monorail – akaemi.com

On this glorious morning: we slept in. I scheduled us a sleep-in day, half-way through the trip because that is what you need half-way through a trip like ours. Okinawa is a tropical kind of place, so it would have been more practical to go out in the cooler morning and siesta away the afternoon, but … that is not what we did.

The in-laws had also arrived in Okinawa! They had flown in from Kuala Lumpur, so no real jet lag: maybe an hour or two time difference? We got together to make arrangements for the Hip Hop Bus the following day, and then headed out for our afternoon adventures.

Shuri Castle is listed as being on the monorail, so we bought monorail tickets and headed on our way. Got off at the Shuri Castle stop … consulted the google maps … wandered a bit … and oh. my. gosh. Okinawa is so humid and so hot, and the castle wasn’t particularly close to the monorail stop. We eventually found the castle walls, but then there was so. much. walking. to find the actual entrance.

And I am so glad we did! A month after we got home, the whole castle complex burned down.

Which happens all the time in Japan: the castle we saw was a rebuilt version from 1992, I think? But, still. It burnt down?? How crazy is that?

We toured the castle, it was nice and cool inside, and they had some nice museum-y displays. In one of the buildings on the grounds, we caught a show of traditional Okinawan dancing! Also, it was nice and air conditioned.

And I found some more Fanta!

We headed back to the hotel, and chilled for a bit before heading out for the evening (so much cooler once the sun goes down!!) on Kokusai Dori street.

We introduced the in-laws to Don Quijote, which is where we left them for the evening. It was their first exposure and so they needed some time to take it all in.

Okinawa: Getting Around Without a Car

For Okinawa, the best way to get around is to rent a car. Which … we did not do. Driving on the wrong side of the road in a place where I wouldn’t be able to read the road signs sounded all kinds of stressful, so we opted to make do with public transportation, tour buses, and taxis.

The airport is in Naha, so I found us a hotel in Naha. There is a monorail, but it’s pretty underwhelming compared to the trains we rode in Tokyo and Osaka. The monorail would have taken us from the airport to our hotel (I planned it that way!) but we opted for a taxi because managing our bags on public transportation didn’t sound like a fun time. It was just a 10 or 15 minute ride away, so the taxi fare wasn’t bad.

We took the monorail to Shuri Castle. Or … to close to Shuri Castle, anyway.

We mostly walked to Kokusai Dori street, but we tried out the monorail once. I think it was just one monorail hop from the hotel to Kokusai Dori, so it wasn’t a huge savings in steps for the youngish and healthyish.

We took the Hip Hop Bus to the Churaumi Aquarium and American Village.

And it was a day of taxis for the WWII sites and Okinawa World. There are city buses that will take you there (and our hotel was right across from the bus station!) and the Hip Hop Bus has a tour that goes to Okinawa World, but we wanted a specialized day of touring, so taxis it was! Split across 4 adults, the fares weren’t terrible (though I can’t quite remember what they were?)

Taxis in Okinawa: the drivers will tell you they speak no English. But then half way through the ride will start whipping out grammatically correct English sentences! So they are overly modest. If you stick to simple sentences (like even just the location name of where you want to go) then you should have no problem. (Now that I think about it, one of our taxi drivers really didn’t speak English. It was a lot of him typing stuff into his phone to translate into English, and us typing stuff into our phones to translate into Japanese. Technology is awesome!)

There is a taxi app I downloaded to call taxis, and we did use it to call our first taxi on our taxi day. But then we were able to pick up taxis at the taxi drop off area at the other stops. So it wasn’t necessary to have (the hotel could have called us a cab if we hadn’t been able to hail one on our own), but it gave me comfort that I could call a cab if I needed to and we wouldn’t get stranded 15 miles from our hotel.

So: Okinawa without a car is totally doable. If you are scared of foreign-driving: buses, taxis and monorails will get you on your way!