As this was our first time visiting Japan and we didn’t really know the area we decided to book one of the MSC shore tours to be safe and try to get the most out of our port days. The Best of Naha tour seemed to us to be one of the better value ones and included some things that were of interest to us so that’s what we went with.
This is a half day tour and in this video we show you what you get and give you our thoughts on each location and the tour overall.
You can also find lots more information on our website at www.robandali.net
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hi this is Robin Ali sharing with you our passion of all things cruise and travel we are in naha today we’ve done a tour from the ship an MSC tour uh it’s called best of naha and it visits shuri Joe Castle and caide Dory which is a shopping street it’s about a half an hour on the coach here we’ve just arrived this is the gate our guide Hero has been telling us a little bit about the place so we’re going to have a look around shy joke Castle um he’s been telling us a little bit about it and I’ll tell you all he said when we’re um when we’re going through just to say that the um getting on the coach it was not what we expected at all when you arrive it’s a huge underground um kind of uh Coach Park and you have to take a photograph of where you are that of where to get the coach when you pick it back up just like when you’re in one of those huge shopping centers because you’ll never find your bus again so that was a surprise true all right let’s have a look at the Castle I think the guide has gone ahead now behind me is a gate at the entrance of the castle now this is not a gate that you would pass through this is uh this is a prayer gate and what would happen is the uh the Kings and people leaving the palace would pray at this gate for a safe journey along the road uh so prayer gate you don’t go through it it doesn’t open it was partially destroyed in the fire on the journey our guide was telling us a little bit about the castle and he was saying that it has actually um been destroyed by fire five times and this is the uh this is the sixth version that is undergoing construction at the moment he’s supposed to be finished in 2026 after which time you won’t be able to go inside so we’re a bit lucky coming before 2026 because we’re going to get a look inside while it’s still being constructed this is actually a fairly steep walk up here with these steps that we walk up to the entrance or the second gate this is the Lions or looking lions that look after the gates in fact people often have those in front of their houses that’s why you see them ah our guide told us that the people who can’t get up this wheelchairs or people who are a bit unstable there is another entrance where they can come in and look inside the castle so it’s a different entrance so if you are in a wheelchair or are in stable on your feet you can still come here the train that can see from here around about here I’m not sure whether you’re getting there’s only one rail line in uh naha or in um and that island is the monal it goes from the airport right through to the other side of the island it goes to the city this is a spectacular views from here um yeah this is this is a really good spot to to just soak in the just to see what the city is like and you can see the ocean over that way used to be sacred Forest um as far as you could see but obviously development has now taken over let’s carry on going our guide has taken us through this gate behind us and we’re in U quite a large sort of waiting area now from here what he’s going to do he going to give us some tickets we don’t know what these buildings are yet we haven’t had a look on the pamphlet but um he’s going to give us the tickets which will allow us to go into the castle and then we can uh do our own thing look around on our own yeah so throughout the different stages throughout the different hundreds of years when um on the different occasions when this Castle has been destroyed it’s been destroyed in um in um not completely except when it got to them the second world war when he said it was completely destroyed so I don’t even think the walls are original but they are trying to restore it um all back to its original form yeah some of them look pretty old though they look like they I did think that some of the but certainly I I don’t think the 1900s um well the original no no not 1900s 900s uh no the original Castle was built in the ryuku dynasty which I think was the 14th century he said was when the original and since then there’s been basically a fire every hundred years yeah which is why we’re now on the six rebuilt so the sun’s coming out it’s a beautiful day we better find our guide with our tickets so we can actually get so we’ve come this far and you don’t need a ticket it’s only then to get into the inner sanctum yes plenty of toilets everywhere as well that’s one additional thing they’ve added I think as they’ve been rebuilding toilets toilets we got our tickets now we found out what some of the buildings are the one behind us is just an information desk and a rest house and then some toilets over here so we’ve got our tickets let’s go into the castle proper we’ve had a look at the map map uh what I’ll do is actually I’ll put a map in here uh so that you can see what this map like looks like it’s a huge place I we are not going to get round it all the regular course takes about 90 minutes we actually have about 40 minutes before we’ve got to have a look around here and then go back to the bus which is not a lot of time one of the other buildings that we just saw before we’ve actually gone through the ticket is the Great Dragon column repair exhibition room tell us about this I I said that with was even moving my lips so these are the Great Dragon columns they’re made from sandstone um and this is one of the characteristic features of the sheeri castle um and they’ve stood up to the fire um but due to the immense heat of the fires that they’ve had they’ve started to show cracks now believe it or not they have I guess you should realize it like everything there is a scale of cracks like a scale of earthquakes and things like that um of activity and they show it on this sort of a heat map here so this is this is the two columns and they’ve shown this places where the cracks have have appeared so in order to restore them and repair them rather than trying to fill the cracks with something like cement that will crack again they use a resin and they actually inject the resin in between the cracks to sort of hold it together and that will give a little bit of flexibility as well and because it’s seethrough you can’t see that that that’s where the repairs are and then these will then go back on display for people to enjoy um for many generations to come it’s worth sometimes just taking a step back and waiting for the crowds to go we’ve now come into the castle and we’re on a little Bridgeway and if we look down this is the original Courtyard that we came into before that we were showing you and look how different it looks now there’s nobody there it really is quite um something to see and it’s it is a marvelous elevation here it is lovely you do get a sense that it was something special in it even though it’s been recreated it when I say recreated it’s not like a Disney Recreation it still has certain age and characteristic and charm about it and I think that’s probably because the Restorations have been over the over the various um centuries difficult to know which which bits are the old ones but yeah there’s certainly a certain charm to it our guide hero was telling us that this Castle is actually built on the highest part of Okinawa Island at 130 M High that’s not very high compared to some of the places on the mainland Island but it is um highest point here part of the interesting bit about coming on this tour is is all about the restoration work behind me it may surprise you to know that I do actually work in Timber so this is a a familiar site to me so behind me is all the timber that they are using in the restoration of this Castle they are using sort of traditional techniques to recreate it to make it as authentic as possible but then obviously Modern Machinery is involved as well we do have people it is a a working Workshop hard people hopefully you’re getting this hopefully it’s not a reflection of the window cuz they in front of a window but yes this is where they’re actually working underneath the the clay tiles are all the shingles all the kind of the leaves of the shingles as well underneath it is going to be painstaking to recreate this which is why I think it’s taking so many years to get it completed it’s fascinating what they did say though was once the some of the original Little Bits that are left standing once they’re covered up with the restoration work you will no longer be able to see the original which is a bit of a shame you think that they they may put in some little PE specs windows in places so that you can still see the original underneath that that would be perhaps a a really good feature to have we can see over here as Robert pans round you can see the walls of the castle um that come around it’s they’re curved and quite thick as most cast walls are and in some places they are double double thickness we don’t know whether you could walk in between you know a little bit like um Great Wall of China or Hadrian’s Wall they were sort of built like that where you could walk or the soldiers could go or the guards in between um but that gives you a sense of the size of the place interesting you should say that about China because hero was telling us on the way here that at one time okena Island was under the control of the Chinese so behind me I’m going to take this hat off so behind me here they are reconstructing the main hall completely from scratch entirely from start to finish it’s on three floors and they’ve given viewing platforms so you can see this being reconstructed it’s absolutely fascinating because even the columns are made of Timber the whole thing is sort of Timber framed and then set into sandstone and a kind of concrete slabs that’s they give you detailed stepbystep guide about how they’re doing this of course this gives you an appreciation of how difficult and the intricacies of actually doing this in the 1400s without all the modern technology somebody’s been very clever here so the building that they’re reconstructing the main hall in the mural outside of this which I just thought was nice decoration this is actually that this is the main hall that that’s what going to look like two size that’s what it is the mirror image of it inside so you get a sense of the size of it and also the decoration and the intricacies and everything else that’s going on inside so isn’t that really clever you get a sense that of the size and that it is over those three stories it’s going to be so impressive it is the dragons on the top here orig Al they were made from um so you would have sort of the metal a metal post and then each of the segments is um is cast individually out of pottery for the design and painted and decorated and then it is all sort of glued together if you like even even originally with sort of resin and mortar um and put together and they’re the dragons to look after the main hall so they’re recreating those as well the pathway leads us on up to to an observation deck which is up further ramp now we said about people who are a little bit unstable being able to come in or if you’re on a wheelchair I’m not sure how far they’d be able to get I’m not sure you could actually get up here as we wind our way through the ruins and up the steps climbing higher there are points of interest all along the way so on this side here they Unearthed so during sort of um excavation they Unearthed a well or a water reservoir um rather than a well so this is where they collected rainwater and it’s all lined inside with extra little um Chambers where the water would collect and then it’s all lined with plaster so that the water wouldn’t seep out genius they’ve also recreated um using tals that they’ve read old scripts and tals that they’ve got Citrus Gardens and a chrysanthemum Garden um and they’ve recreated ated those things here that looked an intricate gate what was that about well they think this is sort of an extension to the uh the original um constructions uh built in about the 1700s these gates are are now made not from wood but from uh Sandstone I think it’s Sandstone or Limestone um carefully recreated and this would have housed the king uh plus the female um the female courtiers of the king um and also it allowed for the coffin of the king to be now inside the gate walls rather than where it used to be placed um outside say the king the kings over time OB it wasn’t the one okay so up here we’ve got an observation deck we’ll have a look there and then we’re I think we’re going to have to start heading back very shortly we don’t have much time at all on this tour no entry down that way we’re not allowed so we go up some more steps you would certainly have kept fit if you lived in the uh the times when this was being used you certainly do get a good view of everywhere all around from here don’t you you you can see over here the building with the um the main room the castle is in the Heart of the City so completely 365° we are surrounded by city so there the views are not the most attractive but they are very very interesting to look at you get a complete view of N I am so surprised at how busy it is I have to say even though we knew it was the busiest city and the busiest port that we came into this was quite a surprise and it’s also surprise how little land there is around the castle they’ve sort of built pretty much right up there are a number of routs around this castle and we can see the pathway that goes around that’s not one that we’re going to be able to do this is one of the utaki now utaki is a collective name of praying places and there are a few of them inside the castle and this is one of them the most important one is called eie uh I’m not really sure where the eie utaki is apologies if I didn’t say that the right way around so after the observation deck we’ve got the return route there are signs showing you where to go around these routes and as I said there are different routes around the castle um and they all take different amounts of times some of these steps you’ve got to watch you step on here again another sign the return route which shows you the way to go around this little Garden area tucked away in the corner here is another little area which is called the yuya this is believed to be a bath area for female attendants so we’ve all heard of bed baths well the king apparently used to be bathed by two female attendants but while he wore his white cotton kimono and there were pouches in the sleeves and around the body of the kimono where the female attendants would slip their hands laed up with soap and they would wash him without him revealing his Royal nakedness so the King was not in the all together no here are some of the other roots and the gardens that uh unfortunately we’ve not been able to go around today and back to the gate and our time here is nearly up we need to make our way back to the coach now to our guide to go on to our next uh stop of went next and last up which is uh koku Dori which is the main shopping street that was a little confusing but uh we managed to find our way back to the bus so our I took a photograph and our area was a and when we came down there is every letter from souvenir shop going b c and d no letter A so we started making our way down the escalators then had to ask one of the Gods and a is in section B there you go okay thank you very much for cooperation so 20 minute bus ride thereabouts from the castle brings us down to coai Street which is the main shopping street um coai apparently translates to International Street and it’s it’s not named after anything other than the international Theater which used to be here and that’s which is no longer here yeah what he did say was there’s there’s nothing traditional here at all that’s left it is basically it is what it is it’s a souvenir shop souvenir Mile Long Street call it Miracle Mile something Mir Miracle Mile it’ll be a miracle if you get to the end of it without spending money on some rubbish I think is what it is so we we stopped outside the prefecture main city hall uh apologies if I got that wrong uh as well the buses can’t stop here so they are off now and they will come back in 2 hours time at 1:00 to pick us up so we’re off to find a cafe oh we are desperate for something to drink we didn’t manage to get any water on our way out so we stopped listening probably about 10 minutes ago because that’s all we can think about is a cold drink we’ll have a walk down cide street we’ve got an option of walking back or getting a taxi back or a shuttle bus or or uh getting picked up by the bus here so we’ll get a drink we’ll sit down and we’ll maybe do a quick review of uh of this tour and then we’ll decide whether we’re going to walk back it’s about 2 km back to the cruise ship apparently my very first initial impression is that it is very busy but it is very very clean yeah well caide Street apparently is down this way straight down here to the shopping street let’s go and have a look what’s down there so this is the start of cocky Street and it’s it’s got some nice Palms boulevards but you can see straight away it is literally shops and restaurants all the way down some interesting little souvenirs and artifacts that you can take home artifacts is a bit of a stretch rubish souvenir knickknacks there are lots of sweet treats and goodies but unfortunately I have no idea what they are to even try them could just buy some and see what they are the the thing is they don’t scream quality do they so I think you can kind of tell they scream sugar yeah sugar yeah they definitely just look sugary souvenir sweet yeah we may have found somewh kangan store there held beer and food and things looks quite nice inside Third Time Lucky we’ve managed to find a little restaurant that’s downstairs it’s a lovely little restaurant you go downstairs or we’ve come down some stairs into this this area here um she’s been using the Google translator for the menu and managed to order us um an alcohol-free ran for herself uh a draft of sah and a bowl of Edam Army so we’re not going to starve with Google translator are we but actually the thing is the the Google translator it will translate into literal so a lot of the foods were things like um you know the the the feet of pigs and chicken senu skewers and things it’s very very literal and even for Robert who has a stronger stomach than me he kind of just went so we’ve been very very safe and we we’ve gone for the we’ve gone for um the um EDI beans edamami beans which is the safest thing you could possibly get it’s a bit boring really but it’s just a snack to have with the beer they are lovely look I would never have really eaten Pig’s trots anyway I don’t think but certainly after that um that morning with the little piggies in Yokohama I absolutely could not eat them now if you are down hoside street um pop into kangan store they’ve got uh it’s a lovely little place that was a lovely little stop with the drink and snack nearly fell off the pavement there lovely little stop with drink and stack and companies a Japanese couple uh on our ship sat next to us so we had a little bit of a a chat with them uh the the lady there used to live in London a good few years ago and spoke very good English so uh if you do watch this then you were sat next to us in the uh in the cafe then hi and thanks for your company it was uh it was very pleasant what we’re going to do now is we’re going to walk back down kide street um because we I wants to see if she can find the Cho shop down here uh try and get some Sho products because we believe they’re a lot cheaper then you can get them in Australia so we are walking back now down Cai street it’s got a bit busier than um than it was earlier I think I absolutely love the advertising boards this one’s going on behind me you can probably hear it with the uh not sure what the creature is there’s so much fun in the streets though ah looks like we found a uh a shopping Center shopping mall this looks like it this is directly across the road from where we’re supposed to catch the bus it’s like a Japanese version of David Meer it’s got all the same Brands and everything so who knows how long we’ll be here but I think we may be walking back to the ship okay she’s found the product she wants and now we’re doing a bit of a price comparison thanks to modern technology hop on the internet and see how much it is in Australia and so far it’s looking like it might be quite a bit more plus we also are qualify for the tax refund scheme so that think we can claim the tax back because we’re overseas visitors U anyway see how we go with the prices first of all then we’ll work out if she does want it what we do about Tax Refund Now compared to it was a lot cheaper but we have a store called Mecha which apparently is based in Brisbane and it’s pretty much the same price as the uh as what she can get the stuff back home for so it’s not a purchase from Japan today from the chiso products we’re just about 10 minutes off the bus now so we’re going to hop across the road literally across the road and catch the bus back to the uh cruise port so this is the advertising board that I was talking about we’re across the other side of the road now I’m not sure what the fish was trying to say or what the shop is but he’s very vocal that little fishy it’s almost like a little movie in itself green man cross the road for the bus we are waiting for the bus now to go back to the uh the cruise terminal that is our tour that we booked through MSC Cruisers best of naha as I recall it was a little bit over a hundred Australian dollars per person so I I can’t remember exactly but uh so just over $200 for the two of us now we’ve enjoyed our morning it is now coming up to 1:00 we set off at um well it was 8:15 was the meeting place inside the G terminal so we’ve enjoyed our morning but we don’t feel we’ve really had good value for money we have to say not on this particular tour no we went to the castle and the castle was great we would have loved more time to to look around there but it took a long time to actually get in there get our tickets we were supposed to have an hour and 20 minutes I think by the time that had finished we were down to about 50 minutes uh for us to have a look around on our own and it was about a 10-minute walk for us to get back to the bus so yes we only had about 40 minutes there when we look on the map the recommended time to walk around is 90 minutes yeah so we were a little bit sort of rushed around there I don’t think there’s too much that we didn’t see we just didn’t have a lot time to take it in we enjoyed and understand what we were looking at and we can’t fault the tour as being being part of a tour buus you do feel that little bit of being herded and rushed together and you don’t get to enjoy what you’re looking at until you then get the time on your own and you can have a little Wonder off so that’s not the tour’s fault that is all part part of being part of a big tour so no complaints there but it’s not that far away and um even our guide said you could just get the monor rail which is very simple only goes kind of one way back that’s it a one track with what how many stops 19 19 stops it just goes up and down up and down so there’s two stops that are within about 10 or 15 minutes walk of the castle I just had a look on the um on the map yeah entrance to the castle was about 400 Yen um which makes it a very inexpensive um admission fee it does then the coach brought us back into the um Kai Street I say again kusai Street k street so just say a little bit about cus size street cze street is is a a street it’s a mile long they call it the Miracle Mile so it’s about 1.6 km long it is it’s a modern street it’s not a historical Street it is full of tourist uh shops absolutely lovely and worthwhile coming down and checking out the shops and the cafes and everything but we had two hours here we we didn’t need 2 hours and you know what if we did want 2 hours we could walk back it’s about 2 km to walk back to the cruise terminal there’s also a taxi there’s also a shuttle bus so if we had an hour in kocai Street and and had a look around and then if anybody wanted to stay and quite a few people did actually quite a few people said they weren’t coming back and they would walk back easy done we thought the focus could have been more on the castle than kide Street simply because of its location if you say you can walk back or just jump a cab for next to nothing the reason I am I’m I looked distracted then is because they the timing on this ship and and I guess it’s pretty good it means that people aren’t hanging around it’s to the second if they say they’re going to pick you up or something it leaves at a particular time it does and we were told to be here at 1 and it is dead on 1:00 and our coach has turned up he wait 10 minutes and they said but we did put our name down and our cabin number that we may walk back to the ship so if we went on this they’re not going to wait for us because we’ve already said we may have walked back anyway so so here we go just to wrap up caide Street and the castle definitely worth doing the tour guide said there is absolutely nothing else of any historical value very good English gave us a a you know good talk and everything but it was not a guided tour through the castle and certainly not a guided tour in the town but for our money we did not get good bang for our books if you want to do this seriously consider doing it yourself it’s close to the terminal very little risk you would do it for a fraction of the cost and you would have a lot more Leisure Time Around if you’ve liked this video please hit like please hit subscribe and hit the notification button if you want to see more of our videos from naha on this absolutely gorgeous sunny day we’re going to say thanks for watching yes and bye for now we’ll see you in the next one bye