My sister and I didn’t plan to do much shopping in Okinawa, but we did visit two pretty nice shopping places so I thought I’d share them! Also, I’m heading to Malaysia soon so this is just a quick post(:

Ashibinaa Outlet Mall (English Site)
This is pretty famous and was a stop of several day tours of South Okinawa that we looked at. It’s basically an outlet mall like Marinoa in Fukuoka. Parking is free, if you’re thinking of driving here. It’s quite far from the nearest station, but there are buses.

Quite a few brands are high-end brands but there are a few mid-range shops. My sister managed to pick up a pair of shoes at the ABC mart there.

There’s also a tax-exemption for tourists. I’m not sure if every shop is like this, but for ABC, we had to pay tax at the register and then get a refund at a specific location in the outlet mall. So you should factor that in, especially if you’re pressed for time.

And if you see this sweet potato cart, you should definitely buy a sweet potato! It’s sold by weight and the potatoes were extremely sweet and very, very soft.

Haebaru Aeon Mall
The word “Aeon” may sound really pedestrian, especially if you live in Singapore/Malaysia, but this was a surprisingly good shopping place. As with Ashibinaa, parking is free and there are tons of shops.

We found a big Uniqlo shop (which oddly, we didn’t see near Kokusaidori), and the shop list included Best Denki, Daiso, Village Vanguard, GAP and many more. There are also a lot of restaurants and even a foodcourt, if everyone has different ideas on what they want to eat. Not to mention the Aeon supermarket and drug store, which is perfect if you want to buy snacks like kitkats, pocky, senbei, or facial products, makeup, and the like. It’s great if you want to get omiyage at a lower cost or just buy some snacks for the hotel room.

And that covers everything my sister did in Naha and Southern Okinawa. The posts from now on will be about Onna and the northern part of mainland Okinawa (click here for the masterpost)