Another nice path of Yanbaru. I think this will conclude this collaborative thread #FootpathFriday / #EADays #JEArchéo #JEA2025. I have more photographs of Yanbaru paths of course, but I fear I am becoming a little bit redundant… There are some parts of Yanbaru easily accessible to the public (even children) for instance in the park around Nangusuku (Nago Gusuku). They even have charcoal kilns ! I’d recommend to wait for november though, when the habu season is over.

Ah, bamboo! Another plant you’ll learn to hate really quickly when surveying Yanbaru… They invade the ridge paths like the ferns. Of course they don’t look terrible in this picture. When they are terrible, I’m too busy cutting my way through to take any pictur And they cut holes in your waterproof boots! All things considered, ridge paths are quite a bit of hell, better stick in the valley and walk the streams.If your boots are still all right.
#EADays #JEArchéo #JEA2025 #Okinawa #FootpathFriday

In fact when the horse paths became too deep, they made another one 1 metre on the right or the left. Generally there is a human footpath just next to the horse paths (on top of it you would say) because that’s not easy to pass a horse going the opposite way on such narrow paths, so humans would better walk elsewhere. So you can find two horse paths (different depth) + one human path going the same way. Yanbaru’s highways.
#EADays #JEArchéo #JEA2025 #Okinawa #FootpathFriday

Another horse path, please appreciate the height of the walls. Or maybe their depth, since they were dug...A lot of the paths were cut after the Japanese annexation, at the end of the 19th century : the Ryūkyū Kingdom was really strict about access to Yanbaru. But even limited, there was access and so, necessarily, paths. I mean we found paths with the kingdom’s landsurvey markers along them, so obviously, some date back to the kingdom.
#EADays #JEArchéo #JEA2025 #Okinawa #FootpathFriday