Okinawa Japan Tour – WWII Tunnels, Zen Gardens and Great Food!

Today our 9-Month Ultimate World Cruise stops in Okinawa Japan. Here we have our first World War II historical stop. We tour the Okinawa Navy Tunnels from WWII. This was an incredibly moving and emotional place as so many people perished here during WWII. We follow our time there with a visit a beautiful garden to relax and reflect. We end our day we a great Japanese teppanyaki meal.

Ultimate World Cruise Day 113 to 114

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hello everyone and welcome back to our 9-month ultimate World Cruise adventure and today we’re in okanawa Japan where we experienced some sobering World War II history we walk through a tranquil Japanese garden and have an amazing tiyaki meal welcome to living Phase [Music] 2 hi Mike and I’m Nancy and we’re in empty nesters striving to live life to the fullest and we’re living that full life aboard Royal Caribbean’s 9-month ultimate World cruise on serenade of the sea well we sure are Mike and today we’re in okanawa Japan and this was was quite a day quite a busy day with lots to see and do and our ship docked we had a nice easy port to get around in some of these ports have been wonderful here lately right taxis pulled up right up outside they also had some some shuttles that we could have paid to go in but but frankly the taxis are amazing in Japan right and that’s what we did we decided that we had done enough research that we kind of felt like we knew where we were going we were comfortable uh with the places we wanted to go to so us and uh two of our friends came with us we just got a cab and we went to our first destination but let me give you a pro tip here first friends so Japan does not have Uber that is not an option for you they don’t have like the third party they don’t they don’t allow ride share is is what it is um but there is an app you can install on your phone it’s called go just go and then you can hail your taxi and and Mark a pin in it so just basically the same way that you would use Uber you would use this go app but it just it calls a taxi and really the taxis are are very fair and they’re they’re honest yes yeah so and it worked really well so it did yeah to give you an example we took a taxi to our first destination which is the Japanese Naval headquarters um site and it was about a 35 minute taxi ride from the port uh there were four of us in the cab and it was $20 is in equivalent in US dollars so extremely reasonable extremely fair and it’s all metered and if you do it through the go app you you pay right through the app like you do with Uber now Pro tip number two with cabs in uh Japan be very aware whether they’ll take credit cards or not oh true if you’re just now getting to Japan and you haven’t been able to acquire some Yen through an ATM or a money exchange be sure to ask ask your taxi driver will they take a credit card or just cash Japan Japan is a very cash-based Society so you just want to make sure that uh that you can pay for your cab you know when you get it so watch for that well as we men mentioned we took a cab to the Japanese Naval headquarters from World War II and this site what they did they dug a couple of kilometers worth of tunnels under a large Hill and they use that to hold out when the Allied Forces were then attacking okanawa to start their assault on Japan and as we mentioned and you saw in the map at the beginning uh okanawa Japan is is quite Way South it’s in a small chain of islands on the very tail of Japan so it was really the stepping stones that the Allied used to start their Advance on Japan toward the end of World War II and unfortunately in these tunnels that you’re seeing you can go down and it’s 20 M down below the the surface of the Hill that we’re on and before you go down actually you you can see a movie about what happened there a video you can see all the pictures you can see all of the information directly from World War II and it’s the history what the saddest thing is these 4,000 men almost all of them died a large portion of them actually even committed suicide when the Allies were had Advanced to the point where they realized that they were not going to win this battle and that was seen as a more honorable way out um you know than getting captured by the Allies so um the again this was a very sobering piece of World War II history I think it’s very important though to still visit and to understand sites like this because because we need to always be reminded how terrible of a thing war is we don’t want to ever have to go into that situation now we of course understand that like in World War II there was the inevitability of the involvement of the United States and what happened there um you know War can sometimes be a NE necessary thing but it’s also a very terrible thing but we toured those those tunnels um you know like we walked into one room and they had a sign and you could even see the chips in the wall where you know they had set off a grenade inside there to commit suicide at the time and but it it was very well done I thought it was very um very balanced it was very simply factual in how the Japanese told the story uh of what happened in these tunnels but I would I certainly especially if you’re um a history buff or interested in World War II or you know just really looking at at history in general um this is a a good place to visit it’s a very difficult ult place to visit emotionally um and intellectually but it is U certainly worth a visit so I would I would highly recommend it so that was a little bit of a heavy start to our day y we uh on a lighter note yeah but on a lighter note we walked from the Japanese Naval headquarters we went ahead and walked down and we headed to the Montreal right right we were on our way to the montal and and on our way there well we had we had reached the montal and there’s quite a shopping complex there right there’s like a whole Mall attached to the monreal station that we were at yes and inside there was a Mr donut and one of the friends that was with us said that she gets kind of magnetized and drawn into Mr donut shees she misses having that in the United States right and and they have a daughter that lived here in Japan for four years and so they had they had been to Mr donut here so we’re like listen you know we let’s just sit and have a coffee and a donut after that little bit of a heavy start we had to the day and we did it was very good and so they had a green tea donut that was like almost like a beaded bracelet that that is really what it looked like but it was quite tasty little balls of the bracelet yeah so we tried some and again it was absolutely excellent um you know they’re always very helpful in fact they had an English menu or they also have menus that you can just point and say okay this is what I’ll have and so just kind it helps a lot right um no that was a nice stop to sit and actually have even a little discussion after the stop we had before and to kind of you know reset ourselves and get get going again so well after our Mr donut break we went down to fukushu park yes we did so this was a beautiful park it looks very old but it was really only Built about 20 years ago there shrines sculptures um a beautiful uh waterfall just just almost very it’s very Zen very meditative um the waterfall you could climb up to the top you know there’s a tower you could climb up to the top of the tower you could also go behind the waterfall and get your picture taken so that it was just it was just it was Charming there was also a big koi pond there um you get to feed the fish there was a little machine where you could drop a coin in and it would you’d get fish food out and then those fish were hungry it was like a boiling water when you threw your fish food and they were really hungry but we probably spent a good hour and a half there and it was just a very peaceful place to walk around and very beautiful yeah you even took a did a little Japanese thing and took a a coin and laid it in the dragon’s mouth did for that was for good luck so no I enjoyed that a lot just sitting on a bench enjoying the and and the funny thing was this park is in the middle of this bustling city of okanawa and it’s so calm and so peaceful so no again we’re we’re feeling uh we’re really starting to feel our Japan here it was it was a lot of fun after our relaxation in fukushu park we decided Well it’s really getting time for some lunch so we had it downtown and we went for a walk and we saw a really interesting thing right but before I tell you I’d like to invite you to like subscribe and turn on those notifications but we did so you don’t miss any of this nemon adventure that’s right and you don’t miss the sweet thing I’m going to tell you about which is the trash trucks yes so the trash trucks play music kind of like an if you can imagine an ice cream truck so friends there’s no trash cans on this the sidewalk like for instance in the United States maybe your trash day is Thursday and you’re Wheeling your trash out um to the curb well they they don’t have trash cans here but the trash truck comes by they I mean I’m sure it has to have a schedule and people hear the music that the trash truck is playing and they come out of their homes or apartments with carrying their trash and give it to the trash man to throw into the truck right so no that way the cans aren’t taking up room on the street anything like that and it’s just the uh the ice cream man version of a trash Tru those are the little cultural things that we love seeing and love learning about so well after the trash truck we walked on the on downtown and we were trying to find a place to eat and we found a tiyaki place we did now okay I’m going to tell you this is probably the best tiyaki that I think we have ever had I would agre started out with a soup it wasn’t your traditional um just miso soup it it was in a big Black Cauldron like a like a big witch’s black rod iron cauldron and uh that they would Ladle the soup out of but it was it was rich and creamy and mushroom like like a lobster bisque or or some kind of shellfish bis that was so good it was really quite delicious but even the tippenyaki that they were cooking right there on uh the plate in in front of right in front of you your table there uh the flavor was so good it seems like what we’ve had in the United States any any place we would go the flavor is always the same they kind of blend together um but this this was just very just just flavor and Rich the steak just melted in your mouth the the shrimp and other things were just just perfectly done and no um really really good so it again it’s that attention to detail that they have in Japan that um really almost nowhere else in the world excels like they do at that so we no excellent excellent lunch we just couldn’t say enough about it so try you’re going to see over these next several and as Nancy said be sure to subscribe because we have seven different cities in Japan that we’re going to be covering throughout our world Cruise here and uh you know we’re recording this after we’ve been through some of those Port days and they no secret here you’re going to see some amazing food and amazing stops so be sure to keep watching not disint Japan is not disappointed at all so after our amazing tiyaki dinner we just decided to walk the street some more and just see what this had to offer and here we ran into our first experience of vending machine culture in Japan right there’s a a lot of vending machines a lot you can get most anything out of a vending machine and they and we mean almost anything they even had horse Sashimi there and we did not we didn’t try it I don’t think I could bring myself to try that but um well a friend of ours actually researched it a little bit and I guess it comes out of the venue machine Frozen that’s how they can still be Sashimi which you mean which means raw and yeah we saw that and it was just funny it’s like okay you truly can get everything out of a vending machine and I said I would try a lot a lot of things most everything I would try on this world cruise but you think horse I wasn’t expecting horse sash anyway well another place that we saw had what’s called Bal cin now that’s a German word Bal meaning tree and cukin meaning cake so like picture uh you know when a tree is cut you see all the rings on a tree well that’s what this cake looked like so picture a spit and the cake is is rot ating and cooking and as as the the cake rotates the guy puts a a layer of batter and it continues rotating on the spit and another layer of batter and rotating on the spit and another layer and I don’t know it must rotate around 25 times or so quite quite a few um and then you you get a slice uh that looks like a slice of out of a tree tree trunk yeah so we we got a slice back to take or to take back and share with our friends yeah we did because we have some plans later that we’re going to tell you about in a minute well we continued to walk through the streets and really at that point oh we walked through a fish market another live fish market not near as big as what we saw in busang but um but yeah they had all kinds of fish and everything so fascinating to see every day well after walking through the fish market we went ahead and we caught a taxi cab and headed back to our ship as it was about time to uh to depart All Aboard that’s right and the next day was a SE day so we relaxed a little bit but then we had a really nice dinner with friends we did so we had giovan at the chef’s table so that giovanis is one of the specialty restaurants that they have on board the ship and the chef’s table is like a private dining room where they have a set menu but the chef’s table was not in use so we were able to book it for us and and a total of 10 of us were there at uh the chef’s table but we were actually having giovanis the Italian food there and we brought our own W all all of us brought wine in from places that we’ve picked up along the world Cruise so we could sample various wines we brought our Bal cukin cake along and shared that with everyone and it was just a really lovely evening to the end of a a quiet sea day that we had and the next day we’re heading to Busan South Korea so should be sure to tune in hit that subscribe Button as we see and in Busan we are going to try some unbelievable Korean barbecue and the corn dog dog slh hot dog around the world challenge continues as well as using the George W bush toilet stay tuned friends have a beautiful day we’ll see you soon thank you bye-bye bye bye [Music]