CONTRIBUTED BY KARA PIERACCINI
When my husband deployed, I vowed to keep my kids busy. Finding Okinawa’s fun parks was one of the ways we managed to keep our minds off of things. We found so many great parks, that I hate not to share them all!
While trying to find the Urasoe Dai Park one weekend, we passed another park that we had to stop at. I always called it Makiminato for the neighborhood it’s in, but the actual name appears to be Machinato Children’s Park.
First of all, the playground equipment is huge! Seriously huge! There are actually two, but one is smaller for little kids. The big one has multiple slides, including a roller slide, bridges, tunnels, just about everything. There is also a large area to run around and play in. This is one of those playgrounds that I will gladly climb around on with my kids, it’s that big.
The park has bathrooms, a drinking fountain, and benches.
Directions: Head south on 58 toward Naha. Before Kinser, you’ll come to the large overpass. Stay in the left hand lane, so you go under the overpass, passing the big A&W. Turn left at Arin Krin (The Garlic House). Go through one stoplight and a little farther down, you’ll see the entrance to the park on the left. There isn’t parking there, but if you take a left at the next streetlight, then the next left, you will circle around to the back of the park. There is an empty lot there you can park in.
Its a cute park but not one of the “major” ones. The roller slide is pretty good. If you live or happen to be nearby go for it!
The easiest way to get to the parking lot in front of the park is to take Hwy. 58 turn left at “Arin Krin”. Drive down to the 2nd stop light and turn left. Take the first right turn and go straight, the park will be on the right side.
You mentioned that the park is in the Makiminato area but appears to be named Machinato Park. Many Americans on island may not know that there used to be a housing area on the east side of HW58 and, in the early post-war years it was referred to as Machinato. That was an Americanization of the correct name of Makiminato. I lived in that housing area back in the early 1970s. As years passed it was then commonly – and correctly – referred to as Makiminato.
I have a large map of the old housing area; if interested you can see it at http://www.members.tripod.com/~MickMc/makihousingmap.html
I’ll be returning next month, after having been off island since 1990, and hope to find the area again. My old house was L-O-N-G ago torn down and now the area is entirely metropolized so as to make it absolutely unrecognizable. In fact, they leveled a couple of what used to be pretty large hills within the old housing area. Interesting history.
Once we found this park, it was great! The written directions are good, but the pin is WRONG. I tried to use the pin with my GPS and was LOST. Here is a better address to use with GPS: 901-2131
Okinawa Urasoe
39-7, Makiminato 2-Chōme
Japan
Hi Sarah,
I just moved the pin to the address you provided. Can you confirm whether this looks correct now? It gets tricky to pin locations using written directions without a physical address, so I really appreciate your help!
Marie
Stopped by this today. It was good but we went super early (to best the heat)8am, and there were some homeless people sleeping there. They left around 8:45 when the cleaning man-woman team shows up to tidy the park. Just FYI. Otherwise great place.
Thanks! We’ve been here a couple weeks now and the kids are going stir-crazy. Thanks!!
Thank you so much for sharing! I actually grew up right around there and have never been to this park. Now I have a new place to take my kids when I come visit my mom! I know you mentioned trying to find Urasoe Dai Park, that is a great one as well with a huge roller slide!