Monday May 25

Today we visited the Nijo castle, a large complex that housed the Tokugawa Shogunate built in 1626. There were two sets of walls that were surrounded by moats to defend the castle from intruders. The outer wall was immense and was made using huge blocks of stone. The castle itself was made out of wood and was pretty large. It burnt down in 1788 by a city wide fire but was rebuilt in 1893. We were able to walk through the castle and see the wall paintings. The floors made squeaking noises every time you took a step and they called it the nightingale floor. This would alert guards if anyone was trying to sneak into the castle. There was also supposed to be many small hiding spots around the castle that they could stay in waiting for intruders but I did not find any of these hiding places. The grounds were incredible, with many different types of trees and beautifully landscaped ponds. The whole place was very impressive and peaceful.
For lunch we went to a place near the hotel that was one of the best meals I had through a ticket place. Some restaurants have these ticket machines that you put money in to choose what food you want to get and then you hand the ticket to the waiter. They are usually noodle and rice places. This was similar to the other places but a little more expensive but there were larger portions. My meal had some teriyaki, sesame beef, two beef patties, potato, green beans, salad, rice and miso soup. It was really good and was only about 860 yen.
That afternoon we had a lecture from a professor at Kyoto University. Kyoto University is one of the top ranking schools in Japan . When we arrived at the school there were just hundreds of bikes parked all over the school. Many people ride bikes in Kyoto and Tokyo, and most of the ride on the sidewalk so you always have to be on the lookout for them. The University had a very nice campus and our lecture was about immigrant communities in Japan. Japan has reformed their policy in the past 20 years to allow some foreigners with Japanese ancestry to work in Japan. These are mostly Brazilian Japanese and in total Japan has about 5% of their total population as immigrants. However, Japan needs to open up to more immigrants if they are to stabilize their declining population and loss of work force. They do not have the right to vote in national elections and some people are concerned that they will become the issue if they get the right to vote. The professor had some good stories about when he had studied in America when he was younger.