Added 5 Castles Around Ushiku (Ibaraki)

Hi Everyone!

This is my first update in several months. If you've been following on Facebook or even seeing some of the updates on the home page you'll see that I've been busy rebuilding all of Jcastle.info on a new platform. There's still a lot of work to do, but as we approach the best season for visiting castles I thought it was also important to finish off all the updates that have been pending from Spring. My first big update is several castles I visited around the Ushiku area of Ibaraki Prefecture during Golden Week.

Some of these castles are quite far form the station so they can be difficult to visit with public transportation. On this day I took my trusty Brompton folding bicycle to visit them all.

With the exception of the jin'ya these were all castles that formed part of the network of castles of the Okami clan. The Okami clan were allied with the Hojo in the latter Sengoku Period and provided an important defense along the Hojo's Easternmost borders. The Okami surrendered to Hideyoshi loyal forces during the Siege of Odawara and their castles were abandoned. There are no stone walls or big water moats here, but what you will see are some key examples of earthworks castles that were typical in the Kanto region. In particular Osaka Castle (Ibaraki) and Ushiku Castle are highly recommended for castles fans.

	GPSLocation
Okami Castle	35.97489, 140.17295
Osaka Castle (Ibaraki)	35.96665, 140.19818
Torinji Castle	35.96182, 140.12128
Ushiku Castle	35.9541, 140.13512
Ushiku Jinya	35.95604, 140.12818

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