One day in the samurai city of Matsue (Japan)
If you want to get acquainted with the samurai history of Japan, then you will not find a better place than the city of Matsue. One of the 12 real samurai castles has been preserved in this city, and walking through its streets, you get to medieval Japan. Here you can visit a samurai and look at his home and life, you can taste traditional samurai food, and if you want, even live in a samurai house. And Matsue is also called the "city of water", so when history and samurai get bored, you can load into a boat and ride along its countless channels, enjoying the beauty of provincial Japan!
This is a classic Japanese samurai multi-level castle. The base is stone, and the castle itself is wooden. It is painted black, which is why it is called the "black castle". Now there is a military history museum in Matsue Castle, where you can get acquainted with the history of the prefecture and look at the real weapons and armor of that time.
I especially liked these samurai helmets.
If you climb to the top, you can see the panorama of the city of Matsue. Here you understand how correctly the castle is located, since everything is so well viewed from all sides from it.
As I have already said, they did not live in the castle, but only fought. And they lived down in the city, in the most ordinary houses. So let's go down and visit the most ordinary samurai in his dwelling, which the Japanese call buke-yashiki.
It turns out I didn't know anything about samurai. I thought samurai were warriors and that's it! But in fact it turned out that samurai are not necessarily warriors. Samurai in peacetime were engaged in ordinary administrative, economic and managerial affairs, and were something like modern officials. The papers were signed, and the nologs were collected. But, with military training, and if God forbid war (and the clans fought in Japan all the time), then take up the sword and defend the Motherland. In principle, samurai are something like a European knight. Not any sword bearer could become a knight, either, and so here. To become a samurai, it was necessary not only to be able to fight, but also to be born into the right family.