Rum & Roots: Japan’s hottest new rum bar in Okinawa

At the invitation of fellow TWSC Executive Committee member and Japan Rum Association chair Shinobu Ebisawa, I recently had the opportunity to visit a newly opened rum bar in Naha, Okinawa called Rum & Roots. It’s the sister bar to Kichijoji’s famed Screw Driver, one of Tabelog’s top 100 bars in Japan in 2022. It’s not every day that we make it down to Okinawa from Tokyo, so let’s dig in.

Rum & Roots

Located less than a 10-minute walk from the main drag of downtown Naha, Kokusai Dori, Rum & Roots opened in July 2025. Ebisawa-san and head bartender Takahashi-san have sourced over 800 bottles of r(h)um for Rum & Roots, which should be enough to keep any fan of the category busy for a lifetime. If there’s a rum being made anywhere in the world, chances are you’ll find it here.

Rum & Roots is open from 7 PM to 2 AM, and is closed only on Tuesdays. Unlike Tokyo, Okinawa doesn’t offer the chance to use “last train” as an excuse to end your night. In a rarity for Japan, the prefecture has no public transportation worth mentioning. Instead, Okinawans who go out for drinks will either go to/from home in a taxi or use a “daiko” to get back — a system where you pay for a driver to come pick you up and drive you home in your own car.

The drinks

I love me a good rum cocktail. Rum & Roots has a selection of the classics for 1000 yen or 1200 yen.

I started with a Uchina- Mojito (“Uchina” is the word for Okinawa in Okinawan). The drink brought together Okinawan rum, Okinawan cane sugar, Okinawan cane sugar syrup, and Okinawan spearmint for a decisively local mojito. No limes were harmed in the making of this mojito!

I honestly don’t know where to start with describing the rum. The backbar has two entire shelves devoted to Ebisawa-san’s private bottlings in the SINOB series, for example. 12-year single cask from Belize, a Caroni 1997 right next to a 22-year Caroni, Venezuelan aged for 12 years in Venezuela, then 2 years in the UK. And that’s just the private bottlings.

My question to Takahashi-san at this point was simple: What’s the best Japanese rum you have here? Without hesitation, she says it’s Karaki, which I reviewed back in 2021. Teeda Agricole follows, and she mentions Rhum Boso has been rapidly improving since they opened.

Like me in this article, if you don’t know where to start with rum, there’s a 2000 yen flight that will take you into Spanish-, English-, and French-style rum. We had a long conversation about why there isn’t a “Japanese-style” in that flight. I’ll let the photo do the talking here.

Popping back over to the cocktails, I’m not coming to a rum bar without ordering a piña colada. Thick and rich, despite the paper umbrella, this isn’t your wrinkly aunt’s overpriced piña colada she sips on some cruise ship. Served with crushed ice rather than frozen, the richness here stays with you until the end.

The Visitors

Takahashi-san says she has been surprised by the makeup of the bar’s clientele. On my visit, about three months after the bar opened, she estimated that about half of her customers lived in Okinawa. Another 25% are tourists, and the last 25% are industry folks.

Given the number of foreign tourists and non-Japanese living in Okinawa, I had to ask Takahashi-san about her English ability. She’s fine for handling orders and standard conversation. One of the things she likes about Okinawa, she says, is that she has more opportunities to speak English.

Since so many locals also visit, I had to ask about bottle keep: buying a bottle to keep at the bar and drink when you visit. The answer is a firm no. Sure, bottle keep is a great way to get people to bring their friends. But it also holds people back from trying a variety of rums, she says, which is rightfully what she encourages given the selection here.

Being in Japan, and this being a rum bar, Rum & Roots is also smoker-friendly, including cigars. Even some non-smokers might have a cigar when having a rum, after all.

Like Screw Driver, there’s no seating charge at Rum & Roots. Takahashi-san says this is to encourage guests to spring for a slightly more premium rum than they usually would, or order some food alongside a rum.

Why Okinawa?

When we talk about drinks and Okinawa, the first thing that rightfully comes to mind for many readers is Okinawa’s local spirit, awamori. But Okinawa is also the birthplace of modern Japanese rum: in 1961, the company now known as Helios Distillery started producing rum to cater to American GIs stationed in Okinawa under the Occupation.

Perhaps more importantly, whether we’re talking about molasses-based juice-based rums, they all come from sugarcane. Sugarcane production in Okinawa first started in 1623 under the Ryukyu Kingdom and has continued ever since. As of 2020, 55% of all farmers in Okinawa were involved in sugarcane production, and around 53% of all farmland in the prefecture was used for sugarcane.

Okinawa is also one of only two subtropical island groups in Japan — the other being Ogasawara (where we’ve also visited Tokyo’s most remote bar). And let’s be real: what images come to mind when you think of rum? Probably a mojito, piña colada, the beach, and sitting by the pool.

Demographics & Roots

Apart from the link to sugarcane and geography, Okinawa has a somewhat mixed culture that is well suited to rum, says Takahashi-san. As a category, rum is one of the few spirits in the world that isn’t associated with a single country. In that sense, you might call it one of the world’s more cosmopolitan spirits.

Okinawa Prefecture has a local population of 1.46 million and a population of SOFA status holders of around 90,000, or 5.8% of the total. Even Tokyo’s famous gaijin neighborhood, Minato-ku, says 8.5% of its population is foreign residents. On top of that, Okinawa welcomed a whopping 2 million overseas visitors in 2024.

That’s something you will notice walking around Naha. You’ll see plenty of “non-Okinawan” faces, hear plenty of languages that aren’t Japanese, and see even the tiniest mom-and-pop restaurants make an effort to cater to non-Japanese guests. For those of us who live in Japan, Okinawa feels way, way more cosmopolitan than any other part of the country — even Tokyo.

When I look at the vibes of rum, compared to whisky, it all just seems so chill. Takahashi-san says the more open, relaxed, and independent vibe offered by rum matches that of Okinawa perfectly.

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With Takahashi-san at the helm, given her experience running events for Screw Driver, Rum & Roots should have no problem making inroads into the Okinawa community. Already, she’s gearing up to have a booth for the bar at the upcoming Okinawa Food Flea in Ginowan.

If you’re a tourist who wants a solid mojito, a local who just wants to check out a new bar in Naha, or one of Japan’s 2,000+ rum concierges, there’s something for you at Rum & Roots in Okinawa.

But perhaps the best part about rum and Okinawa is that even if you’re not one of those people, there’s still something for you at Rum & Roots in Okinawa.