Okinawa's Forgotten Islands

The Islands Beyond the Islands

Everyone knows about Miyako and Ishigaki. The Kerama Islands, thirty minutes from Naha, have made it onto the radar of adventurous travelers. But Okinawa Prefecture encompasses 160 islands stretched across 1,000 kilometers of ocean, and most of them remain genuinely unknown to international visitors. These are places where the ferry arrives twice a day, where the grocery store doubles as the post office, and where the rhythm of life is dictated by the tide, not the clock.

This guide maps six islands that reward the effort of getting there, some with exceptional diving, others with nothing more than empty beaches and the kind of silence that city-dwellers have forgotten exists. None of them are easy to reach. All of them are worth it.

Tokashiki: The Diver's Wall

Tokashiki is the largest of the Kerama Islands and the closest major dive destination to Naha, 35 minutes by high-speed ferry from Tomari Port. While most Kerama visitors head to Zamami for snorkeling, Tokashiki draws serious divers for its underwater topography. The island's western coast drops steeply into the Kerama Gap, a deep channel between the islands where currents bring nutrients and visibility regularly exceeds 40 meters.

The signature dive sites are wall dives, vertical coral cliffs that plunge from five meters to beyond 40 meters, encrusted with soft corals in purple, orange, and electric blue. Manta rays cruise the deeper sections from September through November. Green sea turtles are year-round residents, so habituated to divers that they barely glance up from their coral meals. Tokashiki has three dive operators, all based in the main village, with two-dive morning trips running ¥12,000-14,000 including equipment rental.

Aka Island: Kerama Deer and Coral Gardens

Aka is tiny, just 3.8 square kilometers, but packs remarkable biodiversity into its compact frame. The island is home to the Kerama deer (Cervus nippon keramae), a subspecies of sika deer found only in the Kerama Islands. Roughly 200 deer live on Aka, and they are frequently seen on the roads at dawn and dusk, moving between the forest and the beach to feed on coastal vegetation. The deer are wild but habituated to human presence, they will watch you from a few meters away with calm, dark eyes.

The snorkeling off Aka's Nishibama Beach is among the finest in the Kerama group. The coral starts in knee-deep water and extends outward in a gentle slope of staghorn, brain, and table corals. Clownfish, parrotfish, and moray eels are common. The beach itself is a 700-meter arc of white sand with no development behind it, just forest and a single bathroom block. Bring your own food and water; there is nothing for sale at the beach.

Kumejima: The Phantom Sandbar

Kumejima lies 100 kilometers west of Naha, a 30-minute flight on RAC (Ryukyu Air Commuter) or a 3.5-hour ferry ride. The island is mountainous by Okinawan standards, with forested peaks reaching 310 meters, and its coastline alternates between rocky headlands and sweeping white-sand beaches. Kumejima produces some of Okinawa's finest awamori, and the Kumesen distillery offers tours and tastings (¥500, reservations required).

The island's star attraction is Hate-no-Hama, a seven-kilometer sandbar that appears offshore at low tide and disappears again as the water rises. The sandbar is accessible only by boat (¥3,000-4,000 round trip from Eef Beach), and at its peak exposure, it forms a blindingly white crescent surrounded by water so clear you can count grains of sand through two meters of depth. There is nothing on the sandbar, no shade, no facilities, no sound except the wind and the lapping water. Bring sunscreen, water, a hat, and nothing else.

Aguni and Tonaki: Remote Island Life

Aguni and Tonaki are neighboring islands roughly 60 kilometers northwest of Naha, connected by a twice-daily ferry that takes about two hours. Together they have a combined population of fewer than 1,000 people. There are no convenience stores, no traffic lights, and no tourist infrastructure beyond a handful of minshuku (family guesthouses) and a single dive shop on Tonaki.

Aguni is famous for its salt production, the Aguni-no-Shio (Aguni Salt) brand is prized throughout Japan for its mineral complexity, produced by evaporating seawater in traditional clay pots over wood fires. The salt factory offers free tours, and the ¥500 tasting set lets you compare salts from different evaporation stages. The island's interior is a patchwork of sugarcane fields and low forest, crisscrossed by unpaved roads ideal for cycling. Bicycles rent for ¥1,000 per day from the port guesthouse.

Tonaki is smaller and wilder. The island's fringing reef creates a natural lagoon of turquoise water visible from the hilltop road that circles the island. Diving the outer reef wall reveals overhangs sheltering whitetip reef sharks and sea turtles. The single dive operator, based in the village, runs trips when there are enough customers, call ahead to confirm availability.

Yoron Island: The Coral Island

Yoron sits at the very southern tip of Kagoshima Prefecture, technically not Okinawa, but culturally and geographically Ryukyuan. The island is just 23 kilometers north of the Okinawan main island, closer to Naha than to any Kagoshima city. The coral beaches here are among the whitest in Japan, the water is Caribbean-turquoise, and the population of 5,000 maintains a pace of life that makes even Okinawa's main island seem hectic.

Yurigahama, a sandbar beach on Yoron's southeast coast, appears only at spring low tides and is consistently ranked among Japan's most beautiful beaches. Like Kumejima's Hate-no-Hama, it vanishes with the rising water, a reminder that nothing here is permanent. The main island beaches, including Okaneku and Terasaki, offer excellent snorkeling straight from the shore, with coral starting in waist-deep water.