Beaches

Two quite different things share this category. In Okinawa and the islands south of Kagoshima you have white sand, coral and water warm enough to swim in for most of the year. On the mainland you have a short, tightly defined season and beaches that are usually attached to a fishing town, a surf break or a pine-backed cape rather than a resort.

The mainland swimming season is the fact to plan around: most beaches only open — meaning lifeguards, marked swimming areas, showers and the beach huts that sell everything — from around early July to late August. Outside that window the sand is still there and the facilities are not, currents are less watched, and jellyfish become a real consideration in late summer. Okinawa's season runs longer, roughly April to October, with typhoon risk concentrated from late summer into autumn.

Costs are mostly incidental: the beach is free, parking in season is a few hundred to a couple of thousand yen, and a rented umbrella and chairs are similar. Equipment rental for snorkelling or a board is in the low thousands. What costs real money is a boat trip out to a reef or an offshore island.

Practicalities that surprise people: shade is scarce compared with beaches elsewhere, and the answer is usually a rented umbrella rather than a tree. Facilities outside the season are frequently locked. Tattoos are a non-issue on a beach but can matter at an attached bathing facility. And swimming outside marked areas, while not usually forbidden, means genuinely unwatched water on a coast with strong currents.

Getting there shapes the day more than at most kinds of site. A useful number of Japanese beaches sit within a short walk of a train station, which is unusual internationally and makes a beach afternoon possible without a car; the trade is that those are also the busiest. Anything on a cape, an island or a stretch of undeveloped coast means a bus with few services or a hire car, and in high season it means a car park that fills before nine on a weekend morning. Coin lockers, showers and changing rooms exist at the developed beaches during the open season and essentially nowhere else, so plan to arrive already changed if you are going anywhere quiet.

Start by deciding whether you want to swim or to look, because that single answer sends you to opposite ends of the country and opposite ends of the calendar.

If you want to swim, and you are travelling outside July and August, go south. Okinawa and the islands are the only part of Japan where the swimming answer is reliably yes for a wide part of the year, and trying to make a mainland beach work in May is a walk on cold sand. If you are travelling in high summer, the mainland is open and vastly closer to everywhere else you are likely to be.

If you want to look — capes, sea cliffs, pine groves, a torii standing in the surf, a fishing harbour at dawn — then season barely matters and winter is often better, because the light is clearer and the coast is empty. This is the underrated half of the category and the one that works on a trip built around cities.

Two further criteria. Prefer a beach with a town attached over an isolated one if you are without a car: the food, the toilets, the shade and the train are all in the town. And check what the sand actually is before travelling for a photograph — Japan has beautiful white coral beaches in the south and a great many perfectly good grey volcanic ones elsewhere, and the difference does not show in a description.

For snorkelling specifically, visibility on the mainland is not comparable to the southern islands. Set expectations accordingly.

Assuming the beach is open because it is summer. The official season is narrow and specific, and a fortnight either side of it means no lifeguards, no huts and locked showers.

Underestimating the sun. Unshaded sand, high humidity and a midday sun that visitors from higher latitudes consistently misjudge. Rent the umbrella; it is cheap and it is the point.

Swimming outside the marked area. The flags are not decorative. Coastal currents here are strong, and the marked zone is where anyone is watching.

Turning up in late summer without checking for jellyfish. Numbers rise from around August, and some beaches net the swimming area for exactly this reason. It is posted at the entrance.

Booking a coastal trip in typhoon season without slack. Late summer into autumn regularly closes boats, ferries and island crossings at a day's notice. Build a spare day into anything involving a boat.

Driving to a popular beach at ten on a summer weekend. The car parks fill early and the queues are long. Arrive before nine or come by train.

Expecting mainland snorkelling to look like the brochure. The reef photographs are from the southern islands. Mainland visibility is a different proposition and disappointment is avoidable by knowing that first.