Are we sitting comfortably?
Then I'll begin.
Which is the place with the massive posh mall complex and the Prefectural Office. What I didn't realise, as I was rushing last time, is that it's right next to Kokusai Dori Street, the Oxford Street of Okinawa. This clearly merited further investigation, so I did.
This is the Prefectural Office, which is their government building. I went in and asked if I could get my visa renewed, which caused some issue as the security guards had to go and find someone who could translate my broken Japanese. Turns out that, no, I couldn't get it renewed there, but they told me where I could, which was nice. I think they were nervous about the protest outside, which seemed to be about the American Bases or maybe just that everyone should wear white gloves.
From here I wandered up Kokusai Dori Street, as it's helpfully named in English. Or unhelpfully as "dori" means street, so they've named it Kokusai Street Street. But there you go. It's an interesting street, a sort of a mix of Covent Garden, Camden and Oxford Street with restaurants, night clubs, bars, trinket shops, high end shops and touristy places. It's some kind of student say or something today as, just as I crossed the road a bunch of guys dressed in togas chased a guy dressed like a fish and jumped on him and tea bagged him a la Halo. Humm. I think they were students anyway.
There's lots of Shisas on sale here and I took loads of pictures which I'll stick on Facebook to bore you all with. Also this guy:
I wandered up one side and then popped up to where the Jahanna-Kippan shop is, just off the main road. Where Hisano fed me some fresh togan (it had been an hour and a half since my last feeding and I was growing hungry). James also struck a pose in his chef's outfit
From here I wandered back down and walked down the other side of the street back to the monorail station. No more toga terrorists tackling people (my alliteration has failed me!), but there you go. Although I did see this:
Yeah, uh... penis shaped chocolates with a half naked baby on the front, naked from the waist down too. Uh.... Japan has some aspects that I will never get.
Anyway, I was on the hunt for a baseball cap for myself as my hair is short and the sun is strong so I popped into here:
The Habu Box! The ultimate cool shirt place. Baseball caps are a little expensive, so I skipped out on one but I did pick up another cool T-shirt (last one, last one).
From here it was back on the monorail and over to
Now, last time I was here I popped into that big book shop and picked up a book on BJJ... this time I popped in with the knowledge that is had an English language section! Top floor! All right! You can only read so many non fiction books on martial arts before you start craving fiction, so I picked up three nice little books and am quite happy. I also found the Manga section, which is bigger than some libraries back in the UK!
James turned up and we ate lunch across the road at a Japanese cafe. There's a word for these places, but I always forget it. Anyway, lunch was pork, rice, a fried egg, miso soup and some deep fried prawns. God it's hard to eat a fried egg with chop sticks. From there it was off to
Which is the far end of Kokusai Dori. From here I wandered back up the street to the indoor market, seeing some street violence along the way! It was too store clerks arguing and got a little heated. Interesting to watch, a pretty standard monkey dance of posturing, arms out, chest up, but then the taller one pushed the shorter one of the head, not the chest, which is different to what happens in the UK. Some other guy came and broke it up then and that was that. Interesting though. I managed to find a cheap hat in the end too, only a thousand yen. It made me look well American though, but there you go, at least I wouldn't be adding to the sun burn on my scalp and neck. On the way back I found an arcade and popped in. Man was it interesting; an arcade for the more serious gamer as opposed to the more kid friendly ones I'd been in before, I gave Tekkan 5 a blast and had fun. It had a slot for your Tekkan play card so you could record how well you'd done. Ditto for most of the other games, including Street Fighter. And they had playstation controllers attached to some of the machines. I then wandered up to the Eager Beaver, which was closed but the owner was there. Will probably watch the England game there tomorrow.
Next up was
Which is a residential area so there was pretty much nothing to see. About the only interesting thing was a Cocol I wandered into. It's sort of like a Family Mart. The magazine weren't sealed and I had a look through some of them. Interesting, even the normal looking ones had some strange pictures...
Anyway, next was
Which is where that big shopping mall is. On the map it had "Galleria", which I thought meant an art gallery. No, it was a high end mall filled with high end stores like Tag and such. I had a nice wander and popped into the Food Colliseum on the 3rd floor. Basically a series of joined restaurants. Had some good coffee and a doughnut and made my way off to
Which is the station near that high end gym. Nothing else really here so I headed off to
Now this place is basically a part of Naha City hospital, which is a damn good idea, and on the other side is a massive park. Hell of a place, had a big old walk through it, basically a massive valley so hell on the legs getting through it but well worth it. So glad I had that cap though.
Next station was
This is the second last station, sort of near Shuri castle, but not as near as the final station. It's on the other side of that massive park too. Some interesting historical sites but nothing compared to the castle itself, which was at
The end of the line! Nice sign, amazing place. The castle is huge and somewhere between really old and quite new as the damn thing has had a history of getting burnt down and bombed and blown up and deconstructed. They've done a damn good job of the reconstruction though:
Hell of a place. The actual grounds are a kilometre across and a good walk, the castle itself is a two tiered affair with outer and inner walls and a central castle structure where the king lived and ruled. That's it up there; 800Y to get in, but well worth it, and I had a traditional cup of tea and some traditional biscuits too.
And that's it really. I did more than I've written but I've condensed it down or this page would be a few thousand words as opposed to about a thousand. Hell of a day, recommend it to anyone.
Well, hell of a two days. Doing it in one day is pretty much impossible, you just don't get to see everything.
Hmm, beer is now calling me.
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