The first day was nothing but driving, and the next morning we went to Gifu Castle, the first destination of the trip. It is a place steeped in the history of Oda Nobunaga. I recently read a book called Taemang (the Korean edition of Yamaoka Sohachi’s novel Tokugawa Ieyasu), and Oda turned out to be a truly remarkable man. I really wanted to visit once, so I put it on the schedule.

Around Gifu Station

Gifu has some places like well-appointed hot spring ryokan, but this was a guys’ trip, so we just stayed at a business hotel in front of the station. The area around the station is pretty run-down; the area near Gifu City Hall seems more developed, but I could not get there this time.

Scenery snapped along the way

Gifu City is not exactly small, but there are no tall buildings. It felt a bit quiet and laid-back.

Gifu Castle seen from the foot of the mountain

If you look closely, you should be able to see a castle at the very top of the mountain. How on earth did anyone think of building a castle up there.. It looked like a place that would take a good hour to climb on foot.

Wandering around, unable to find the entrance..

Even with the sat nav, the entrance to the parking lot was hard to spot. Or rather, the parking lot and its entrance are quite far apart, so when I put the parking lot into the sat nav there was no way to tell where the entrance was.. Thanks to that, we wandered around for quite a while.

After parking, we crossed the bridge and took the cable car.

Restoration work on the three-storied pagoda in progress

They were doing a huge construction job up in these mountains. I am looking forward to seeing it finished.

Going up on the cable car

It was a weekday, and there is not even that much to see on top of the mountain, yet surprisingly a lot of people were riding it. Must be the power of Oda.

The little ones absolutely love it.

A view that takes in the whole city at once.

It was a real shame that the weather was bad and a lot of the photos did not come out well.

Even after the cable car arrives, there is still a bit more climbing.

Gifu Castle

It is smaller in scale than I expected, but I could still feel the spirit of the Sengoku period.

Entrance

I paid 200 yen to get in.
 

Spears

So these are the famous Oda spears. They really were long.

The view from the top of the castle

This is roughly what Gifu is like. What were the castle lords of the Sengoku period thinking as they looked out at this view?

The view

With the sky this overcast, the photos just would not come out nicely no matter what I did.

It was a decent course for a weekend trip. There are other scenic spots further north in Gifu, but getting all the way there was too much for this trip, so we simply set off right away.

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