Though still in its early stages, I am so glad that the main JCE site & its accompanying blog (THIS site of course), now share a common theme. It just makes sense. So, what else is new?

- Home – It’s where the heart is
- Castle list – A sortable list of over 120 of Japan’s castles
- Map – An interactive Google map of Japan’s castles
No major changes have occurred on the above pages with the exception of the castle list where the categories menu was moved to the right-hand side.
- Articles – A top page has been added to tidy things up
- Shop – A new page & a place for things I no longer need & others may yet enjoy
- Blog – You are looking at it
I don’t think the above changes warrant any further explanation. Hey, you can always leave a comment.
The sub-menu
This is new. So often, people arrive at the site, don’t INSTANTLY find what they’re after and leave. It is my hope that every corner of the site is accessible from this here box, with one simple click. Well actually, not every castle profile can be reached with one click – the top 10 can.
Thanks to a little PHP & javascript trickery, each page reached by the main menu (or castle profile page) will open the relevant accordian section of the sub-menu. At least my testing says it does.
Time will tell whether this will be successful or not. I’ll be monitoring usage to see how it goes in any case. I have to admit that I’m not entirely thrilled with the look of it. Anyway.
The profile-page sub-menu
The picture to the right has all of the accordions opened, which is not how it should ever look. It’s just for demonstration purposes.
Much of the information in the former side-bar remains but you’ll have to click your mouse to access it. Is this a good thing? Unsure, we’ll just have to wait and see.
Map
Clicking on the map will take you to the zoomed-up view of the castle on the large map page.
Rating
It’s now out of 10. Everyone’s old ratings have been kept & continue to be used to rank the castles. Also by hiding it in an accordion, I hope to cut down on dodgy votes.
Also in …
Have just added the nearby (same prefecture) castle’s category.
Oops, one more thing
The weather is back! This little widget is quite interactive. Unfortunately, it was only available in Japanese, so you could click the wrong thing and be zipped out to their home page.
The immediately useful thing is the current week's weather. You can get at that by clicking on each of the day/dates. In this case the 30th to the 5th.
Each castle profile page (with the exception of the castles in Korea) will show the weather of the prefecture that the castle is in. Handy, hey?
I’m spent
Well, I think that is about it. Would love to hear everyone’s thoughts/criticisms.
c ya