Day trip to Aichi prefecture

Since many of my students are from Aichi prefecture and since I don't know about many of the cities in Aichi, I decided to do a day trip there to find out more about some of the places there. The first place I went to was Kiyosu and to Kiyosu castle specifically: It is not a large castle but it can be seen from quite far away. It was built in the 15th century and saw a number of battles:

Luckily there was beautiful weather for the whole day and so it was easy to get some nice photos of the castle:
Inside, I was able to dress up as a samuri. It took three men about 5 minutes to put everything on me:
There were 9 separate parts to this uniform. I was then able to have my photo taken carrying a sword, a rifle and then a spear:
Afterwards I climbed up to the top of the castle to get a good view of the city. The photo below is of the beautiful rock garden at the entrance of the castle:
After visiting the castle, I got back on the train to go to the city of Handa. It has a very famous vinegar factory there called Mizkan that has been in Handa since 1804. Its vinegar is especially good for making sushi rice. Here are some of the factory buildings that run along both sides of this river:
After an hour tour of the vinegar factory, I walked a short ways to a sake museum. There, I had a tour of the museum. Since I had gone on another factory tour of a sake factory last year with my family, it was interesting this time to see some of the historical equipment that this museum had:
You will notice that both the vinegar buildings and the sake museum are made with black-painted wood. There were a number of these old style buildings throughout the city of Handa.

After going for a short walk around Handa, I got back on the train to go to the city of the Okazaki. This was the city that my Aunt Elizabeth had done a homestay. The first place I visited there was a miso factory. Miso is a paste made from fermented soy. Miso soup is of course made from this miso paste. From the black buildings in the picture below, you can tell this is also an older company (over 300 years old):
To make miso, soybeans are soaked, steamed, and then sprinkled with 'koji' fungus that helps the soy ferment. After three days, sea salt and water are added and the mixture is put into 7-foot-tall cedar vats. These vats can hold 12,000 pounds of miso. The vats are covered with a cotton cloth, a heavy wood pressing lid, and 6,000 pounds of stones. The pressure helps reduce the salt content of the miso and it is allowed to age for two years. It was very impressive to see these large vats of miso:
There must have been about 100 vats in the one building I walked around in. This naturally fermenting method brings out much more flavour in the miso than miso which is pressed with machines. I found a good website here explaining in greater detail how the miso is made at the Hatcho miso factory.
After buying some miso products, I went for a walk to Okazaki castle. While crossing the bridge to the castle, I could watch a swan battling with some turtles and 'koi' carp for bread thrown by some other visitors:
Compared to Kiyosu castle, Okazaki castle was quite hidden by large trees:
This castle is famous for being the birth place of Tokugawa Ieyasu. He was the first shogun of the Edo period (Tokugawa period) of Japan, which was from 1603 to 1868:
There was a nice park around the castle with very fancy telephone booths:
Here is a museum for Tokugawa Ieyasu:
I was just about to leave the park when I could here some music coming from behind me. I turned around to see a doll doing a dance (perhaps a Noh dance) to music:
I realized that I had past by it and had not noticed it since it wasn't playing music:
Only after the performance did I understand why I had not seen it. Everything neatly folded away into a regular-looking clock:
As I walked back to the station to get the train back home, the sun was setting and I felt good that I had made the most of my trip to Aichi.