Naha

Around ninety per cent of Naha was destroyed in 1945. Almost nothing standing here is older than that, and the city that grew back is not a Japanese city with Okinawan decoration but an Okinawan one that has spent eighty years absorbing Japan and America in roughly equal measure.

Shuri, on the hill to the east, was the royal capital of the Ryukyu Kingdom until 1879 and was folded into Naha in 1954. The castle there is being rebuilt after the 2019 fire and the reconstruction work is open to watch.

Down in the city, Makishi Public Market is the one thing to do if you only do one: buy a fish, a slab of pork or a sea urchin from the stalls on the ground floor, carry it upstairs, and pay a cook a few hundred yen to prepare it while you sit down. The building was replaced in 2023 and the system survived the rebuild intact.

Tsuboya, ten minutes south on foot, has been making pottery for over 300 years. The lane is stone-paved, the kilns are behind the shops, and the shisa lion figures on the roofs here are the originals of the ones sold as souvenirs everywhere else.

Naminoue Shrine sits on a cliff above the city's only beach, with an elevated expressway passing beside it, which is a fair summary of postwar Naha in one view.

The Yui Rail monorail, opened in 2003, is the only railway in Okinawa; the prewar network was destroyed and never rebuilt. Akamine is the southernmost station in Japan. Eat goya champuru, Okinawa soba and taco rice, and drink awamori.