12

Viewer Comments

• neutronsan on My Page    February 23, 2013 at 02:27 PM
  

  Cute little castle on a hill overlooking town, cool moat.

• Anonymous    November 25, 2012 at 12:01 AM
  

  I visited this castle last year during a rainy week. The rain kept a lot of people away, which was great for me. I understand what you mean by run down areas. Some parts need to be restored. But I did enjoy going into the castle; It had great views of Iga Ueno. Because the rain was so bad I was the only person in the castle for a time. =) I liked the position of the castle on the hill, with the river or moat below. The walls were of a good size and impressive. It might be small but the area is very scenic. I enjoyed it.

• Frank T. on My Page    October 18, 2011 at 05:18 PM
  

  What a disappointment. This castle is a reconstruction done in wood, true, but it was NOT done in the traditional way like Kakegawa, Ozu, or any number of other wooden reconstructions. The interior was done in a modern style with absolutely NO effort made to mimic the original. In addition to that, regardless of the quality of the park and ninja museum nearby, the latter attracts hordes of families with children when they are out of school. Try going on a weekday when school is in session.

• a22cricket on My Page    May 16, 2011 at 07:18 PM
  

  I like the story behind this one. A local businessman built it to promote tourism in his hometown. Obviously visited the town for the ninja museum, like 99.9% of the town's visitors, and was surprised to see a castle there. I also believe this is the castle Ian Fleming described in "You Only Live Twice" during 007's ninja training scene. The film used Himeji.

• nite127    January 22, 2011 at 11:32 AM
  

  I visited this castle in Summer 2010 and found the foundations interesting. I heard that Kurosawa's film "Kagemusha" was filmed there

• Alamo6400    January 08, 2011 at 04:39 PM
  

  THIS CASTLE WAS AMAZING THE BASE OF THE CASTLE WAS AWESOME NOT AS AWESOME AS AZUCHI CASTLE WAS BUT IT WAS AMAZING

• Kris on My Page    November 14, 2010 at 11:49 PM
  

  This was the second castle I picked to take my brother and friend to when they came to Japan. (By which I mean I said we were going to see a ninja village and it just turned out that it happened to be near a castle as well). The ninja yashiki next to the castle was first class – they had comprehensive English explanations and lots of hands-on displays. It was winter so there were no ninja demonstrations and many of the souvenir shops were closed. The giant walls and stonework around the moat are superb for taking photos, which is great because unfortunately we were there when it was under repair. My Iga Ueno shots show just the far left of the top photo, which was the only bit not under wraps, and various people posing in the Todo Takatora cutout out the front of the keep. We did a day trip from Nara – one point to make is that Iga Ueno station has almost no baggage storage facilities - Uenoshi is a little better but the connecting ninja trains don't come so often – however, the staff at the Ninja house will mind all your baggage for free for as long as you want to wander around the area, including the castle. (They're ninjas; you know they're going to do a better job of guarding your bags than some measly coin locker anyway).

• furinkazan on My Page    October 14, 2010 at 08:57 AM
  

  2 days ago i went to this castle. I liked it very much, with its great walls and the artifacts on show. Kids and adults can disguise in shinobi(this is the land of the ninja) and i saw alot of little ninjas wandering. I also visited the ninjahouse in the parc. Its a nice museum(with english explanations) and you can attend a ninjashow. They demonstrate the use of some ninja-weapons, but it's only in japanese. I walked to the castle and took the train back, because some of them have ninjas painted on them.

• Anonymous    February 19, 2010 at 02:43 PM
  

  The castle repair and restoration page is a huge help to people that live in Japan and like traveling to castles or those who live overseas and have an interest in coming to Japan to see some of the castle sites for themselves. Thanks

• Raymond W.    January 31, 2010 at 09:54 PM
  

  I had a similar experience when I went to Kumamoto Castle in 2007. The top floors of the castle keep were covered in white scaffolding. These days before I go and visit a castle, I try to find its official website and see if there is any renovation before I go. BTW, on the official Iga Uneo Castle website at http://www.ict.ne.jp/~uenojyo/, it says that the castle is undergoing some renovation for typhoon repairs (hope I have read the Japanese right) from 24th Nov. 2009 to the end of Feb. 2010.

• Anonymous    January 26, 2010 at 08:37 PM
  

  I arrived at Igaueno castle today from Tokyo with the specific purpose of getting some nice photos and was absolutely mortified to see that it is surrounded by scaffolding and is undergoing some reconstruction. An expensive trip for nothing!

• Raymond    December 04, 2008 at 04:00 PM
  

  The honmaru walls are quite impressive going down to a water moat on three sides. The tenshu (keep) has a pretty good museum inside with plenty of original artifacts and samurai armour. One of the display actually had an English explanation much to my delight. There are still some nice red autumn leaves on the trees, so now it is good time to visit if you are in the area. I went there from Shiga using JR trains. It takes about an hour from JR Kusatsu to JR Iga-Ueno or around 90 minutes from Kyoto. You can change to a Kintetsu train at Iga-Ueno Station, but if you like walking (like me), it is only a 30 minute walk or about 3km. Exit the station and go straight down that main road. You can see the castle on the hill a few clicks down the road.