Shuri Castle 1

This is a diorama of what Shuri Castle would've looked like
back in the days of it's operating existence.

Just one of the views of the castle grounds.

Cameron poses in front of a huge Banyan tree.

Posing along the outer castle wall

Even in the Shisa Dogs are ready for Christmas!

Girls in traditional dress. They offered to take our picture, with our camera, with them, for $10! I think not! So I snuck a picture of them when they weren't looking!

One of the gates around the castle.

Here were the ascending stairs to the Castle maingrounds.

Daniel set out to get all the stamps on his sheet.

The McGuires at the Shuri Castle, with Okinawa in the background.

Cameron poses in front of the Shisa dog guarding the castle gate.

Shuri Castle 2

This is the Shuri Castle and it's surrounding buildings. The building shown here was the King and Queen's main living quarters. Many ceremonies were conducted on this parade deck.

Here's my little poser! Cameron enjoyed climbing all the stairs.

Instead of the typical souvenirs that one may collect in the states, the Japanese have stamping stations. We started out with a map of the grounds and at each little building or new path, there was a stamping station. Daniel found almost all the stamps. It's a good way to know that you've seen it all!

Daniel poses in front of one of the most sacred buildings on the castle grounds. This was the place of prayer for all those living at the castle. It was where the King would pray before leaving his castle and before many political meetings. Its just a wall around a couple of Banyan trees, it's supposed to be very sacred.

This is the top of the front of the castle where the king would sit to watch the various ceremonies. A lot of the art work bears resemblance to that of Chinese art, due to the fact that the Chinese played a very important role in crowning Okinawa's first king. The kingdom of Okinawa was known as the Ryukyu Kingdom. The dragon is the Chinese symbol of peace and power.

We visited the tatami rooms, that's all they were, just rooms with mats on the floors. We had to take off our shoes for the whole inside tour, so not to ruin the mats. Pictured below is the place where they would brew their green tea, just a cement hole in the floor. Otherwise, there were no furniture or anything that would resemble a kitchen! It was a little disappointing.

The outer porch of the tatami house.

There were only two of these ornate columns, not sure if there were actually more. There was quite a bit of construction going on while we were there. The third floor was the attic and strictly for ventilation purposes. Overall, the castle living quarters were quite smaller than I'd imagined for a king. On the second floor, there was a chair facing what looked like a wall, but it actually was a wall that was lifted to show off the king from the second deck. This is where he would give his speeches and watch the special ceremonies on the parade deck in front.

This is another seat of the king or queen. Half of the second level of this part of the castle belonged to the queen and the king's other wives. No males, other than her children, were allowed in this part of the castle at anytime.

The king and his women would pray every morning in their tatami rooms.

The rooms were quite bare. It seemed that this castle was robbed and left with hardly anything!! Maybe the fact that this is it's third reconstruction, due to the wars. The hole in the floor shows the original ruins of the castle.

An enlarged version of the king's crown, not as lavish as I would've imagined. Of course the bead work here is fake, it was real gems when he wore it. We are standing in front of the area where the king would sit to conduct business. There wasn't a throne here, just a tatami mate on a raised platform. His son and grandson would sit on his left and right.

Cameron poses with one of the guards (?)

This is a view of the surrounding area of the castle. Now the castle is pretty well swallowed up by the town.

Kokasai Street Market

This is Kokasai Street, it's this huge market, it seems like it covers six blocks or so! Funny thing though, it seems all the shops have pretty much all the same stuff! I was looking for something unique. This place reminded me of Pike's Street Market in Seattle, or the flea markets in Charleston, SC. We visited the meat markets and saw all kind of exotic fish, all parts of the pig, beef and poultry for sale. We saw a bunch of Japanese Santas too! The Japanese celebrate Christmas as if it were a second Valentines Day, just a day to give gifts and show your appreciation for your loved ones.

Cameron found some frog wallets, they were real frogs a couple days ago! BLAH! I hate frogs!

Yummy! (uh NOT?) Lots of meat at the market! You can even have something as exotic as the puffer fish shown below, or a huge lobster!

Everyone has their version of a Santa! A Japanese Santa! Playing their traditional instrument, the "San Shing" which translates as "three-string". These things are $150! Looks and sounds like a $store toy! The boys were given goody bags from the Santas.

Carmello shows us the size of this lobster!
That's one big Lobster!

This waving cat is seen all over Okinawa, probably Japan as well, not sure what the significance is? Anyone? Is it like their version of a Snoopy or something?

Our Trip to the Japanese Orphanage!

We recently had the opportunity to visit a local Japanese orphanage. This is where they live. They share rooms, two kids per room. They have a good sized gym where we held our event, though they didn't have any balls to play with.

The kids patiently wait for the events of the day!

My hospital's chaplain's office had a tree with candy canes on it, bearing the names, ages, and sizes of the orphans. We could pick up a candy cane and buy for the child and then return the candy cane with wrapped gifts to the chaplain's office so they knew who got what!

I didn't find out about this opportunity to buy gifts until too late, but I was able to bring the whole family to help with the various games and crafts. The boys had a great time mingling with the orphans and other children that came to visit. They were able to get in on the food and games. Our booth was the cookie decorating booth and it had it's perks! Cameron got to eat all the broken cookies! When the activity at our booth died down, we let the boys run through all the booths for some fun and games.

This little guy is adorable! He was all banged up in the legs and head, just a rough-houser I guess. He was a happy little guy! This is the one I wanted to take home!
It was great to see their smiles!

Overall, our favorite part was watching the kids receive their gifts with big smiles and victory dances . The chaplain had to put a halt to all the gifts that people were bringing! Each child received at least 4 gifts each! There were tons of gifts left over too! We experienced the truth of the verse that says, "It is more blessed to give than to receive! "
This little guy can barely see over the top of his bundle!Then they read the Christmas story and did a cheesy job of acting it out, but nonetheless .... Then "Santa" gave out the gifts to each kid. The orphans wouldn't open their gifts, we had to prompt them to open them. They were very appreciative and carefully examined each thing they got. Some children didn't even open some of their packages, guess they thought it was too pretty to open! We helped clean up the gym where all this was taking place and moved everything outdoors for a traditional Christmas dinner on the grounds. I wanted to hold some of those kids, but some Americans had already grabbed them up. Evidently, the hospital does some sort of function with this orphanage on a monthly basis. The First Class Petty Officers of the hospital get small groups together to go once a month for grounds keeping and BBQ at the orphanage. This event was the biggest event of them all. I think we Americans outnumbered the workers and residents! It was great! Cameron wanted to have "some of those Japanese kids over for dinner and to play with them!" Daniel and Cameron were trying to think of some of their own toys that they could give to these children. We will definitely be making another trip down there!

Sweet Potato Festival!

We try to get out for some sort of adventure in Okinawa, about every weekend or so. With the help of the local paper, Japan Update, I can stay abreast of the various festivals and activities available here. We missed the Obon festival as it was either during church, school, work or bedtime hours! The Obon is held in the months of August and September and focuses on the Japanese ancestry and the honoring of their dead. There are a lot of different celebrations, dances, and costumes associated with this festival. As that may be a more morbid topic, we chose to try out their "Sweet Potato Festival". This festival is a yearly celebration of the harvesting of the sweet potato which wasn't ever a native plant here in Okinawa, but was brought to Okinawa by a farmer many years ago. It's become a staple item here, so the sweet potato is worthy of it's celebration! There were lots of sweet potato plants and potatoes to buy as well as lots to taste!

Have you seen a purple potato? We did see some purple potatoes in an ordering magazine in Washington state, but I had never seen one in person. Pretty wild actually! The purple sweet potato tastes like a regular orange sweet potato, just not as sweet and a little dryer. However, the purple sweet potato seems to be more common than the usual orange ones we're used to.Not sure if Cameron's "diggin" this one!

Here Mr. Sweet Potato takes to walking through the crowds in the park.

More yummy sweet potato!

We decided to join the big crowds in this area of the park to figure out what all the excitement was. They had hauled in some dirt from a local farm and had buried lots of sweet potatoes. This was their version of an easter egg hunt! With bags in hand, the kids were itching to get busy digging. They blew the whistle and off went the kiddos......

After this event, we wandered over to another crowd of onlookers. I am not sure what this particular sport is, but there were lots of different age groups of fighters and teams. The whistle would blow and the wrestlers would grab each others' cloth belts and try to turn their opponent over onto the ground. It was neat watching some of the younger guys turn the older kids down quickly! It's a sport of speed and balance!

A good part of our day was watching the performances. The performances were put on from the tiny preschoolers to the high school students of various schools on the island. Each age group had their own costume and dance. The youngest group's song and dance resembled something much like the "Wiggles" on TV. Uh.... NO! I am NOT a Fan!

These kids were really cute! Too bad I didn't have a clue as to what they were singing about! I'm guessing that all the orange and purple in their costumes had something to do with the sweet potatoes!

Overall, we had a fun day immercing ourselves in the Okinawan culture! Oh yeah, and I did try some octopus for the first time. It's one of their "fair foods". They make this hushpuppy-like batter with green and red peppers, and bury a small chunk of octopus in it and deep-fry it. There was so much yummy fried batter around it, I didn't even taste it!! I've learned here that it you aren't sure about liking a certain food, like sushi, raw fish, .... just add wasabi to it or dunk it in a batter n deep fry it!!! ;)