Okinawa
Okinawa Prefecture is the southernmost and westernmost prefecture of Japan.
It consists of three main island groups—the Okinawa Islands, the Sakishima Islands, and the Daitō Islands—spread across a maritime zone approximately 1,000 kilometers east to west and 400 kilometers north to south. Despite a modest land area of 2,281 km2, Okinawa's territorial extent over surrounding seas makes its total area nearly half the combined size of Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu. Of its 160 islands, 49 are inhabited. The largest and most populous island is Okinawa Island, which hosts the capital city, Naha, as well as major urban centers such as Okinawa, Uruma, and Urasoe. The prefecture has a subtropical climate, characterized by warm temperatures and high rainfall throughout the year. People from the Nansei Islands, including Okinawa, the Sakishima Islands, and parts of Kagoshima Prefecture, are often collectively referred to as Ryukyuans. However, there are significant cultural and customary differences between individual islands and even between local communities.
Getting to Okinawa
Most visitors arrive in Naha, the capital of Okinawa, which is also well served by low-cost carriers like Skymark and Jetstar. Domestic flights do connect major Japanese cities directly to some other Okinawan islands like Miyako and Ishigaki, but prices can be steep; for example, the standard one-way fare for Tokyo-Ishigaki is a whopping ¥50,000.
Worth seeing
Most people come to Okinawa for the sun and beaches. Even in midwinter, when many areas of the mainland Japan teeter around the freezing point, temperatures rarely dip below 15°C in Okinawa. For more adventurous types, the vast yet almost uninhabited island of Iriomote is covered in dense jungle.
Things to do
Okinawa is the best place in Japan for all sorts of watersports. The Okinawa archipelago is one of the world's best diving destinations, with the count of marine species on par with the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. You can find over 400 types of corals, 5 types of sea turtles, manta rays, whale sharks, hammerhead sharks and many kinds of tropical fish.
Where to eat
Okinawan cuisine is distinctly different from that of mainland Japan. Unlike the simplicity of classical Japanese food, which tries to highlight individual ingredients, Okinawan cuisine mixes lots of ingredients in a single dish to create complex, balanced flavors. Indeed, Okinawa's most famous dish is chanpurū (from the Malay word campur, meaning "mix"), a stir-fry of multiple vegetables and meats.
Getting around Okinawa the local way
- Get inFerry services to Okinawa have been cut drastically, with Arimura Sangyo filing for bankruptcy and RKK Line stopping passenger services entirely.
- Get inAs of 2024, the only survivors are A-Line Ferry, aka Maru-A (マルエー), and Marix Line, which run from Kagoshima to Naha (25 hours, ¥16,560 2nd class one-way) on alternating days.
- Get inThe ferries are fairly utilitarian but comfortable enough, with sleeping arrangements varying from shared spaces of tatami in 2nd class (二等 nitō) to private cabins in special class (特等 tokutō).
- Get inAll ferries call at various minor islands including Yoron and Amami Oshima along the way.
- Get aroundFerry and air connections link the islands together, but many of them are simply so small in population that scheduled services may be infrequent and prices vary.
- Get aroundThere are dense webs of ferry links between nearby islands, but only infrequent cargo boats ply lengthier routes like Naha-Ishigaki.
- Get aroundIf traveling by boat in late summer, note that the area around Okinawa is known as Typhoon Alley for a reason: it's not uncommon for ferries to be suspended for several days if one comes barrelling through.
From Wikivoyage: Okinawa, CC BY-SA. Not yet checked by us. Last edited 2026-06.
Text adapted from Wikipedia and Wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 4.0. Photograph: Wikimedia Commons (see Commons), Wikimedia Commons.