Okinawa travel info

Step out of Naha Airport and the air is the first thing you notice. Even in October it's 28°C, a damp sea breeze moves through the palms, and families with small kids are already queuing for the rental-car shuttles. The monorail gets you into town in about fifteen minutes. On Kokusai-dori, sanshin music drifts out of souvenir shops, and upstairs at the fish market the fish you picked downstairs comes back fried.

The island's real face is further north. Drive Route 58 and you pass the Ferris wheel of Chatan's American Village, then the Onna coast, where resorts sit one after another on coral-lined bays. Stand on the cliff at Cape Manzamo above the rock shaped like an elephant's trunk, drive another hour, and a whale shark glides past the giant tank at Churaumi Aquarium on the Motobu Peninsula. With only one monorail line on the island, most visitors rent a car.

It's a short flight from Taipei, Shanghai or Hong Kong, and under three hours from Tokyo. Everything runs a beat slower than mainland Japan. Shake a few drops of koregusu, chillies steeped in awamori, into a bowl of Okinawa soba, then end the day with a can of Orion watching the sun drop into the East China Sea.

Naha Airport (OKA)