On the second day of our trip Ritsuko's sister-in-law Miyuki took us to Kinka-zan the mountain on top of which Gifu-jo (castle) sits.

Gifu-jo is a concrete reconstruction and the interior like Nagoya-jo is modern and hosts the usual Samurai paraphernalia museum. Unlike Nagoya-jo, Gifu-jo is an example of an early Japanese castle design which were build on top of mountains rather than massive ramparts.

We climbed up Kinka-zan from the base near Gifu city and visited the castle then adjacent squirrel centre, I'm not sure what the point of the squirrels being there is but it was kind of fun. To save time we caught the cable car down.