Date I went: 03/29/2020
Youtube video:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oritabi808/
I'm not writing this post to give any history lessons or cool things I learned at Nakagusuku castle. In fact there is not much information to be found at the castle besides the information brochure you receive. Most of the information on the castle can be found online and on the Nakagusuku castle website. I'll highlight a few interesting things I found online there and provide my own observations.
Nakagusuku Castle: https://www.nakagusuku-jo.jp/en/about
Kitanakagusuku Village Ayakari no Mori Library (あやかりの杜 図書館)
To start the day I happened to come across this library called Kitanakagusuku Village Ayakari no Mori Library (it's a mouthful I know) coming from Chatan over the main middle hill. It's hardly a mountain coming over from one side of Okinawa to the other from Chatan to Nakagusuku at least; actually I believe this is one of the shortest widths of the island, as my Dad famously keeps telling that Okianwa is 2 miles at it's shortest width. There is also a camping ground here, and I would imagine it be a great spot to camp especially in the hotter summer months of Okianwa with a cool breeze coming up the hill. The view of the ocean can clearly be seen as well as the town of Nakagusuku.
Onishi Terrace Golf Club (大西テェラスゴルフクラブ)
I also made a quick stop to check out Onishi Terrace Golf Club once more, as I had previously checked it out while biking around Okinawa. Many golfers were poised and ready to tee off on this Sunday the 29th of March. I didn't play the course personally, but the views were quite fantastic from my vantage point above what looked to be the first hole.
Nakagusuku Castle (中城城跡)
After that dilly dallying I made my way to the Castle. It's listed as one of Japan's 100 most famous castles and is a Unesco World Heritage site, joining the ranks of sites such as the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Colloseum of Rome. It is in fact 1 of 9 World Heritage sites that can be found in Okinawa.
Here is a link to the other's if you'd like to learn more.
Some of the quotes I would like to highlight for what it takes to become a World Heritage site include
"To represent a masterpiece of human creative genius"
"To bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared"
"To be an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history;"
Pretty heavy stuff if you ask me...
Nakagusuku Castle is located just 10 minutes by car from Chatan, and about 20 to 30 minutes from Naha depending on the traffic. When I went on Sunday in the morning there was nobody else there. The ticket booth lady and golf cart guy who drove me to the start of the castle grounds were quite friendly. It felt like a mom and pops shop running an ancient castle grounds exhibition.
In good faith with Japanese castles and towns, Nakagusuku proudly shines their Gosamaru mascot when you enter the castle grounds. He is based off of one of the most famous Aji from the time of its construction in 1440 AD, his full title being Lord of Zakimi, “the Yomitan Mountains Aji (Lord) Gosamaru". He's the guy who helped unify Okinawa during his time around 600 years ago.
As a side note I'm definitely playing this as a D&D character in the future. He carries a battle fan and a white carrot, apparently the white carrots are well known to the region of Nakagsuku. But I have a feeling that they don't taste like marshmallows or vanilla ice cream though.
There's a few parking spaces at the entrance area for the castle. You first buy a ticket at the ticket booth from the kind Obaasan (Japanese for aunty) there and then board a golf cart driven by a nice Ojiisan (Japanese for uncle) who takes you up to the top of the hill for the start of the castle grounds.
Once at the top you disembark from the golf cart and you are set to explore the castle grounds!
There is a large area fenced off here for he excavation work they are doing to uncover ancient Ryukyu relics beneath the castle grounds.
Some ruins on top of the wall of the castle.
The rocks from the construction of the castle almost seem to blend into the hill and it feels like the castle has grown it's roots into the hill.
Photo of the Nakagusuku Hotel taken from abandonedkansai.com (https://abandonedkansai.com/2012/06/20/nakagusuku-hotel-ruin-the-background-story/#jp-carousel-3346)
There's a fun and scary little ghost story I read regarding the hotel next to the Nakagusuku castle, only about 50 meters away. I didn't check out the hotel personally, but I wish I had; I seriously love ghosts and scary places. You can read about it here in the link for Abandoned Kansai. To summarize though it's haunted and the ghosts will make you go crazy if you stay there, and that is why they abandoned the hotel project (like many hotel projects throughout Japan as I would find out through my travels later). Japan has lots of ghosts lets just leave it at that.
Link to a more detailed version of the story here:
A sacred monument. I have no idea what this monument is, and on the website it doesn't provide much explanation for it either. It's in the main plaza area though and feels important. Maybe there's an ancient Ryukyu battle fan directly passed down from Lord Gosamaru himself, waiting to be pulled by a champion of Okinawa who will release the island from the grips of control of the... well I don't want to get too political let's leave that story in the realm of fantasy as well.
I walk around the castle more, and although I know it's an important site and people say it's an important site, it just feels abandoned and forgotten. It's well up-kept, no doubt about that and it was awesome having the whole castle to myself as I strolled around. I don't think there's anything wrong with that though, and I quite like going and checking out places that people don't normally frequent anyways. If you don't look down the hills to the sprawling towns and buildings below around Okinawa, I think you could really get lost in time here, and maybe with a few extra special white carrots you could really enter another zone.
There are a few stone laying techniques that the Okinawans used to make the castle, but one I would like to call attention to is the Aikata technique. It reminded me of the way the Hawaiians built walls as well, and is actually how the rock wall at our house was built. The unique thing about this method of building stone walls is that no motar is used to hold the rocks together. The stones are actually processed to fit into each other, forming the most solid type of stone wall construction.
After exploring the inside of the castle I go out to the castle grounds front yard as I'll call it. While I show the videos I took of the castle my Dad recalls when he and his friends from Kubasaki high school (the American military school in Okinawa) would come here and play a firework slingshot game.
The game entailed seniors vs Juniors/sophmores, and as the name implies they would slingshot fireworks at one another. Of course they took precautions wearing heavy jackets, sunglasses, and helmets; so responsible right. They would use little cherry bombs for grenades. I asked him if this was a once a year event, like some hazing ritual, but he said they come up a few times throughout the year to play. I guess that was the alternative to playing hours of League of Legends or binging Netflix all night.
The castle definitely feels ancient, and I'm quite certain that a barage of rocks hurled by ents could not even penetrate these walls. If I was a Ryukyu king I would feel quite safe up here, and ride my horse down the hill to the beaches below. What a nice life that would be.
The views are quite nice from the castle overlooking Nakagusuku and even having the American Village/Chatan visible in the distance. Forests encircle the castle on every side.
Thank you for reading and hope you enjoyed my take on some of the things I noticed at the castle!
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