Yuinchi, with its hanging stalactites and pillars of giant stones, is the second uganju. Yuinchi takes its name after a location in Shuri Castle like Ufugui and is the named after the kitchen in Shuri Castle.
The king’s kitchen used to hold both domestic and foreign goods from the mountains and sea. In other words, the kitchen was a place indicating Okinawa’s prosperity, and by praying in a place with the same name, the king would wish for the kingdom’s prosperity.
In the past, there were horse-shaped rocks (“umagwaishi”). These stones would be used in fortune-telling by lifting them up: if they were heavy, it meant a good harvest was to come, if they were light—a bad harvest was to come.
These umagwaishi were coral fossils known as Ryukyu limestone. If water dripped from the stalactites above them, they would absorb the water and grow heavy; if dry, they would grow light. Thus, the rain in Sefa-utaki was used as a standard to measure the amount of water necessary for farming and foretold the fate of the harvest throughout the kingdom.
