Visiting Matsumoto
Castle, the Crow Castle/Carlos Pueblo
We had
visited the Castle twice, once together on the 1st afternoon
arrival, and
on the 3rd day Amy went inside while I went ahead
to visit Karuizawa and came
back for my
2nd visit before our departure. I like the Castle very much because
it
is in black
color and do have many crows flying around the keep and the moat up
and down;
therefore the nick name is the Crow Castle. All structures are either
rebuilt or
re-innovated and are more beautiful than before. The garden park is
very
charming especially during the early spring, cherry blossom and snow cap
mountain on
the background.
We entered
the park before the moat, turned right to the Taikomon Gate, the
Drum Gate,
which was a new flame construction at the time of current Emperor.
There is an
epitaph on a stone tablet which contains many Kanji character I can
guess to
understand. On the side, it is a side of the moat with a male white goose
bullying a
small white egret by pounding water and loud noise. Many tourists were
wondering
what was going on, yet he left all the small dark color ducks alone. On
the 3rd
day afternoon, I did see him with his partner leisurely swimming on the
other side
of the moat near the Kuromon Gate, the Black Gate like white swans.
The park
authority installs all the previous lords’ banners on the court yard. I do
Search all
their names, Ishikawa, Matsudaira, Mizuno, Ogasawara, Takeda, and
Hotta. Amy’s
brochure indicates that those lords of Shino Han are comparable
small to
midsize at that time less than 100,000 koku a year mostly about 80,000
koku. 1 koku
is 278.3 liters of rice and 10,000 koku is about 7.5 million U.S. dollar
in 2016. The
lord needed to maintain his small government, military force samurai
, and family,
and then if anything left, to build a castle.
I am very
impressed of the current day Japanese to engage the restoration of their
heritage and
the beautification of their city and environment. It has attracted so
many
tourists from all over the world to witness such unique civilization. When I
write this this
report, I also check something that gets my attention. The peach farm
and grape
farm on both sides of the railroad. Natsukko, or Nectarine and large purple
grapes or
koho grapes are very famous in Japan.
Farmers set them up like a mat
awning and
both peach trees and grape vines grow on it. I guess that is easier to
harvest. It
says that is a crop from the fertile Shinano River, or Chikuma River, 228
miles and
the longest one in Japan. There is a famous song called Chikuma River
after the
War in 1975 by Goki Hiroshi.
I run out of
my space to introduce Kumamoto soy bean pasta, Shinshu, and the
old Kumamoto
post senior high, called 9th Ko, the precedent of the National
Shinshu
University in Kumamoto.
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