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Daiichi Makishi Public Market

Locally knownKnown to people who live here. Not in the international guidebooks.

Researched and written by Hinato

Makishi marketmochiageNahapublic marketOkinawan food

Okinawa · Naha

26.2147°N, 127.6880°E

Daiichi Makishi Public Market is the kind of Okinawa food stop that locals recommend before any restaurant with a sign in English.

The market grew out of a black market in the rubble after 1945 and became the food hall of Naha — the ground floor is fish in colours that do not look edible to anyone from a temperate country, along with pork in every part including face and trotter, and the first floor is a row of small restaurants. It reopened in 2023 in a new building on the same site.

The format to know is mochiage, lifting up. You buy a fish or a cut of meat downstairs, pay a cooking charge, and it is carried up to a restaurant on the first floor and cooked how you ask. That arrangement is why the market survived the supermarket era and it is the reason to come rather than eat somewhere else. Opening runs to ten at night, which is unusual for a market anywhere.

Eating essentials

Price range

Free to enter | Food and mochiage cooking charges priced individually

Best season

Year-round

Hours

8:00 AM – 10:00 PM, varying by shop | Ground-floor cooking last orders 7:45 PM | First-floor restaurants last orders 8:00 PM

Closed: Fourth Sunday of each month except December | 1–3 January | First two days of the lunar new year | Two days after lunar Obon | Individual shops may differ

How long to allow

1.5–2 hours including a meal

How to reach it

Directions

Ground-floor mochiage cooking last orders at 7:45 PM and first-floor restaurant last orders at 8:00 PM. Closed the fourth Sunday of each month except December, 1–3 January, the first two days of the lunar new year and the two days after the lunar Obon; individual shops may differ. The mochiage cooking service is charged and applies to selected items.

Insider tips

**Do the mochiage.** Buy downstairs, pay the cooking fee, eat upstairs. It is charged and applies to selected items, and it is the entire point of the building. **Last orders are earlier than closing.** The market runs to 10:00 PM but mochiage cooking stops at 7:45 PM and the upstairs restaurants at 8:00 PM. **Fourth Sunday is the closed day.** Except in December. Plus the New Year, the lunar new year and the days after lunar Obon. **Ask what things are.** Irabucha parrotfish, gurukun, sea grapes, pig ears — a good proportion of the ground floor is unfamiliar to most visitors and the sellers are used to explaining. **It is a 2023 building.** The market was rebuilt and reopened on the same site; the old structure is gone. The trade and the tenants carried over.

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