Hi Howard, yes you're right, it's just like Hokkaido. Reading the names of Okinawan towns (as well as people's names) can be extremely frustrating, even for mainland Japanese. A great example is a town that is written with the kanji for "north" and "valley," so you would think it should be called "Kita Tani." But it is actually pronounced "Chatan." Go figure! Helen
Kakazu is such an Okinawan name... I never would have figured in out by looking. It's like those names of small towns up in Hokkaido where they just threw some kanji onto Ainu names. --Howard