Okinawa

The Ryukyu Kingdom traded with China, Korea and Southeast Asia for centuries and was annexed only in the late nineteenth century. It never became culturally identical to the main islands, and the differences are not decorative. The languages of the chain belong to a separate branch and are not dialects of Japanese. The older religious practice centres on sacred groves and on women serving as priestesses, rather than on the shrine architecture visitors will recognise from elsewhere.

Food, music, textiles and roof tiles all show the trading routes rather than the mainland. The practical advice is to stop treating this as a beach annexe of Japan and spend at least one of your days on the culture — a village grove, a weaving or pottery workshop, an evening of local music — because it is the part of the trip that could not be had anywhere else, and the sea is not.

Five days for the main island, longer if you are island-hopping, and the distinction matters more here than anywhere else in Japan. Okinawa is a chain running hundreds of kilometres, and Naha to Ishigaki is a flight rather than a drive.

On the main island: Naha and the southern war memorial sites are one to two days; the central and northern half — the aquarium, the coast, the Yanbaru forest at the top — is two to three more. Naha to the northern tip is about two and a half hours by road.

The outer islands are separate trips. Ishigaki and Miyako are an hour by air from Naha and are where the best beaches and reefs are; the Kerama islands are a fast ferry of thirty-five to fifty minutes and can be done as a long day.

A week split between the main island and one outer group is the trip most people should be planning.

Naha Airport is about two and a half hours from Haneda and three from Kansai, and it is the hub for the outer islands — Ishigaki and Miyako both have their own airports and are an hour further on. On the main island the only rail is the Yui monorail in Naha, which reaches the airport, Kokusai-dori and Shuri, and it covers nothing beyond the city. Everything else, including Churaumi Aquarium two hours north, needs a highway bus or a car, and rental cars sell out in summer and around holidays. The Kerama islands are 35 to 60 minutes by ferry from Naha; Miyako and Ishigaki are effectively flight-only.

The kingdom's principal castle was destroyed in the fighting of 1945, rebuilt over subsequent decades, and burned again in 2019. What stands today is a site under reconstruction rather than a finished monument, and the operators are open about that — parts of the work are deliberately made visible, with viewing points onto the craft of it.

Set expectations accordingly and the visit is genuinely rewarding: you are watching timber joinery, lacquer and tile work being done rather than looking at a completed hall. What you should not do is build a day around the photograph you have seen, because it may not currently exist. Check what is open before you go, allow time for the surrounding walls and gates, which are original stonework and are the older and in some ways more interesting half of the site, and read the war memorial sites in the south as part of the same story rather than a separate one.

June to October is typhoon season and it is not a formality here — the islands take direct hits, flights and ferries stop for days, and being stranded is a normal rather than exceptional outcome. If you travel then, build in slack and take travel insurance seriously.

The rainy season in May and June is heavy. The best windows are late March to early May and late October to early December, when the sea is still warm enough to swim and the storm risk has dropped. Winter is mild but the sea is cool and choppy and many beach operations shut, so a winter trip should be about culture rather than water.

Okinawa is subtropical and warm all year, roughly 17–30°C, but the seasons are not the mainland's. The rainy season runs from early May to late June, ahead of Honshu, and typhoons are frequent from July into October — a direct hit closes airports and ferries for a day or two, so build slack into island itineraries. Swimming season officially opens in April and runs to October, and water temperatures stay comfortable well into autumn. Whale watching off the Kerama islands runs from January to March. April to early May and October to November are the best windows.

Okinawa soba is wheat rather than buckwheat, in a pork and bonito broth, with stewed rib or belly on top — the Yaeyama and Miyako islands each serve their own version. Goya champuru stir-fries bitter melon with tofu, egg and pork, and rafute is pork belly simmered slowly in awamori and brown sugar. Awamori is distilled from long-grain Thai rice, not the Japanese short grain, and the aged kusu is worth asking for. Taco rice was invented near a US base in the 1980s and is now standard island food.

A car on the main island, without qualification. There is a single short monorail line in Naha and nothing else — no railway on the rest of the island, and the bus network is slow and infrequent. The distances up the west coast are real and the traffic around Naha is heavy at commuting hours.

On the smaller islands, bicycles and scooters work well and cars are available. Note that hire cars sell out on the main island in the summer holiday period and at New Year, and that booking on arrival is not reliable. Ferries between the islands are frequent in the Yaeyama group and sparse elsewhere.

A first visit is the main island, and it should include the south. The war memorial sites and the museum at the southern end are essential context for everywhere else you will go — a quarter of the civilian population died in the 1945 battle, and the island's relationship with the mainland and with the American bases that still occupy a substantial share of its land follows from that. Balance it with the northern coast and the aquarium.

A second visit should skip the main island and fly to the Yaeyama group. Ishigaki, Taketomi with its sand lanes and coral walls, and Iriomote, which is almost entirely jungle with mangrove rivers running through it, are a different country from Naha — and closer to Taiwan than to Kyushu, which is the fact that reframes the whole prefecture.