Aizuwakamatzu

My second day in Japan started in visiting the famous town of Aizuwakamatzu, the hometown of the samurai clan White Tigers. there is a legend that in the war between the samurais and the emperor at the the Meiji Era, that a group of young samurais commited suicide when they saw from the top of a hill, their castle on fire. this story is told almost has a joke about blind loyalty, because in reality it was not the castle on fire but the sorounding houses, and the castle resisted one week more.
in the old times the all village was sorounded by walls being the clan castle in the center, nowadays we can see the reconstructed castle ( the real one was burned during the meiji wars), old samurai houses, farms and a monument in the hill where the samurais commited suicide. Me, i just visited the castle and one of the oldest tea houses in the region, just behind the castle.
the city is sorounded by hills and is located all inside the valley, being all the hills covered by trees. Inside the castle walls we can find a small park with tennis courts and a camp where you can shoot arrows. there is also a small school for kids to learn martial arts and a small temple. then i pciked my things and catch the train going even more east of Japan in direction of Ichinozecki.