What Uchinaa Tea House and Gallery Buku-buku is known for
On Naha's Yachimun Street, this tea house and gallery serves bukubuku-cha — a frothy Okinawan tea whisked from roasted rice and sanpin (jasmine) tea, once served in the Ryukyu royal court — in handcrafted local pottery, alongside traditional sweets.
Uchinaa Tea House and Gallery Buku-buku sits on Tsuboya's Yachimun Street, Naha's historic pottery district, and centers its menu on bukubuku-cha, a distinctively Okinawan tea that survives almost nowhere else. The drink is made from white rice, brown rice and sanpin (jasmine-scented) tea, whipped with a large bamboo whisk into a mountain of pale, aromatic foam — a preparation with royal-court origins, said to have been served to visiting envoys in the Ryukyu Kingdom as far back as the sixteenth century.
Everything is served in yachimun, the region's traditional glazed pottery, much of it made by potters working along the same street; visitors can choose their own cup or bowl from a rotating selection before it's filled. Alongside the tea, the menu runs to Okinawan sweets — brown sugar and matcha zenzai, shaved ice, purple sweet potato parfait and chinsuko cookies from the noted Arakaki confectionery — served in a bright, plant-filled room that doubles as a gallery for the pottery and local art on display.
It's a rare chance to taste a genuinely regional tea tradition rather than a generic matcha or sencha service, in a setting built around the same craft the tea is served in.
How ORBIS reads this city
Best for — Frothy Okinawan tea whisked from roasted rice and sanpin (jasmine) tea
More in Naha
- Ryukyu Piras Ukishima-dori Store — Naha
- MIMURI — Naha
- GARB DOMINGO — Naha
- Ikutoen Pottery Works — Naha
- Shuri Ryusen — Naha
- Chinen Bingata Laboratory — Naha
- Uehara Meat Ichibamae Honten — Naha
- Naha City First Makishi Public Market — Naha
Where next
Hand-curated for ORBIS · no paid placement