Okinawa · Naha MakishiNo.444★★★Open in map →
Okinawa Soba
— Wheat noodles in a pork and bonito broth
Okinawa's everyday noodle bowl uses no buckwheat at all — wheat flour, alkaline water, and a broth built from pork and dried bonito. The easiest place to meet it is the upper floor of Naha's rebuilt public market.
Despite the name, Okinawa soba contains no buckwheat. The dough is wheat flour worked with alkaline water — kansui today, wood-ash lye in the older method — and cut thick. The broth is drawn from pork bone and dried bonito, and the standard bowl carries simmered pork belly, a slice of fish cake, spring onion and pickled red ginger. Variants have multiplied: soki soba with braised spare ribs, soft-bone soki, vegetable soba. The outer islands keep their own lines too, flat and uncrimped on Miyako, thin and straight in the Yaeyamas. First Makishi Public Market is where Naha buys that pork and that fish, and where the finished bowl is served in the same building.
Background & history
The dish traces back to Chinese-run noodle shops that opened in Naha during the Meiji era, and spread quickly after the war as wheat flour became easy to obtain. In 1976 the Fair Trade Commission ruled that a noodle made without buckwheat could not be sold as soba; the prefecture's noodle makers negotiated until the name Okinawa soba was secured, and October 17 has been Okinawa Soba Day ever since. The market has its own timeline: it opened in 1950 as Makishi Public Market, and reopened in a new building in 2023.
What to look for — in walking order
- Kokusai-dori
- Naha's main shopping street, running southwest from Makishi Station toward the prefectural office
- Ichiba-hondori and Heiwa-dori arcades
- roofed pedestrian shopping lanes behind Kokusai-dori, entered at the Mutsumibashi crossing
- Market ground floor
- stalls of pork, reef fish and island vegetables, with a service that cooks your purchase upstairs
- Market second floor
- a row of Okinawan eating houses directly above the stalls, where the soba is served
- Tsuboya Yachimun-dori
- a pottery street of kilns and ceramic shops a few minutes east of the market
How to enjoy it
Come at midday, when every second-floor kitchen is open and the stalls below are at their liveliest, and eat the soba first rather than last. If belly pork is not what you want, ask for soki instead and the bowl arrives with braised spare ribs. Nothing about the dish is seasonal, so it holds up as a rainy-day plan.
How to actually get there
- Naha Airport Station → Makishi Station (Yui Rail monorail, 16 min, 320 yen).
- Makishi Station → First Makishi Public Market (walk about 9 min via Kokusai-dori and the Ichiba-hondori arcade).
- Look through the ground-floor stalls first, then take the stairs to the second floor and order the soba.
- Leave through Heiwa-dori and continue east to Tsuboya Yachimun-dori.
- Yui Rail monorail, direct from Naha Airport
- Naha Airport Station →(Yui Rail monorail, 16 min)→ Makishi Station, fare 320 yen. From Makishi it is about a 9 minute walk through Kokusai-dori and the Ichiba-hondori arcade. Roughly 25 minutes in total from the airport, and trains run often enough through the day that no timetable planning is needed.
- Return from Makishi Station
- Makishi Station returns you to the airport on the same monorail line with no transfer. The last airport-bound train leaves before midnight, so check the platform timetable if you stay into the evening. Miebashi and Kenchomae stations are also within walking distance, which helps if your hotel sits at the other end of Kokusai-dori.
Before you go
- Cash
- Entering the market and the arcades costs nothing; you pay only for what you buy. Yui Rail accepts OKICA and nationally interoperable IC cards such as Suica, as well as cash. Individual stalls and eating houses may take cash only, so carry some.
- Closing days
- Confirmed hours at the time of writing are 8:00 to 22:00, varying by shop, with the second-floor kitchens taking last orders at 20:00. The market closes on the fourth Sunday of most months (December excepted), over New Year and during the Old Bon holidays. The arcades are roofed, so rain is not a problem.
- Another way
- From Kenchomae Station or the Naha Bus Terminal side, walk northeast along Kokusai-dori for about 15 minutes to the Mutsumibashi crossing, then turn into the covered arcade.
- After you get off
- Leave Makishi Station at street level and walk southwest down Kokusai-dori to the Mutsumibashi crossing, then turn into the Ichiba-hondori arcade on your left. Stay under the roof and the market entrance appears ahead.