We are staying at the Crown Plaza with a Castle view on the 18th floor. Seeing Toyama Castle is fantastic but even better watching a series of trees next to the castle where there are roosting grey herons, eastern cattle egrets and little egrets. There must be 200 birds in total and we can watch them come and go. We are pretty sure they are sitting on eggs. We strolled around the castle grounds to shake off the train ride. We saw what seemed to be crow traps with crows inside them. Perhaps the local council is trying to control the population. After our stroll we went to dinner for a Japanese meal. Before we headed upstairs to the 19th floor restaurant, we watched the sun set from our window We had some tasty new fishes , angler fish and genge fish ( kind of pout fish).
Fantastic lobby
The walls are tall
Impressive
Eight or nine grey herons are standing in the shallow moat
Heron and egret side by side
The cattle egret
Frilly plumage
Orange headed
In breeding plumage
Three greys together
The base of the picture is the moat and the middle are the trees that the birds are roosting in. I counted 200 or so white dots in the trees, each one is a bird
The art begins.
Sally Sassy Pants
Heron tracks in the mud of the moat
The red and green must be some sort of design on the bottom of the moat
Double bloom peonies
Frilly Egret
The walls are different from the other castle walls we have seen. It is almost as if the large rocks are places an then the edge chiseled off smooth
The room with the lights on is the bar and the dark window one floor down is our room
Nests in the trees
Beautiful beak
More statues on the castle grounds
Possible earthquake damage?
Fancy gal on the bridge
Nice bronze post top
The internet posing videos have influenced Leslie
A koi in the water that matches the bridge
We are pretty sure that the crows don't know how to read
Crows in the crow trap
We are not sure that these were crow traps but we asked about these at the info booth
A secondary castle
Samurai hats in the info booth
Mountains and snow on the manhole covers
heading back tot he hotel
The sunset
So intense
What a fine sight
Stretching out all across the horizon
The sky is darkening
Lights are coming on
Bright red sun
Setting in the west
Time to go to dinner!
Yes, Chef!
Pouring over the menu
A chart that describes the Sake that is available
Sashimi
Three appetizers, seaweed in a thick slimy sauce, tofu and ikura on top of a ball of pickled greens
Angler fish in broth
Fried mackerel
Warning: Do not ingest raw the firefly squid
Perhaps it was not fresh, perhaps we have not acclimated enough to Japanese cuisine, but it was not tasty and both of our stomachs returned negative feedback
Deep fried Genge fish, aka Ocean Pout Fish
Some miso soup and rice
Leslie sharing her ice cold noodles
Yummy
Cold noodles and all the fixins
Tooth picks are provided with the bill
Matcha tea and fruit for dessert
