Ocean Expo Park

The Ocean Expo Park (海洋博公園, Kaiyōhakukōen) is a large park on the tip of the Motobu Peninsula in northern Okinawa Honto, which was built in 1976 to commemorate the Okinawa International Ocean Expo held there a year earlier. The park's main attraction is the Churaumi Aquarium, Japan's best aquarium.

The park stretches about three kilometers along the coast and is so extensive that small buses run on several routes around the grounds for 300 yen per ride or 500 yen for a 1-day pass. The various sites and facilities are also connected by attractive walking paths.

Apart from Churaumi Aquarium, there are a number of other interesting facilities in the park:

The spacious Oceanic Culture Museum, located just beside the park's central gate, exhibits ship replicas and other informative displays about ocean-based cultures from Asia and the South Pacific, including a giant replica of a Lakatoi canoe from Papua New Guinea and a trade ship used for travel by the Ryukyu Kingdom. The museum also includes a planetarium.

Just next to the museum stands the Native Okinawan Village, a small open air museum with over 20 residences and other buildings from different time periods and regions of Okinawa. There is no admission fee and no staff, and visitors are free to wander around.

A variety of tropical plants can be seen across the Ocean Expo Park along the walking trails and in two arboretums. Furthermore, there is the Tropical Dream Center, a well maintained botanical garden with a wide range of tropical trees and plants in multiple greenhouses. The center also features a 36 meter tall observatory tower that resembles the Tower of Babel.

At the northern end of the Ocean Expo Park lies Emerald Beach, an attractive sand beach. Emerald Beach is divided into three separate areas that each face into a different direction: a beach for playing and swimming, a beach for resting and a beach for viewing.