Shikinaen Royal Garden

We ventured down to Naha on Sunday afternoon to check out the Shikinaen Royal Gardens. Shikinaen was the 2nd largest residence of the royal family and a guest residence for visitors from China.

It is a really pretty, peaceful place...smack dab in the middle of crazy Okinawian urbanity. Once you step inside the gardens though, and walk along the paths, you pretty much forget the city outside...the heavy foliage filters out some of the sun, and the noise from the city is muted.

There is a huge villa-I think it was something like 15 rooms. It overlooks a pond with some pretty stone bridges.

Everything structure-wise in the garden has been rebuilt-it was destroyed (like much of the island) during WWII. I think we read that reconstruction started around 1975 or so. Many of the pathways that we walked along appeared to be original though-the villa/gardens was originally constructed in 1799.

There is also a very cool lookout that has a pretty panoramic view of....only land. Sounds funny, but that's rather unusual in Okinawa...you can pretty much see water off in the distance anywhere you look (when you are at a high vantage point). At this lookout, you are on top of a large hill-but no water in sight. The view in 2009 is of city, more city, and some distant hills, but I bet it was beautiful before it was completely urban.