October 2024; 800¥

Felt like a waste of money. Most of the personnel is unfriendly and unable to find solutions to anything which exceeds the routined concept, including their english skills (I can speak japanese but apparently it doesn‘t matter which language one is talking to them) The castle looks completely different from what the outer hull suggests and has nothing of the charm you’re expecting of a castle. Why are they even allowing visitors inside, to begin with, maybe to make up for the renovation costs? The air on the observation platform is so bad that I got headache and the windows were completely fogged, I couldn‘t find any means of air circulation on that floor. As someone else mentioned the infrastructure leading to the castle (but also within the castle) is very bad and consists of two streets basically. The information signs are mostly japanese only. The whole thing reminds of a relatively small museum you‘d get into for 200-300 yen in other places.

Even the sound system they set up for the light show event was miserable.

In short: densely crowded (weekend), badly constructed artificial castle with unfriendly personnel and horrible infrastructure.

I suggest paying 0¥ to view it outside, from the kato-shrine area instead, unless you feel like contributing in the incomprehensible renovation fund the entrance fee seems to be.