Ocean Expo Park Part 1: Subtropical Arboretum

(Last posts about January. Slowly catching up.)

On the northern end of the island, near the city of Nago, is an area called Ocean Expo Park. It covers a rather large area and contains several different sites, including the Churaumi Aquarium, several gardens and arboretums, a native Okinawan village, and a museum. On this trip, we visited the one of the arboretums, called the Greenery Kingdom, and the Tropical Dream Center, a large indoor/outdoor garden walk, featuring hundreds of orchids and an observation tower. Again, another pictorial post.

the walk in

 

these sorts of water jets are fairly common in gardens like this. too early in the year for it to be on, though.

what they called an English-style garden, basically a hedge maze. neat though.

there were bees on its flowers

a long arbor covered in vines

they called this area "salt wind trees". all the trees here are hardy in the ocean winds.

the Okinawans like cute things, apparently, because frame creatures covered in flowers are quite common.

(see part 2 for photos of the Tropical Dream Center)

Shuri Castle

Hello from the island, much belated I know. Let's get caught up in bits and pieces.

January was a fairly busy month. As I mentioned (forever ago), we toured several places. I've already told you about Okinawa World. The next place we went was Shuri Castle, way down on the southern tip of the island in Nanjo. As I'm not much of a historian, this account will be mostly pictorial. Basically, the castle was Ryukyuan, the unified governing body of the Okinawan island way back when, and was built sometime during the 1300s. It was originally build by another political group, but it is considered to be the palace of the Ryukyuan kingdom. It was nearly destroyed during WWII, but has since been restored and is the most famous castle on the islands.

We started with a quick walk through a museum. Not as informative as it could have been, had we been able to read Japanese. But, as many places here do, it featured a neat miniature of the castle and surrounding area during the time it was inhabited by the people of the Ryukyuan kingdom.

The miniature: 

And a period boat model:

Then we headed outside. There was a large stream running under a bridge. On the bridge were a lot of ducks (or geese maybe...) that were not shy.

And 10 minutes later...

Once we were done playing with the local fowl, we moved on.  On one side was a small building, with another bridge leading to it.

We followed the paths through a gate, as always, guarded by shishi dogs.

There were a lot of gates, actually.

And a lot of stairs.

Which gave you a great view:

One of the courtyards. Through the doors was the main courtyard in front of the palace:

And at last, the palace:

Inside, the king would come down these stairs to official meetings of the court and such:

A story up (it was a three story structure), the throne room:

The crown jewels:

A highlight of our tour was having tea in the castle, where we were seated in a side room and served the type of tea and cookies that were thought to be served there, based on written records from the time:

And that was Shuri Castle. Later that afternoon, we took the monorail (an adventure in itself) to Kokusai Street, the most famous tourist shopping area on the island, rather like a mile-long strip mall made of tons of tiny and seemingly repetitive shops. We found one of the side streets was more interesting, as it was aimed at locals, and not tourists. We had dinner at the Japanese version of an Italian restaurant, where we learned an important lesson about making sure we always have enough local currency before ordering food. Thankfully we learned that the post offices have  ATMs that will take our credit cards...

I had to buy a round trip ticket to get to Okinawa because Nathan and I didn't know if we could get clearance for me to stay before the automatic 90 day visa expired. The end of the story tells itself, as the other half of that round trip ticket landed in the US a few hours ago, and I am still here.

New Years, Okinawa World and Habu Museum

So, I suppose I should say Happy New Year, belated though it may be. We cheered in the year at Hansen Christian Center (the place we stayed before moving in to our apartment) with the four Marines who lived there over the holidays. Since then, we've had a fairly busy year: Chaplain Black is in the US for a month, so Nathan has had full responsibility of the chapel in his absence. On one of his days off, we acted on a bit of a whim, and ended up buying a Tv and a Wii from the island's online yard sale site. It's been fun though, and gives us something to do together when we have extra time on our hands. We entertained for the first time (the same four Marines we spent New Years with), which was fun to do together in our own place.

We also discovered New Years Day sales in Japan, which was awesome. Both of us are currently on a scarf fling, and Nathan has discovered Converse shoes, both commonly found in Japanese malls. While shopping, we learned of a Japanese New Years marketing gimmick. Many shops will put a collection of items from their store into a bag and seal it so you can't see inside. They create lots of these bags and display them on a table for a single price, which tends to be a really good deal when considering the number of items in the bag. However, since you can't see inside, you don't know what you are getting, so they call it a "Good Luck" bag, wishing you luck in the new year. We didn't actually buy any of the bags, as Japanese clothes run a lot smaller than American clothes, and we aren't totally sold on their sense of fashion. Still, it's a fun, tempting way to shop on New Years Day.

We've visited a few places this month, so I'll start with just one. Okinawa World, on the southern end of the island in Nanjo, is essentially a culture center. A collection of museums and displays set up like a village to walk through, exploring Okinawan history. We started the tour with a 30 minute walk through a cave.







It was very humid and the floor was wet in many places. It was neat to see stalagmites forming on the concrete path through the cave, and to be able to reach up and touch the stalactites dripping down on our heads. There was a stream running through parts of the cave with a few small fish in it.

Outside the cave, there was lots to see.

Glassblowing:





Local instruments:




Lots of shishi dogs on display, of course:


A garden with local plants, like this kumquat tree:


A natural dye hut:


Even some stilts to try:


But our favorite was definitely the habu section. Habu is a word used to refer to poisonous snakes in Japan. There was a museum:





A show:





Several cages and tanks of various animals:








And our favorite, snakes to interact with:









We spent a lot of time playing with and taking pictures of the snakes (There are lots more pictures on Facebook if you are interested. Just email me.). Definitely a great way to break in my new macro lens!

After Okinawa World, we headed to a Japanese mall for some dinner and shopping.





We order a lot of food without having any idea what we are about to eat. But we've ended up with some amazing dishes!