The Henro route is not only going through the nature in the mountains or along the coastline, but it also takes you old and picturesque towns, making the pilgrimage an enjoyable experience besides visiting the 88 sacred temples.

Today it’s raining and quite cold outside. When I entered the downtown of Uwajima, I found Coco-ichi curry which is available everywhere in Tokyo, and I felt nostalgic and went in 🙂 They offer curry with deep fried sea bream cutlet (Uwajima is famous for its sea bream), and I tried it. It was really good!

As I entered the downtown area of Uwajima, I could see the castle tower of Uwajima-jyo. The castle was built by Lord Takatora Todo, a master castle builder in Edo era. There used to be more than 25,000 castles in Japan, but today there are only about 200 castles that you can visit. Of these, only 12 castles have been preserved from before the Edo era, and this Uwajima castle is one of this 12 castles.

Due to its design, it was hard to get close to the castle tower. The stonewalls are very impressive.

The castle tower is a small three-story structure. They put some replica of Japanese armors inside the castle tower, which got me a little excited.

I forgot the name of the painter of this cool image of Samurai… probably ink painter Okazu-san, though.