Shuri Castle in Okinawa was on fire on October 31st, 2019. I visited Okinawa with my family at the end of 2019 and we visited Shuri Castle on December 31st, 2019 so I am going to report current Shuri Castle.
We did not know whether we could visit burned Shuri Castle or not. A staff of the hotel where we stayed told us that we could visit Shuri Castle Park and see the main gate of the castle.
The way to get to Shuri Castle is Yui-rail(monorail). The nearest station of the destination is Shuri Station. It takes about 10 minutes to the park on foot. Some people walked to the park from Shuri Station like us so I realized that some people want to see the castle in spite that the castle was burned.
We directed to the main gate of the castle. The gate is called ‘Shurei Gate.‘ Some shrines including the main shrine were on fire but the all gates of the castle were not.
After seeing the gate, we directed to the main shrine. We saw destroyed shrines on the way to the main shrine.
It was prohibited to close destroyed shrines but we could saw them. We directed to the observation space. We saw many burned parts of the shrines on the way to the observation space.
We could see the view of Naha City from the observation space. also, we could see the destroyed shrines from the high point.
We felt sad not to see the perfect main shrine but we had valuable experience there. We hope Shuri Castle will be rebuilt soon and see it again.