One of Kyoto’s less famous sightseeing destination. This former daimyo residence is filled with secret caches (to hide assassins), hidden folding stairways (to escape), “nightingale floors” (made to creak when walked on by potentially nefarious individuals) and uncannily low ceilings (to make it impossible for samurai to draw their katanas)…

Unfortunately didn’t have a chance to snap a shot inside (our tour asked us to refrain from taking pictures and felt conspicuous enough being the only gaijin amidst a dozen locals).

For a good English description, I just found this blog entry that describes pretty much the same tour I had. I can also confirm that the tour is exclusively in Japanese (in my case, spoken insanely fast by some little obāchan) and they seem pretty serious about not letting in unaccompanied non-Japanese speakers (luckily my crappy language phone skills miraculously managed to fool them… mwahahaha).