Archilibra Journal

January 15, 2005 - Himeji (Day 4)
Himeji Castle Fish to ward off fire Koko-en	This morning Laura and I headed out to Himeji, home to one of Japan’s most famous castles. We picked up some sweet bread at the station and nestled in for the 1 hour train ride on Japan Rail’s Special Rapid service. It seemed as though we were traveling a fair distance from home, but in the context of our fellow passengers, we were on the equivalent of a morning commute. Many Japanese think nothing of a one hour train ride on the way to work or school. We arrived at Himeji castle and managed to fall in with a couple of Australians for an English language tour of the grounds and the castle. During the tour the guide learned that I was an architecture student and suggested that we go and see a couple of architect Tadao Ando’s buildings after we were done at the castle.

Kodomo no Yakata passageway nice views of the lake Workshop (more like a fancy storage shed) The observatory Just before the bus picked us up	Following the guide's suggestion we headed back to the station for a map and bus information after which we enjoyed the world’s cheapest ramen lunch (about $2.30 US). A bus ride into the country took us to “Kodomo no Yakata” (a Children's Center) designed by Tadao Ando. The building was unmistakably “Ando” but unique from his other buildings I have seen in that it was beginning to age. To further enhance the decay it had been drizzling off and on all day and the pure forms in concrete were marred by water stains. This particular building had many examples of “forgotten spaces” around the auditorium, as well as a workshop outbuilding with architecture that had been all but taken over for storage purposes by the occupants. We nearly got run over walking along a very narrow road sandwiched between a ten foot cyclone fence and a cliff as we made our way back to the bus stop. The road had many corners and it was quite unnerving as one after another of the crazy little Japanese box shaped cars would come barreling from behind a cliff barely able to correct course in time to miss us. We got to the bus stop nerves frayed but bodies intact and tried to decipher the schedule... After waiting 15 minutes beyond the time we thought the bus would arrive it was clear that we had deciphered it all wrong. We rethought the proper interpretation of chicken scratches that pass for writing here and determined that, contrary to our prior assumption, the bus we were waiting for was actually supposed to come in another hour. It was our fervent hope that this bus would actually show as no matter how illegible the schedule, it was definitely clear that it would be the last bus for the evening – a bit disconcerting due to the fact that the sun was setting and we were very far from anywhere on a road that, as mentioned before, left a lot to be desired for one off on a midnight stroll. We used the ensuing hour to wander about another Ando building, a hotel for families complete with its own observatory. We wandered around for awhile before awkwardly stumbling into the front desk, something I would have liked to avoid as we were not sure we were supposed to be inside the building. The clerks looked at us expectantly and I explained to the staff that I was a visiting architecture student, one of the few sentences I can actually say properly, and that Laura and I would like to look around if that was ok. They responded by handing me a map of the building and saying “go for it”. The latter of which I gleaned from a barrage of unintelligible Japanese and some well place hand gestures. The place was interesting and we passed the last half hour before the bus was to arrive in a small but very tall room in the tower watching the light disappear from the surrounding forest. The bus came as expected and we were saved.