Naha, Okinawa, Japan
Today we met our guide at the entrance to the port station. Masayuki Shinjo. Shin would be our guide all day. We did stop at the ATM yesterday and picked up some yen. 10 – 1,000 yen bills. Each 1,00 bill was worth about $8 USD. It is a pain dealing with currency that has been inflated like this. Coins are practically worthless. Now that I think about it, coins at home are too.
Our first stop would be one of the US military bases. We did a bus ride out and started to walk to the entrance of the station. When we arrived, we saw what looked like a young American on his cell phone. “Hey guys, how are you doing”, he said. We said fine and then he said “The cab driver dropped me off at the wrong entrance last night” Lot’s of colorful language followed. “I haven’t slept in over 24 hours”. I asked if this was his base and he said “This is my f*&*^&^g base”. He also said for the three years he has been here, he didn’t know this gate existed. No one was at the gate. Finally a friend came by and picked him up. He said good bye and then screamed out more colorful language. Maybe there is hope for our military?
We boarded another bus and went to lunch. Traditional Japanese food was served here. Upper left, bitter cucumbers, lettuce, below that is seaweed, some vegetable that resembles spaghetti, a piece of pork with the skin still on, below that is soup, fried melons pieces, tofu that looked like ice cream and finally rice. Delicious meal. For desert? Home made ice cream with a brown sugar syrup. It is not sold anywhere and it is to die for. I put a business card here. It would be worth the trip.The translation is interesting.
Next stop was the Shuri Castle. We grabbed another taxi for this.
Between 1429 and 1879 it was the palace of the Ryukyu Kingdom. In 1945, the US navy almost completely destroyed this. After the war, the castle was repurposed as a University. In 1992, the walls were reconstructed and many of the university buildings were removed. It is very difficult to tell what was original and what was rebuilt.
Seiden Hall of Shuri Castle was destroyed by fire in 2019. Completely burned to the ground. A new Seiden Hall is being constructed on the same site. It will be exactly as the old and all joints are connected using tenon joints, posts and other non-nail techniques.
Inside this building is the where the new hall is being constructed. Fascinating inside.
View of Naha from the castle.
We spent a good amount of time at the castle and then walked over to the monorail.
We took the monorail over to the Prefectural Museum. We didn’t have a lot of time in the museum but we did enjoy it. It was time to go back to the ship. We hopped into a cab and were back in about 20 minutes. We said goodbye to Shin and went up for dinner.
After dinner was fun and games on the Lido. A carnival atmosphere. We played a number of games and called it a night.
The ship left Okinawa for Tokyo at about 10:30 pm. Rough sees again. Everything on the desk is secured!…