On our first full day in Okinawa we decided to go cultural. We walked through some shopping streets that weren't open yet due to the early hour, to get to our first destination: Yachimun Street. This paved street is famous for its pottery since you can find 35 pottery shops and craftsman workshops within a few hundred meters. It's not just a regular shopping street as the side streets look like the days of old with withered walls crawled over by vines and bushes. For a while you can forget the rather busy main streets of Naha and pretend to be in a more historic site.
A typical Okinawan aspect is the presence of Shisha: twin statues of a doglike figure that typically protects the entrance of the house, but can also be found often on rooftops apparently. It is exactly these figures that the pottery shops are famous for and you can find them in abundance. So much actually that after several shops we knew there were too many and skipped most towards the end.
A notable visit was to one of the craftsman shops of which the building itself was delightfully decorated by protruding dragons from the walls. The cats walking around it were nice as well and liked to be petted. The workshops give courses for making your own Shisha statue as well. Of course, most visitors are no professional and the statues they made looked just so. Since it takes several weeks to dry and bake, your creation is shipped to your house later. A typical scene during our visit there was that they assumed that we were Americans. Not because of how we spoke or what we said, but because Dennis wore a t-shirt with "New York" on the imprint. Japanese often make this assumption even when it is based on something we never pay attention to.
At another craftsman we could see how they make Shisha. The base is made of several molds of which they construct the full animal. After that a craftsman adds detail, additional elements and turns it into a real Shisha. After that it is dried, fine-tuned, painted, coated and then baked. The entire process takes about three weeks. This explains the very high price a little that you have to pay to own a pair.
Some shops had glassware as well, but not as much as we hoped. We will find some in another area probably. In the end we bought two small pairs of Shisha.

Next stop was Shurijo. We got there via the monorail, which unexpectedly stops at the wrong side of the castle park on top of the hill. We walked next to the huge castle walls to the rest center where we had a nice lunch of the local cuisine, Okinawa Udon. As dessert we had Okinawa Doughnut, made of brown sugar. Okinawa seems to be very fond of brown sugar for some of their sweets, including making ice cream of it. Bit weird, but still nice.
We took the scenic route up to the castle in which we passed several strange trees. These had not a single trunk but were a blend of several smaller ones. It reminded us of vines in the jungle, but then in tree form. The park had quite a lot of nature and a big pond as well. There were a lot of baby ducklings which were not afraid if you came close to make a picture, this was a nice bonus.
The old gates were still original, but the castle itself was completely rebuild. It had been ruined several times in its 700 years of existence of which the latest was during the World War. Its renovated very well, with the added bonus that you could enter everywhere and could take pictures of almost everything. Most heritage sites don't allow that to prevent damaging it.
The Ryukyu kingdom of Okinawa has a long history and had contacts with many surrounding countries. Its architecture and customs is a mixture of Chinese, Japanese and Okinawan influences. The house animals are the Shisha and Dragon and they can be seen everywhere of course. The park employees were wearing traditional clothes as well, giving it a nice ancient vibe.

We decided to walk back via the ancient main street. It is still paved with most of the original stones and quite steep. A little sideways was an area where the trees are over 200 years old. Really big and impressive.
Along its route many other flowers, trees and bushes could be seen as well. One in particular was a bit familiar and strange. In The Netherlands we have 'Christmas plants' that are only around during that time of year, but here we saw a complete tree of it. We'd never known that they could grow so big.
We also saw some more of the Naha buildings. Some of them made us think of the buildings of the Gunkanjima island we visited last summer. Large, sturdy looking structures, completely build from concrete with a certain old fifties style. Although they looked unstable, most of them were used as school buildings. Quite surprising, since we expected them to be boarded off.

Last stop of the day was a stroll down Kokusai street. This main and busy street of Naha has many bars, restaurants and souvenir shops. It's easy to find souvenirs there although we prefer to buy them from more local shops ('mede in Okinawa' (no typo)) instead of getting the China-made version.