Kokusai Street

A 1.6-kilometre street through the middle of Naha, and the name it earned after the war explains it better than the one on the map: the Miracle Mile, because it came back from rubble faster than anyone expected in a city that had almost none of itself left.

What it is now is a tourist retail strip. Shirt shops, shisa figurines, purple sweet potato tarts, awamori by the bottle, and a good deal that could be sold in any resort town anywhere. That is a fair criticism and it is also not the whole street: there are still old-school food halls, live houses with Okinawan folk music played on the sanshin, and department stores locals actually use.

The better material is one street off. The covered arcades running south, Heiwa-dori and Ichiba-hondori, are narrow, dim and full of dried fish, pickled vegetables, herbal medicine, and shops that have not changed their stock since the 1980s. Makishi Public Market sits at the end of them, and buying fish downstairs to be cooked upstairs is the reason to walk down there.

On Sunday afternoons the central section closes to cars and becomes a pedestrian mall with street performances and eisa drumming.

Practical notes. Most shops shut around ten in the evening, later than the rest of Okinawa. The street is flat, well lit and easy to walk. And the further from Kokusai-dori you get, the cheaper the same souvenirs become, often by half.

Kencho-mae and Makishi stations on the monorail sit at either end.