1 / 10Buy downstairs, eat upstairs at MakishiPhoto: Naha Mama Pavilionz / CC0
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Checked against official sources · updated · Takumi Yamada
Okinawa's reef fish are the wrong colours — electric blue, parrot green, hard red. Choose one on the ground floor, carry it up, and the second-floor kitchens cook it two ways for a small fee.
- Our number 2 for Naha, out of ten. It is the first thing we would spend the hours on.
- Short enough to be certain of: 1 hr 30 min door to door, so even a tender day works.
- Reachable on foot from the berth, so no timetable can strand you.
- On a 4–6h ashore call our verdict is "The middle" — shuri in the morning, here for lunch, tsuboya after.
- 8:00–22:00 — shops vary; upstairs last order 20:00. closed the 4th sunday (open daily in december).
- 1 hr 30 min door to door needs a 3.5-hour call: a 2–3 hour stop cannot hold it. Pick something closer instead.
Why Buy downstairs, eat upstairs at Makishi is famous
Pork, bitter melon, wheat noodles called soba — and an honest word about longevity
Makishi is Okinawa's kitchen, and its custom is specific: you buy fish downstairs and carry it up, where a cook prepares it for a small fee. The fish are reef fish in blues and reds that mainland Japan does not sell. The building was rebuilt in 2023 but the arrangement did not change.
Okinawan food is not Japanese food with a suntan. It is a separate cuisine built on pork, bitter vegetables and Chinese technique — and the famous longevity story attached to it is true about the past and no longer true about the present.
Okinawa's fish are the wrong colours. Electric blue, parrot green, hard red — reef fish that look like an aquarium and taste nothing like mainland Japanese seafood. The ground floor of Makishi is where you see them, alongside whole pig heads, sea grapes and the pork cuts that define this cuisine.
The system is the appeal: choose downstairs, pay for it, and carry it up to the second-floor restaurants, which cook it for a per-person fee. Rebuilt and reopened in 2023, the building is new but the trade in it is not.
Stir-frying and braising, five centuries of trade
Sweet potato, vegetables, soy, a little pork and fish
Despite containing no buckwheat. 17 October is Soba Day
Taco rice, canned pork, and a real dietary shift
Goya champuru, Okinawa soba, rafute, umibudo. In Makishi Public Market, upstairs, for about ¥2,000.
Three places, three different answers
The one the queue agrees on, the one people who live here use instead, and the one nearest your ship. Opening days change; check before you build a day around one.
Buy reef fish downstairs, carry it up, and a cook prepares it for a small fee. Rebuilt in 2023, same system.
Open in Google MapsWhere locals goKokusai-dori Yatai Mura国際通り屋台村A block of small Okinawan counters one street off the main road.
Open in Google MapsClosest to the berthMakishi arcade lanes牧志 市場本通りThe covered lanes around the market, which is where Naha actually shops.
Open in Google MapsThings worth knowing
- Choose downstairs and carry it up. Ordering from an upstairs menu skips the entire point.
- Ask for the fish to be prepared two ways — sashimi and butter-grilled — from one purchase.
- Tsuboya yachimun street is a five-minute walk. Do them together.
- Umibudo (sea grapes) travel badly and should be eaten here, cold, with ponzu.
- Champuruチャンプルー — "Mixed together" — from the same root as Malay campur. A word that arrived by ship.
- Rafuteラフテー — Pork belly simmered in awamori and brown sugar. Court cooking.
Buy downstairs, eat upstairs at Makishi and your ship
Both pins on one map, so the distance is a fact rather than a feeling.
Where the 1 hr 30 min goes
Counted from the moment you step off the gangway, about 30 minutes after the ship arrives. The hour before all-aboard is not in this bar; it is already set aside.
about 5 minutes each way is the measured figure for ~5 min taxi (~¥1,050) from wakasa, or monorail to makishi + about 10 min walk, not the optimistic one. If your ship is late, cut the 1 hr 15 min in the middle. Never cut the hour at the end.
Questions people send us
How does Makishi Public Market work?
You buy fish or meat from a vendor on the ground floor, then carry it up to the second-floor restaurants, which cook it for a per-person fee on top of what you paid. Ordering directly from an upstairs menu is possible but skips the point — and you can ask for one fish to be prepared two ways.
What should I eat at Makishi Market?
Reef fish — the electric blue and green ones — prepared as sashimi and butter-grilled from a single purchase, plus umibudo sea grapes eaten cold with ponzu. Okinawan pork dishes and Okinawa soba are available around the market, and Tsuboya pottery street is five minutes away.
Routes that already include it
Each one is a finished day timed from the official timetables, with this stop in it. Read the route rather than assembling it yourself.
What to put beside it
Each of these still lands you back aboard with the hour to spare.
3 hr for bothGoya champuru and Okinawa soba
Bitter melon stir-fried with tofu, egg and pork, and thick wheat noodles in pork-and-bonito broth that contain no buckwheat at all.
See the detail
3 hr for bothShisa on Tsuboya yachimun street
Potters have worked this street since 1682, when the kingdom gathered its kilns here.
See the detail
3 hr for bothKusu awamori, cut with water
Six hundred years old, distilled from Thai rice with a black mould, and aged in clay.
See the detail