Japan
Throughout our twelve years in Japan we traveled a lot of places and took a lot of pictures. Many of these are included in the galleries below. Hope you enjoy the trip!
(click on the pictures to visit the associated gallery)
gallery directory
Locations with pictures included in this gallery. Sites marked with a black circle indicate a Japanese “castle” as defined below. Red circles indicate castle “ruins”. Blue circles represent non-castle sites—I do actually visit some of those! The links will take you to the appropriate gallery (castle, ruin, etc.) but each listed site is not built into a separate webpage as I’ve done with some other picture galleries. The exception is Kyoto, which—constructed later than the rest of the collection—actually does have its own webpage. I may or may not provide each Japanese site its own page some day in the future as it is an EXTREMELY time consuming process. But for the time being, I beg your patience in having to scroll through to find the indicated castle, ruin, or other historical site you might be looking for. Still, this pictorial depiction represents, I think, a step forward and should help with trip planning, etc.
Japanese Castles
The beauty of medieval Japanese castles draws millions of visitors every year and the gracefully sloping shapes of these military fortifications has become a bit of a cultural icon for the Japanese themselves. I’ve visited a lot of them over the course of twelve years and offer up my photo log—and associated commentary—here in this gallery.
Japanese Castle Ruins
Japanese castles are generally broken down into two categories based on whether or not the wooden superstructure exists, regardless of whether it is original (rare) or reconstructed. Those with—even when the central keep has been rebuilt using concrete and elevators installed—are labeled “castles” while those without—no matter how magnificent—are generally labeled as “ruins”. This gallery highlights the beauty of the much less-visited latter category and includes some incredible finds dotting the Japanese archipelago.
Other Japanese historical Sites
Just to prove I do visit places that are not castles, this gallery includes a roll-up of “other” types of historical sites in Japan. Most notably, it’s where I’ve chosen to deposit our Kyoto pics from the trip we took just prior to departing Japan. Some of those are spectacular! This space is likely to grow as I dig through tens of thousands of digital photos, but for now, please enjoy what I’ve found and posted to date.