Okinawa island to island
Eight stops from Naha to Yaeyama, four of them reachable only by boat
Okinawa is not an island: it is more than a hundred and fifty, and the ordinary trip stops at Naha and the aquarium. This route takes all eight stops the archipelago has here, and the order is not geographical but whatever the sea allows. It starts with the Ryukyu kingdom, which is what explains why Okinawa is not simply Japan: Shuri Castle, the Karate Kaikan and Sakaemachi market after dark. It carries on to the north of the main island for the Churaumi aquarium and the Nakijin gusuku, and from there on it is all boats and small planes. Zamami and the Kerama national park, with Furuzamami and the green turtles at Ama. Miyako and the Irabu bridge. And the whole of Yaeyama: Taketomi, barely three hundred residents and a village of red-tiled roofs that goes back to being a village between four in the afternoon and nine in the morning; Kohama, whose three rites are designated an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property of Japan as a single property; Iriomote, the Urauchi river cruise and the kayak to Pinaisara; and Ishigaki last, with the mantas at Manta Scramble and one of the darkest skies in the country.
The itinerary, stop by stop
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Naha2 days
This was the capital of a kingdom of its own: Ryukyu was a tributary state of China from the 15th century to the 19th, with a language, a religion and an architecture that were not Japanese, and that still explains the food, the music and the mood of the place. The main hall of Shuri Castle, which burned down completely in 2019, has been rebuilt using fifteenth-century techniques and opens to the public on 23 November 2026; until that day what you visit is the work in progress. Karate was born here, and after dark Sakaemachi market fills with tiny izakayas.
What puts it in this route: Shuri Castle · Understanding why Okinawa is not simply Japan · Okinawa Karate Kaikan · Shuri Castle Festival
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Motobu2 days
Home to Churaumi Aquarium, one of the largest in the world thanks to its Kuroshio Sea tank with whale sharks, plus Nakijin Castle (a World Heritage Site) and Kouri Island, connected by a bridge.
What puts it in this route: Churaumi Aquarium · Nakijin Castle (Gusuku) Ruins · Kouri Island and Heart Rock Beach
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Zamami Island2 days
Under an hour from Naha by fast ferry, the water around the Kerama islands has its own name, 'Kerama Blue', and at Furuzamami the reef starts a few metres off the sand. At Ama, green turtles graze the seagrass close enough that no boat is needed, and the national park seabed holds some 248 coral species with visibility of up to thirty metres. From January to March the humpbacks pass offshore.
What puts it in this route: Furuzamami Beach · Diving in Kerama National Park · Swimming with green turtles at Ama · Month of thanks to visitors
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Miyakojima3 days
The island has no rivers at all: its water is held underground behind walls injected into the limestone, and that single fact explains half of Miyakojima. Above it lie the sand of Yonaha Maehama, three and a half kilometres of toll-free bridge across to Irabu and, off Shimojishima, a system of submarine caves with arches and shafts of light for experienced divers only. The Yabiji reef surfaces on the spring tides of March and April; mango arrives in June.
What puts it in this route: Irabu Bridge · Cave diving off Shimojishima · Paantu Festival
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Taketomi Island1 day
A village designated as a preservation district for traditional buildings, with red-tile roofed houses, coral stone walls, and rides in carts pulled by water buffalo.
What puts it in this route: Walk through the traditional village · Water buffalo cart ride · How to visit Taketomi without ruining it · Tanadui, the harvest festival
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Kohama Island2 days
Half an hour by boat from Ishigaki, and the island almost nobody sleeps on even though you can: there are six places to stay, and two of them are resorts that between them take up, according to one source, close to a fifth of the island. What made it famous in Japan was a television series: NHK filmed Churasan here in 2001, and people still come to see the straight road between cane fields that served as the walk to school. Worth knowing that the viewpoint named after the series sits on a private ranch and has been closed since February 2012, so nobody goes looking for it. What there is instead: a banyan grove some three hundred years old, protected by the town since 1976, a dozen-odd trees whose roots swallow the exposed limestone; a viewing platform shaped like a giant manta ray looking out to Iriomote; a beach five minutes from the port that islanders do not call by its name on the map; and the southwesternmost golf course in Japan. And something the brochure does not show: the island's three rites, the bon, the kitsugan and the tanadui, have been designated an important intangible folk cultural property by the state since 2007, all three together as a single property, and they run on the lunar calendar.
What puts it in this route: Three rites, one designated property, all on the lunar calendar · The sugar road, and the argument over whether there is still sugar · The banyan grove that eats the rock
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Iriomote2 days
Nine-tenths of the island is subtropical jungle and mangrove, a UNESCO Natural World Heritage Site: you reach its waterfalls by paddling upriver, and at night the last hundred or so Iriomote cats cross the road. Staying over gives you what the day trip from Ishigaki can't: the rivers early in the morning, the boat-only village of Funauki and a sky without light.
What puts it in this route: Urauchi River cruise and the Mariyudu and Kampire falls · Kayak and hike to Pinaisara Falls · Funauki village and Ida Beach
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Ishigaki3 days
The gateway to the Yaeyama islands: boats leave the pier for Taketomi in ten minutes and Iriomote in a little over half an hour. You cannot swim in Kabira Bay, because black pearls are farmed there — one of only two places in Japan that do it — so you go out by glass-bottomed boat or kayak, and snorkel at Yonehara or Shiraho instead. Off Kabira-Ishizaki there is a manta ray cleaning station.
What puts it in this route: Diving or snorkelling with manta rays at Manta Scramble · Boats and kayaking in Kabira Bay · Ishigakijima Astronomical Observatory
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