Where to Stay in Naha: The Train to Itoman Is Gone

The monorail that brings you in from the airport never goes near Itoman, in the south. A train once did. From 1923 a small railway ran from Naha to Itoman, and the turntable that once swung its engines around at Naha Station now sits in the open square beside the bus terminal at Asahibashi. Buses do that run now. So if your trip ends at Itoman’s market in the morning, I would sleep at Asahibashi, not out on Kokusai Street.

Asahibashi and the station at Kokusai Street’s southern end are only one stop apart by monorail, so for most of your stay the choice hardly matters. It matters on the morning you want an early bus. The rest of the time, I would rather wake near Kokusai Street, and spend an evening up the hill at Shuri.

The turntable by the bus terminal

Naha’s railway was a light railway, and the city’s history museum says it was affectionately known as the Kēbin. Its trains took about fifty minutes to reach Itoman. Naha Station was badly hit in an air raid in the last autumn of the war; the trains ran again a month later, and stopped the following spring, when American attacks destroyed the station.

After the war there was a plan to bring the railway back, but the main roads came first, and later what was left of the rails and carriages went for scrap. That is the sentence I keep coming back to, and it is why the turntable matters to me: it belonged to a railway that went where you now want to go, and you can still walk up to it.

The station stood where the new buildings by the terminal are now. The turntable’s remains were moved into the square between them and Asahibashi Station, where they are on show. Look for it on your way to the bus.

If you came for the market and the nights, stay near Kokusai Street

Kokusai Street runs for about a mile, from the Prefectural Office to the Asato crossing past Makishi, and it stays busy late into the night. From its middle you can walk into the arcades, to the market where some of the fish you buy downstairs can be cooked upstairs, and on to the potters’ street at Tsuboya. If you are here on a Sunday afternoon, you will usually find most of it closed to cars, and, the tourist association says, Eisa dancing or street music may fill the middle of it.

One hotel we would look at: OMO5 Okinawa Naha. You can walk to Kokusai Street from here, and its lounge is designed around hana-burokku, Okinawa’s traditional patterned blocks. Its yachimun rooms, named for Okinawan pottery, are limited to four a day; if Tsuboya is on your list, ask for one. If the Kerama islands are part of your trip, the hotel also puts you near Tomari Port, where the ferries leave. You can come back in the evening to sanshin music or a night market, every night.

Or: The Royal Park Hotel Iconic Naha, which opened this year on the upper floors of the Bank of the Ryukyus’ new head office, a short walk from Prefectural Office Station. Its lobby uses Ryukyu limestone and a large screen of bashōfu, Okinawa’s banana-fibre cloth, and out on the terrace stands a banyan brought down from Nakijin in the north. Ask for the 11th floor or above: from there, its general manager says, you can see the sea and Shuri Castle.

If you want an early bus south, sleep at Asahibashi

Several Okinawa Bus routes run from Naha Bus Terminal to Itoman; check the morning departures before you book. Read what an early morning at Itoman’s market gives you before you choose: on an ordinary Sunday its butchers are all shut. Asahibashi is also the stop on this page nearest the airport by monorail.

One hotel we would look at: Okinawa Harborview Hotel. You are a few minutes’ walk from the terminal here, at a hotel opened in 1975, with walls in an ochre red meant to recall Okinawa’s soil and shisa, Okinawa’s protective figures that ward off evil, fixed to the building. Inside, you will find a whole wall carved with them. After dark its garden pool is lit in colour, and on Friday and Saturday evenings there is live music by the pool around sunset, saxophone among it.

If you want Shuri at dusk, sleep on the hill

Below the castle, about 300 metres of the old stone road to the port came through the war, with red-tiled houses along it. Sleep up here and you can walk the castle and the path late in the day, with no train back to catch. If you come in summer, there is one more reason, the city’s tourist association says: along Zuisen Street, trees of sagaribana open their flowers at night and drop them by morning, and the street smells sweet in the evening.

One hotel we would look at: DoubleTree by Hilton Naha Shuri Castle. It calls itself the hotel closest to Shuri Castle; you can walk to the Shureimon gate from here. Its top-floor lounge looks out over the whole city, and I would be up there before sunset, and stay while the lights come on across the city below. If you have an early bus to catch from the terminal, Asahibashi suits you better: the road up from Shuri Station is steep, and the hotel itself recommends a taxi.

Before you go

Checked 7 October 2026. We list no room rates.

Where I would sleep

I would spend most nights near Kokusai Street, in a yachimun room, and one at the end by the terminal, so that the last morning starts at the turntable and ends at Itoman’s market, the town the train used to reach.

For every area on this page, see hotels in Naha on Expedia. That is an affiliate link: if you book through it, we earn a commission.