Visiting The Odawara Castle - Highlights Of Traveling Japan

The Odawara Castle (小田原城 ) is located in the city of Odawara in Kanagawa Prefecture, outside of Hakone, Japan.

Michelle and I visited the castle, which was built in the 15th century and played a key role in the history of Japan.

The story goes like this, soon after being built, the Hojo family stole the castle and controlled the land near Tokyo. This lasted for some time until Toyotomi Hideyoshi attacked and seized the castle unifying all of Japan under his rule.

His attack lasted 3 months. Hideyoshi tried to starve out the people inside the city of Odawara, but was unsuccessful. As our tour guide explained in a final move General Hideyoshi changed tactics and instead threw a big party. He invited all of the fighting men inside the city to drink and dance him and his women.

And surprisingly it worked!

The men defending the city laid down their arms and went to party with their enemy. 

Hideyoshi let the opposing army live, but was cruel to the members of the Hojo family. It was said that the leader of the Hojo family looked like a monkey, some even called him the monkey faced general.  After taking the castle Hideyoshi kept monkeys at the fortress to mock the monkey faced general. And they still have monkey cages at the castle today. . .

The castle had many lines of defence including three separate gates that you have to go through before reaching the main castle. 

1st Entry Gate

2nd Entry Gate

3rd Entry Gate

 

Informative signs

A depiction of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's army surrounding the city of Odawara:

Monkeys! 

The Main Castle

Enjoying Japanese Ice Cream!

While in Japan we tried both matcha and sweet bean flavors of ice cream.  Both are quite tasty.

Michelle and I took a month to travel across Japan and China this past May (2017). It was epic! Follow me @slickwilly and Michelle @curiouser for posts about our adventures!  

Hi there, I’m Will.  First and foremost I am an entrepreneur and voluntaryist.  I aspire to help build a more free world, one that we all want to live in.  Some of my biggest passions include cryptocurrencies, marketing, finance, cannabis, traveling, bodybuilding, snowboarding, motorcycles, and Subarus.  All pictures are my own unless otherwise stated.  I release everything under CC0.

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