Takashima Castle – Suwa City

In April, as part of my photography of the cherry blossoms around Japan I visited Suwa City in southern Nagano Prefecture, quite far north of Tokyo. The main purpose of the trip was to catch the sakura around the famous Takashima Castle that was once built on the shores of Lake Suwa. These days the shoreline have receded quite a bit from the castle, and the building we can see today is a reproduction of the original that was torn down in 1870 and rebuilt one hundred years later. Unlike the more even more famous nearby Matsushima castle, the Takashima castle is a light brown color, quite rare among the predominantly black or white castles of Japan. It is also famous for being the highest elevated flatland castle ever built in Japan. Suwa is one of those rare gems of small Nagano cities that easily get overlooked by people heading to the much more famous Matsumoto City or even Nagano City. There’s plenty of nice temples, interesting shrines and well preserved old buildings around the lake that I’ll blog about later on. Enjoy!