Okinawa Port Review - Diamond Princess

[Denverite]

Okinawa: April 26, 2009: Sunny and beautiful day. Japanese immigration authorities take their work seriously. First we had to present ourselves and our passports to a designated place on the ship and have our picture compared with our actual face and then be fingerprinted. It actually was not a big deal and went very fast. The night before you are to dock at Okinawa, you will receive a letter with a sequence number. Supposedly you are to go to Churchill Bar the next day when your number is called and take your landing permit. Our number was 1700. We just happened to be around Churchill’s and there was no line, so they told us to go ahead and go through. By the way, I think they called number 1700 around 11:30 or so. If you want to get off at noon when the ship docks, just check the line and if it is not long, they will usually just let you go through. But you are not done yet—now on to Club Fusion for thermal scanning. Here you just walk past a camera and get your gangway pass.

 

We decided to do Okinawa on our own. Basically you either go to see the war memorial stuff, Shurijo “Castle”, or walk down Kokusai Street. We took the free Princess shuttle to Naha City. It drops you off very close to the monorail. If you are looking to exchange money, there is an ATM in the building across the street from the drop-off site. There are also cabs waiting at this building. We asked a cab driver how much to Shurijo Castle and he wrote down 1500 Yen. Four of us decided to take the cab, and it turned out to only cost 1100 Yen as he did use his meter. Be prepared for quite a bit of walking at Shurijo Castle. The grounds are very nice near the “castle” but the buildings are a bit underwhelming. We then decided to walk to the monorail station (it is a good 15 to 20 minute walk). We bought tickets with our Japanese Yen (I think about 240 Yen each) and took the monorail to the Makishi Station (the beginning of Kokusai Street). We walked the length of Kokusai Street (just a long mostly pedestrian only street with souvenir shops and restaurants). You can go to the public market and the pottery street from here, but we were a bit tired and decided we had seen enough. We did see the jars of Awamori (rice liquor with Habu snake).

 

We had some friends who booked a private guide for Okinawa and they had a great time. If I had to do it over, I would probably get a guide just to learn a bit more about Okinawa.

 

Highlights: Grounds of Shurijo Castle

Lowlights: Not really a lot to see or do

[kobecat]

Do you happen to know the name of the guide your friend booked and if they booked prior to going or just did it upon arrival?

 

Thanks again

 

Beryl

[Denverite]

Do you happen to know the name of the guide your friend booked and if they booked prior to going or just did it upon arrival?

 

Thanks again

 

Beryl

 

Ron posted some information on one of the roll calls and I have copied his words here:

"We used Yukari Marsh, (yukari.marsh@nifty.com) for our group of 8. She was superb, excellent English, and took us around to some of the city highlights. She was the only native Okinawan that day doing tours, other tour guides are brought in from Tokoyo for the ship's tours. At the end of the tour she sang a song for us on what it meant to be Okinawan. We had a half day in port and having a local guide was superb. Tip if going to Shuri Castle, we were told we needed yen to buy the ticket, but they will take USD at that days's exchange rate."

 

Ron did tell us that they really enjoyed their day with Yukari. I have no first-hand knowledge of the tour guide, but in hindsight, I think we would have enjoyed Okinawa more with a tour, not because we couldn't get around on our own, but we would have learned a bit more.

[upontheCs]

i emailed yukari and got a very prompt respomse. she charges 250 US for the day, plus the cost of the car (37 US) and admission fees.

[kobecat]

Thank you so much for the information; I have emailed and hope to hear from her soon.:)

 

Beryl