Naha, Okinawa, Japan
Today we had planned on golfing on Kadena Joint Base but cancelled to give my back a bit more recovery time.
We chose to hire a taxi to visit the old Japanese Navy Headquarters that is underground.
Naha is the capital of the Okinawa Prefecture. The population as of 2019 is 317,000. It looks like it holds many more people as the view reminded me of a large American city.
Not many people here speak English (just a casual observation). This surprised me because of the large military base that is here. In many of the countries we visit, English is taught in school along with the native language. Maybe that is not done here.
When we left the ship, we were diverted to one of two different paths. One path for folks walking to town and one for those who were taking a taxi. Those who had HAL tours went a third way. We chose the taxi line as it was a bit too far to walk. At the end of the line was a taxi and a Japanese woman who also spoke some English. She handed me a piece of paper that had a checklist of commonly visited places, all in Japanese. On the back, the location of the port we were at. Again in Japanese. How handy and how nice. We told her where we wanted to go and she put a check in one of the boxes. I told her we wanted to visit the site and then go to the big shopping area on Kokusai street. She spoke with the driver. He offered to wait while we were in the Navy Headquarters because there is a limited number of taxi’s to hail in that area and then take us to the shopping street. 6000 Japanese Yen was the price. $24 USD. What a bargain! We spent $140 getting to and from the golf course on Guam.
Our driver pointed out things on the way. Pointing was all he could do. When we got to our destination I confirmed that he would wait for us for 30 mins using the translate app. He pointed to the area he would wait. It had many busses there. Probably a HAL tour.
4000 men committed suicide in this bunker rather than face disgrace by surrendering.
The photos of mounted pictures were difficult to take. Some were taken with the translate app so the description could be read.
This trip was well worth the time. I don’t believe it makes the top of the list for sights to see in Okinawa as history has a way of being lost. The pictures say a lot. Often more than history books. We probably spent an hour or so here. This bunker is where soldiers lived and commanded the defense of Okinawa.
The taxi driver was waiting for us when we were finished. He took us down to the center of the shopping district. Loads of stores. We ducked into an arcade full of shops and walked around until we found a place for lunch.
The place we chose was empty but looked very inviting. Nice, large comfortable chairs and some great jazz playing on the speakers. No English menus. Very little if any English spoken. The translate app was our friend again. We shared a salad and then some cheese. I had an Orion draft beer and Terri some red wine.
After lunch we wondered around the shops and started to head back to the ship. We had about a 2 miles or so until we got back to the port. On the way, we found a little dress shop where Terri found a blouse she liked. She tried it on and found the buttons on the sleeves to be in the wrong position. The shop owner marked the spot where Terri wanted the buttons and then took them off and sewed them on in the new position.
We made our purchase and walked back to the ship.
We had dinner and then went up to our spot to play cards. It is much cooler here than in our previous stops. I had to go back and put a sweatshirt on. Winter clothes are coming out as we head North.
Another one for me. Am I up by one?…