As you know, the big izakaya restaurant chain, Yourou-no-taki group, has so many Japanese-style pubs all around Japan. The founder of this huge company, Toukichirou Kinoshita (this is his second name and his real name is Tomikatsu Yamanta), constructed a magnificent fortress as his vacation home in Shiga, Nagano where he was born and raised. This is The Shinsyu Golden Castle (SGC) that I visited 18 years ago.
I’ve heard that there is an enormous number of treasures in the castle, and we can appreciate these things like a private museum. So I made an appointment to enter the castle and visited there on an autumn day with my car, a Rover MGF that I used to drive at that time.
The exterior and entrance gate are gorgeous, and various statues on the garden have no sense of unity. My wife and I paid the entrance fee, 1500 yen per person, and started exploring the castle. Inside of it was like a chateau, and we found so many treasures which have the luck of unity all around there: a huge wooden table made of Yakusugi cedar, an ivory eagle to be presented to the Russian emperor, precious gems, Japanese swords, beautiful corals that we couldn’t import now, and so on. To my surprise, all the things in the castle had price tags! Unfortunately, taking photos was prohibited because of security.
Shinsyu Golden Castle
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