Nakagusuku Castle Ruins

Now that we have orders and know we are definitely leaving the island…..we are re-visiting our favorite places as well as some of the places on island that Ty and Ryan don’t really remember. Today was the Nakagusuku Castle Ruins. These ruins are very close to our house, about 20 minutes out the Sgt Maj gate. It was beautiful today and we had a great time walking the grounds. This castle is believed to have been built in the first half of the 15th century by Lord Gosamaru. There is recent debate on that due to style changes in some of the foundations….either way, it is very old. Like most sites on Okinawa, it is very affordable. Adults 200 Yen, students 100 Yen. Not sure why she only charged us $700 yen total…? It is really fun to walk the pathways and climb all the ancient rock steps. The open areas were used for training horses. From the top you can see the East China Sea on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other. There is also a well. Jorden was teasing Ty and telling him to drink from it for everlasting youth. More like everlasting stomach cramps if you really drank from the moss covered water. Ha! They have been doing construction work on many of the old castle ruins around the island. I had taken some fun pictures of the kids on this one arch way back in January of 2005 and wanted to get the same pictures again, but there were like things put up to block access. No one was there at the time, just us, so we climbed over and I got their pictures again in the same site. We can’t help but climb things, it is just in our nature. The “Ninja” came out and we began scaling the old castle wall. Nobody was on the side we were on to see us break probably one of the rules posted in Japanese. Jorden jumped up and started climbing and Ty was right behind him. They made it to the top without falling or getting stuck. Jorden said he startled the Okinawan’s that were on the other side. Spider Monkey Ryan began climbing, but I made him come down. If someone is going to fall from the top, it would be Ryan. He was sad, but actually listened to me and came down before he got too far up. Vicki and I tried but failed. Vicki was wearing slip slops and I was in boots with a spikey heel, so we were going nowhere fast. Ed started to climb but thought better of it and jumped back down. We got a couple of family shots using the timer and old broken walls. We ended the exploration at the vending machines. There were 6 soda machines to choose from. We all chose something different and each of us, except Ryan tried something new. Jorden’s Mango Cream Soda was interesting……

Nagagusuku Castle Ruins