Exploring Naha

Our Asian adventure continued Southward, in Okinawa - tropical Japan. We started our exploration of Okinawa at the capital, Naha, which is located on the main island. After arriving at the rather makeshift "low-cost airline terminal", we zipped down to central Naha, taking the monorail (a pretty cool way to see the city, actually).

We started our exploration of Naha by checking out the historic town of Shuri (located at the outskirts of modern Naha). The terrible battles fought in Okinawa between the Japanese and Americans unfortunately left most of Okinawa Island in ruins. This includes the old capital of Shuri, and its famous castle (which  originally dates back to the 13th century). However, the castle has since been painstakingly reconstructed, and has now pretty much been restored to its historic state (even if it does look a bit "fake").

Anyway, Shuri castle was the administrative centre of the Ryukyu kingdom, until it was taken over by the Japanese and Okinawa became a Japanese prefecture in 1879. It's a very nice place to visit. The location, on top of a hill, is very scenic indeed, and affords nice views over Naha. The castle itself is pretty interesting to visit too, there is plenty of information about the history of the castle and the Ryukyu kingdom. (I found the kingdom's often complex relationship and status relative to Japan and China quite interesting)

After a nice lunch at the castle site cafeteria (I had taco rice - a "local speciality" rather heavily inspired by the texmex food brought to Okinawa by the American GI's, still a strong presence on the island). We then headed off to check out another historic Shuri site, the Tamaudun mausoleum. This is basically the site where the Ryukyu kingdom royal family members were buried. Unfortunately, the tombs can only be seen from the outside. There is a small museum next to the tombs, but since there are hardly any explanations in English, the visit was of limited interest.

They'd also told us about a historic stone path way at the tourist information back in Naha, that we decided to check out too. A bit of a disappointment too, as it really is just a stone path. We were expecting some historic houses to line up the stone path, but most of the houses were pretty modern.

On the way back to the monorail station we stopped by at an Awamori distellery. Now THAT was more interesting. Awamori is the local Okinawa alcoholic beverage of choice (well, their Orion beer does seem to be more popular, to be honest...) - it's a rice liquor distilled from Indica rice (which is apparently pretty much all imported from Thailand...). Anyways, we were treated to a nice multimedia show explaining the distillation process, we got to see the distillery itself, and most importantly of course we got to try out the stuff itself. Kampai!

The next day, we decided to check out a very different site, The Former Japanese Navy Underground Headquarters. Like I mentioned before, Okinawa suffered greatly during World War II, and this place hammers than point home very well. It's in this place (a network of underground tunnels and bunkers) where the Japanese made their last stand against the far more numerous and better equipped American troops. The final telegram from the commander (who naturally commited Seppuko) to the Japanese high command, where he commends the bravery of the Okinawan people, is rather touching. One of those places you just have to visit (even if it can be an uncomfortable experience), a great antidote to the folly of war...

For lunch, we made our way back to Naha, to Kokusai Dori (international street - the main touristy drag in Naha, with loads of restaurants, bars and souvenir shops). We ended up in a rather touristy place serving up local specialities, but all in rather good taste (both as far as the food and the place itself is concerned). 

We spent a bit of time wandering around Kokusai Dori - mostly we actually went to the souvenir shops and tried the food samples they had - Okinawan sweets are actually rather good compared to what you often find on the other Japanese islands (I love Japanese food, but deserts/sweets are not their strong point in my opinion).

We then jumped on the monorail, and headed down to visit the Okinawa Prefectural Museum. Before checking out the museum itself, we headed off to a nearby park, where some kind of local festival was taking place. The festivities involved local dance performances - all good fun! Some karateka were preparing to put on a show (Karate actually originates in Okinawa) - but unfortunately we had to head off to the museum before we cold check out the performance (as it was getting pretty late).

The museum was very interesting indeed, with plenty of interesting historical information and interesting exhibits. Unfortunately, we had to rush through it all a bit, since we arrived just about 1 hour before the place closed). 

The next day, it was time for us to leave Naha and fly on to nearby Ishigaki island, but we had a bit of time on our hands before heading off to the airport. We decided to use that time to check out Fukushu-En - a Chinese garden located not too far from our hotel. The presence of the garden is a testimony to the strong ties Okinawa has to mainland China (historically and still to this day - the garden was actually opened in 1992 in celebration to Okinawa's appointment as sister city to Fuzhou). It's an interesting place to visit, as there aren't a lot of Chinese gardens in Japan (this is the only one I've visited). It's interesting that Japanese and Chinese gardens are actually very different (interesting since Japanese culture of course very heavily borrowed from Chinese culture up until a few hundred years ago). I have to say I prefer Japanese ones.

Anyway, that brought an end to our exploration of Naha, as it was time to head off to the aiport.