Himeji was kind of crazy!

So I was going to do a 'for real' post about Himeji and then realized what a crazy kind of time we had there. When we arrived there was clearly some sort of street festival demonstration thing going on. They had a bunch of military vehicles there with members of their defense forces (they aren't allowed to build an army anymore, but should the need to defend their sovereignty arise, they do have a defense force). They had line ups and were letting people sit in the vehicles and aim the weapons. If Locutus were older I totally would have made him wait while I lined up to try it out. But since we wanted to give Locke a chance to run around a bunch, we just kept on walking.

There were lots of interesting things to see along the way from the station to the castle with the festival going on. None the least of which was this stage setup where people were singing and dancing while wearing strange things on their head. Note the guy front left wearing a stuffed castle on his head. 

There were also lots of mascots around doing pictures with kids (of all sizes).

When we got close to the castle we saw this guy who was riding by on his bike. Yes, the cat is wearing a Tony Chopper hat and just kind of hanging out on his shoulder. He graciously let us take a few pictures.

When we got to the park we found a quiet little area where a couple of cars were parked. While Locutus and I were running around them and playing a little peek-a-boo we saw this guy.

Yup that's a praying mantis. We didn't end up going into the castle grounds this time around because it became apparent pretty quickly that the castle is under restoration right now. Luckily, they put up a screen showing you what it looks like underneath. It's pretty impressive when it isn't covered by a building.

And then as our other post alluded to, there was a Ninja camp setup for little kids. It was pretty darn cute! The instructors were dressed in ninja costumes. After their instructions were done and the kids were running around they even played ninja theme music. It was surprisingly quiet too. If the same thing were taking place in Canada, I'm sure the screams would have been deafening.