Castle Ruins, and my toes.

We had planned on a New Years visit to a shrine this year but that didn't happen due to the unexpected camping trip. We figured a trip to some castle ruins would be equally cultural.

We picked Nakagusuku because it's supposed to be one of castles that has held up the best and it's close to home too.

I guess the story is that Gosamaru (I might be spelling that wrong), well he was big fan of King Sho, so he built this fortress for his main man.

It didn't last because Gosamaru wasn't so bright and he let an enemy into the castle because they were carrying a King Sho banner. So he killed himself.

I swear, every single place we go, I go home and read about it and it's always about someone killing themselves. WW2 took some good chunks out of the place as well, but it's still pretty awesome.

This picture was to demonstrate that toddlers weren't meant to walk on castle walls. Talk about narrow! That was terrifying.

He was very excited to be up so high. He pointed to everything as per usual. I wish it had been sunny, you could see the Pacific on one side and the East China Sea on the other. So cool.

They were doing some digging and reconstruction while we were there. I love their constructions signs, he's bowing to say he's sorry for the noise, or at least that's what we think.



I love Japanese construction equipment. I just assumed it was always yellow, but it isn't. Here it can be purple or blue or green, whatever you want.


There were a lot of sacred places, little altars to deities, basically things I don't understand and don't want to piss off.

That building behind my men is an abandoned hotel project. The man that was building it had been warned that it was sacred ground but he didn't care and when some workers died mysterious deaths !he couldn't get anyone else to work on it. The castle had signs up, saying they weren't responsible for anything that happened to you if you got off their property!

I think T's favorite part was this bug we saw on the way out. We thought it was an earthworm. It doesn't like fun dip no matter how happy T was to share it. Josh touched it and it flipped all over like a snake or something, and it kept lifting it's head up...so I don't think it was a worm.

That really weirds me out. I hate that I don't know what the bugs are here. How can I keep my kid safe from them other than to just avoid all of them, with a toddler boy.....yea right.

Warning...toe picture ahead





I finally made it to Cocok's nail salon. I enjoyed my ocean view, my free ice tea, an awesome massage and some fun toe art. It makes me want to stop clipping them so short. I can't wait to take my mom there next month. She'll love it. They offer wine and popcorn too, it's like it was made for her.