As Okinawa's Route 58 snakes northwards, leaving behind the lines of silver razor wire that surround the perimeters of U.S. military bases, the shabby ribbon of towns that form a kind of urban bricolage is replaced with farmland and salty breezes from the East China Sea.
Nago is the first settlement of consequence in this region of northern Okinawa. An appealingly laconic town, with stained concrete buildings, sun-blistered wooden homes and little comestible stores, it reminds me of the dusty towns along the Mekong River in northern Thailand. The improbable decision to choose Nago to host the Group of Eight summit in 2000 briefly put the area on the map. It has since dropped off.
My purpose for being here is to visit its city hall, designed by a daring group of young architects who were also the founders in 1971 of a collective known as Team Zoo. The group was commissioned to create a building that departed from tradition in a town where, in ancient times, building styles were based on Chinese models.
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