Okinawa is Japan’s tropical anomaly — a subtropical archipelago stretching over a thousand kilometers of Pacific and East China Sea, with a culture, cuisine, and natural environment distinct enough from mainland Japan that many visitors feel they’ve arrived somewhere altogether different. The coral reefs of the Yaeyama Islands are among Asia’s finest dive destinations. The
Okinawa is a different Japan — turquoise water instead of neon, coral reefs instead of train platforms, a subtropical climate and a distinct cultural history shaped by centuries as the independent Ryukyu Kingdom before its incorporation into Japan. For travelers used to mainland Japan’s connectivity story — dense urban networks, mountain coverage depth, Shinkansen signal