A close-up view of the Tadashi (正殿), the main hall, of Shuri Castle (首里城). Shuri Castle served as the royal court and residence of the Ryukyu king (琉球王) for at least 450 years. That’s pretty impressive! Unfortunately, everything seen here is a reconstruction of the original that was completely decimated during World War II by the US army. Ryukyuan architecture bears much influence from Chinese architecture, as can be noted from the choice of color (red, auspicious!) , motifs (lots of dragons!) and construction materials. Of course you can’t compare this with the scale of the buildings in China’s Forbidden City, it’s much smaller in real life than it seems in pictures. I quite like the mix of foreign influences and those of its traditions. It’s clear to me the Ryukyu kingdom had close ties with China, more so than with Japan, for a long while and was able to incorporate what they saw as strengths into their culture and traditions. It’s pretty evident in their cuisine (some may say it’s plain, but they have the longest lifespan compared to the rest of the world!) and architecture. 🙂
I took the picture on a really wet day. The rain was epic, sort of like a typhoon… The whole time I was there it just poured endlessly… I wished I were wearing a poncho, because it’s incredibly hard to juggle both an umbrella and a camera at a go. I tried holding the umbrella with my chin and wiped down my lens as raindrops blur out my shots. It was a horrible experience, that was further made worse by other unenthused travelers of the group tour. I know very well that I can’t stand being time-restricted when exploring places or photographing, but seriously how do you explore an entire castle within the span of less than 15mins! You have to be like walking through the whole place without much appreciation or care at what you are looking at. I don’t even know why you even booked the tour to this place when you did that. Yup, I had exactly that sort of company on the group tour, who fortunately aren’t remotely even an acquaintance of mine. It was horrible hearing said person insult everything about Okinawa, followed by mainland Japan, and then back to Okinawa… You hate the country, why bother even visiting it!
The rain really disappointed me much, and the having to be subjected to “curfew” while exploring Shuri Castle, a place I so wanted to visit when I first read about it when I was 14… It makes me wanna just go back there during the dry season and recapture the sights I’ve missed, due to the general indifference of other group travelers.
Picture taken with my Nikon D800 and the AF-S Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED.
Sidenote: I really should pick up Japanese and be done with group touring Japan…