The old lady that sold me my ticket was very confused when I came running back out the gate 2 minutes after she sold the ticket to a bright red sweaty maniac. Anyway, that is the castle across the valley there.
Let me zoom in as far as I can. Now you can see the ruins.
I made it back down with time to spare. Light was good for this shot crossing the river along the valley.
And here comes my one carriage train, all painted up in ridiculous colours. Obviously now that I am boarding a train back to Osaka, full sunshine!
And what a train it was. Let me explain its features. First of all there is a display of handbags for sale in a glass cabinet. Seriously! But also, sideways seats for the view. I was not able to get a sideways seat for myself unfortunately.
So that was a long day of train journeying to see a busted old castle in the rain before running like a maniac up a hill.