7/12/08 Nakijin Castle and Miyagi at Last!!

I can say after having completed the drive to Miyagi Minshuku, that it is way further than I thought it would be, even after I began driving in earnest and stopped making stops, but I had another stop to make before I got there and that was the detour off the main road and then off the exit road, to Nakijin Castle.  It was so worth the detour and since I was kind of in the neighborhood, it made perfect sense to venture out onto the Motobu Peninsula for a look and some photographs. 

 

Nakijin Castle is another World Heritage site and would prove to be the most developed and crowded castle I’d visited yet.  Even though it is unclear exactly who started the construction of this castle and when, archaelogical excavations prove that construction started by the 13^th century.  There is a nice museum on the grounds of this castle with relics from excavations, but no photography was allowed.  There were pieces pottery and coins and some furnishings and some old photographs.  Some of the pottery found was in pieces and they were put back together and the vessel “finished” with new white clay so the effect was like a 3-D puzzle.  The main gate, the Heirojo Gate, was restored in 1962 and gatemen stood guard in the battlements on both sides of the gate. 

I took photographs of that.  You can’t stand in these castle grounds and not be awestruck.  Nor can you stand there and not feel how holy the place you are standing on is.  I cannot imagine how these stones must have been cut, one by one, to fit together perfectly, and how they must have been hauled up onto the sides of these mountains where the vistas and breezes would be perfect, without benefit of machinery or even roads, and how these stones were placed to form walls and this all took place hundreds of years ago.  Since the advent of technology, history has been and will be chronicled and we don’t have to use our imaginations to see how dreams are accomplished. 

With these castles, we have only our imaginations and what we can glean from archaelogy.  I took photos of a numbered stone, as during restoration, great pains have been taken to replace these giant stones carefully back where they had been for these hundreds of years.

 

I’d already heard about the footwear some ladies choose for touring around, but it has been amazing to see so many of them teetering and tottering on high heels as they navigate the uneven stone stairways and paths.  I haven’t seen anyone sprain an ankle, but I’m sure it is because they are so much more graceful than I would be.  I have to say, though, it is not always a pretty sight and I have to avert my eyes sometimes because it looks just that painful.  Painful and hot, with the full body coverings to protect the skin from the damaging rays of the sun.

 

After going the wrong way out of the castle and turning around, I eventually made it back onto hwy 58 to its end, where my directions told me Miyagi Minshuku would be waiting.    My Japanese GPS woman talks incessantly to me and all I can pick out is “migi” and “hidari” – right and left.  I don’t know how to turn her off or what she is telling me to do, but I’ve almost gotten to the point where I don’t hear it anymore, until way up in the remote north, she seemed to get stuck and repeated one phrase over and over and over, like the proverbial record, until I wanted to rip that box off the dash and toss it into the East China Sea.  I drove through several tunnels in the coral on the way to Miyagi.  I’d driven and driven and wondered if I’d gotten lost and finally pulled over to call.  Naomi Miyagi answered and reassured me in great English that I was only 10 minutes away.  I realized when I saw that I was on hwy 70 that I’d overshot my turn, but it took a while to find a place big enough for me to turn around and it was getting dusk by then.

  I’ll note that I saw signs every couple hundred yards or so with a distinctive looking bird on it, seeming to warn drivers to look out for this bird.  Some were the yellow signs with only the silhouette of the bird and some were full color with the birds in school uniforms and hurrying or the birds looking worried and hurrying.  Right before I found the perfect place to turn around, sure enough one of these birds crossed the road right in front of my car.  I had a definite positive ID.  I would later come to find out this is the kuina bird and it is endangered with only a few hundred left and apparently the mongoose eat them, too, so they are in peril for sure.  I felt fortunate to have seen one and wished it hadn’t been dusk and the bird hadn’t been moving so fast and that I could have photographed it.  I really wished hubby and girl, avid birders, could have seen it and added it to their Audobon life lists.

 

When I got back on the road, I soon saw Naomi out at the road waiting for me where she directed me to turn onto a narrow coral road with a strip of grass in the middle and vegetation coming in on it from both sides.  I parked and was shown to my room which is totally charming and on one end of the house.  This place is totally magical and I can sense it right away.  This experience is so new and foreign to me, I have nothing to even compare it to and this place will be impossible to do justice with by photography alone and I can tell that immediately.  The whole place is a series of a couple buildings and all very natural and all canopied by lush vegetation.  It is an eco-hostel of sorts in the Miyagi’s home.  

Really, it is a Swiss Family Robinson kind of place, added on over time, a playhouse of a place and after spending very little time with the Miyagis I can tell it reflects their personalities and aesthetics and sense of humor perfectly. 

 

I was shown to my room first.  Naomi turned on something and put it on the floor and she said it was for mosquitos.  She showed me the remote for the A/C – and it didn’t have to be fed 100 yen coins!!  Yay!  I’ll be able to sleep through the night!  I feel like I’m in a treehouse.  The big door to my room from the house is about 8” horizontal planks with polished tree branches for handles.  The side of my room that is the inside wall is those same planks. 

The outside wall is tile halfway up and sliding windows with screens the rest of the way up and a glass door that leads out to a little wooden deck with chairs and a path to the parking lot that is totally invisible because of the lush vegetation. Also outside my door is a tiled sink, long and shallow with 3 faucets coming out.  The floor is natural wide wood planks and there is a 12” deep ledge under the window.  As you walk in and turn left, there is a raised tatami area with 2 futons that I would later place one on top of the other.  On the shelf of my little open wooden closet, were my linens.

There were pressed sheets and a
lightweight comforter and a pillow with pressed linens.  Perfectly wonderful.  My ceiling is wooden with dark robeams

and there are 3 tree trunks from floor to ceiling on the outside wall side, the tatami notched around one of the trees.  There are matchstick blinds on the windows.  I have two huge nautical type lights hanging.  The craftsmanship is amazing.  There is a little antique desk and chair with red velvet cushion on the right side of the room and a sweet little vase of flowers. 

 

I was told dinner was being served outside and I got out my 25% deet spray and sprayed myself down good, legs and arms and shoulders and went outside, through the thatched roof “kitchen and rainy day dining” building to the forested wooden dining tables with benches where a group of people were already enjoying their dinners.  I sat and my dinner appeared out of nowhere.  It was fish and onion salad, rice and miso soup – of course, fish,

various salads and fruit

The guests this evening were a couple from Tokyo, Shig and his girlfriend Tomo.  They are young and gorgeous and Shig speaks beautiful and unaccented 

English from living in NYC for 16 years and working on documentary films.  He is generous with his English and becomes willingly the night’s interpretor.  He is kinder than I can describe and Tomo is 

beautiful and cultured.  The other guests are a family from Sweden, the husband, an architect, is from India and they are with their 28 year daughter Lina, also an architect and now living in Berlin and her boyfriend, Klaus, from Berlin.  This family all speak fluent and lovely English and with Shig as our interpretor, we have a wonderful and amusing time with Masa Miyagi, a character if there ever was one. 

He laughs at all his own jokes and wears no shirt and has his hair pulled back in the sumo type style and a little facial hair for effect. 

Naomi, never sits down, but serves beautiful trays to all her guests and is gracious and charming and beautiful.  They have a 23 year old daughter who is studying acupuncture in Hokkaido.   I felt like this should have been photographed for a magazine layout.  There is a symphony of crickets and gekkos chirping and birds calling in the night

Miyagi san, like all Okinawans I’ve met, is not modest when it comes to all things native Okinawan and "bragging" about it.  He and all, are quick to say this or that or the other thing are ONLY on Okinawa and it is all ichiban, number one.  Well, when it’s true, it’s true.  Right?  He offers me a cup of his awamori, native Okinawan sake, aged 15 years.  He takes a native sukiiwasha (?) the lime/orange and pierces it with his fingernail and hands it to me to smell.  Yes, it smells wonderful and citrusy and fragrant, like the juices I’ve had here.  It is the size of a grape and looks like a lime.  These ones of his in the bowl must have been picked before they are ripe.  I’d imagined them being bigger.  He rubbed and rolled this fruit and dropped it into my glass of sake and added water to dilute.  It was like a martini in a pottery cup!  “Berry, berry gooed, only Okinawa” he says.  Yes, he is right.  Soon, we all retire to our futons. 

The main communal room is high ceilinged and wooden everywhere and a wall of books.  The little noren, short curtains, hang in front of the guest rooms, most with sliding doors..I wait in my room until I stop hearing footsteps going back and forth to the bathroom since I have no idea what the etiquette is and go with my toiletries on in.  The doors to this place are standing open to the outside 24 hours a day, the front door, the door going to the back through the bath, all open, so you hear all the sounds of nature all the time.  You step into the bath 

central hall with its sink on the left and the door to the
commode with slide on shoes to wear in there and the washing machine on the left and the sliding door into the bathing ante room.  Frosted floor to ceiling sliding glass doors lead to the stone floored giant stone bathtub room with a shower head on a cord that you can hang high or low and a little low stool for sitting on to clean yourself thoroughly before going into the tub.  The tub is not filled in the hot summer.  I figured out the knob on the left of the faucet controls the water temp as you need it and the knob on the right when in down position turns on the faucet and in up it turns on the shower.  When I’m finally showered, it is time to go to my freshly made futon with its crisp fresh linens and I’m to sleep through the night until the cicadas wake me up the next morning and I go to breakfast.