Day four was our chartered-car day. We had booked a driver through KKday in advance for an eight-hour trip. The original plan was:

1. Nakagusuku Castle Ruins
2. Gyokusendo Cave (Okinawa World)
3. DMM Kariyushi Aquarium
4. Senaga Island
5. Kokusai-dori Street

We left the hotel at eleven. Finally, the car had a child seat. The driver was a cool, quiet older guy, and he drove a Toyota Crown sedan.

Our first stop was Nakagusuku Castle Ruins. I had been worried that heavy rain might keep us from getting out of the car, but luckily there was a break in the rain just as we arrived.

After buying tickets, we could take the electric shuttle cart up the hill to the castle ruins. Going back down, however, you have to walk. It was not very far. Maybe because of the rain, there were not many visitors, and the staff all seemed quite relaxed.

From Nakagusuku, you can look out over Okinawa’s east coast. It was beautiful, and the breeze felt cool.

I wanted to visit Nakagusuku Castle Ruins because, while preparing for the trip, I had read Zhu Youren’s book Okinawa Has Not Always Been an Inalienable Part of Japan: The Past and Present of the Ryukyu Kingdom. Okinawa has more than 300 old gusuku castle sites. Nakagusuku Castle is one of the better-known ones and is also relatively well preserved. More importantly for us, it was close enough to fit into the itinerary.

There is plenty of information online, so I will not go into the history of Nakagusuku Castle here. But I do strongly recommend reading some Ryukyuan history before traveling to Okinawa. It really changes the experience.

I would love to plan a history-focused trip and visit the gusuku and battle sites listed in the book one by one, but I doubt my wife and daughter would accept that itinerary.

My daughter refused to walk. She did not even put on her shoes, so we carried her the whole way. The driver must have found us very strange.

Our second stop was Gyokusendo Cave at Okinawa World.

The driver dropped us off in the parking lot, and we agreed to meet again two hours later. In the parking lot, I saw Ryukyu Cola, the same drink I had noticed in a vending machine at Okinawa Zoo & Museum the day before, and decided to try it. It tasted a lot like Pepsi. In a blind tasting, I probably would not be able to tell them apart.

Because my daughter is easily frightened, we had originally planned not to go into Gyokusendo Cave. I had already been there in 2017 anyway, and the stalactites probably had not changed much in seven years. But once we arrived, she said she was willing to go down and take a look. She still refused to join the souvenir photo at the entrance, though. The route inside Gyokusendo Cave was longer than I remembered. We walked for quite a while. Some parts were cool, while others were surprisingly sweaty.

When we came back up, it was pouring. Fortunately, we could walk under the covered walkway to the souvenir area. We bought two ice creams and shared them. Looking back at old photos, I realized I had ordered exactly the same thing this time.

On my previous visit, I had painted a paper-clay shisa in the old Ryukyu village area, Kingdom Village. I thought my daughter, who likes craft activities, would enjoy that too. But because of the heavy rain, it was not very convenient to walk over to the old houses. Later we discovered that the pottery hall also offered shisa painting, so we chose that instead.

There were two types of painting: glaze and poster paint. The glaze version would be fired in a kiln later, so it seemed better suited to visitors from Japan. We could only choose the poster-paint version that could be taken home the same day. It was busy and all seats were full, so we waited about ten minutes before our turn. My daughter painted very seriously, carefully applying each color, and spent around forty minutes finishing it.

Before leaving, we suddenly decided to have lunch inside the park. We contacted the driver to delay our departure, and also decided to skip the next stop, DMM Kariyushi Aquarium, because my daughter said she was not interested. Instead, we went straight to Senaga Island. The driver kindly reminded us that Senaga Island was mostly restaurants, but we had a shop we wanted to see, so we kept the plan.

Senaga Island was crowded with people and cars, but it really was mostly restaurants. Its appeal is probably the hillside setting, with views of the sea and planes taking off and landing at the airport. It has a nice atmosphere. There is also a hot spring hotel on the hill, with day-use bathing available.

Our main target was a pretty drink my wife had seen in a travel magazine. It went straight to my daughter’s heart.

The final stop was Kokusai-dori Street. We had to be back at the hotel by seven, so there was not much time to browse.

My daughter wanted to buy a round fan, but the only ones we saw were Orion Beer fans. I wanted to see if there was one with a whale shark, so I kept looking along the street. There were none, only folding fans, so we eventually gave up. Still, we bought a very cute whale shark notebook and a bracelet my daughter picked out.

My wife had forgotten to take her passport from me, so she could not check out with her tax-free purchases. I spent a little extra time bringing it to her. I went back to the meeting point first, and the driver let me get in before moving the car out of the parking lot, probably because parking cost money. We waited by the roadside. It was quite tense, but thankfully we made it back to the hotel before seven and avoided any penalty. I was very grateful to our cool driver.

Dinner was steak plus Lawson again. My daughter only ate Lawson chicken nuggets, Karaage-kun, on this trip.

We also went to the public bath today. As usual, I took my daughter up to the top floor to look around, then used the carrier to take her to 7-Eleven. It rained briefly on the way back. The castella from 7-Eleven was excellent.

After we got back, my daughter refused to sleep. I threatened to leave her outside the room, but she still thought I was joking. It got to the point where her mom actually got up and helped her put on her shoes. Only then did she give in and lie face down on the bed to sleep.

Note: This article is translated from Traditional Chinese.