Inside Okayama Castle

Although I'd been to the castle grounds many times, I'd never actually gone inside. This was partly because I'm cheap, and partly because I'd heard from several people that it wasn't that interesting, at least compared to Himeji castle.
However, when the Fudges were here, they decided they wanted to go in so we checked it out. Apparently everyone else had also been told it wasn't worth it, because even though we went during Japan's peak travel season, we had the castle virtually to ourselves.
It only took us about 15 minutes to go through the whole thing, but there were a few interesting exhibits and some good views across the river of Korakuen, Okayama's famous garden.
As you can see in the first picture, there is a carriage of some sort that was used to carry people a lot more important than us. And in the bottom picture are a couple of really cool suits of samurai armour.