Pick an island by the ferry it takes and the day it fills.

Most trips start at Naha's airport, a short monorail ride from Kokusai-dori. The old royal capital of Shuri sits on the ridge above the city, and the potters' lanes of Tsuboya run down toward the market where the city still does its shopping.

Sugar cane, limestone cliffs and the island's most sacred grove fill the south. This is where the Battle of Okinawa ended, and the peace memorials at Mabuni ask for an unhurried afternoon. Cafés perch on the Chinen headland, and Ojima fries tempura at the end of a short bridge.

Chatan's seawall, Koza's music bars and the base towns along Route 58 show the American side of the island. Out east the Kaichu Doro sea road crosses the shallows to four islands that still farm and fish, and two of the finest castle walls in the kingdom stand on the ridges above.

The Motobu peninsula holds the aquarium, the fukugi-tree lanes of Bise and the soba road, with Kouri and Sesoko a bridge away. Cherry trees on Yaedake flower from late January, when the climb to the summit turns pink.

An hour or less by boat from Naha's Tomari Port, the Keramas have water clear enough to earn its own name, Kerama blue. Humpback whales come to calve offshore through the winter, and the villages go quiet once the last ferry leaves.

Kume-jima sits a short flight west of Naha with a long white sandbar off its east coast. The island rides well in a day, and the village of Nakazato keeps its stone walls and old houses.

Miyako is flat, ringed by reef and linked to its neighbours by long bridges you can ride across in a morning. Maehama and Sunayama draw the crowds, and the island has its own soba, its own language and its own way of drinking.

Ishigaki is the hub for a ring of islands with nothing else like them in Japan: the jungle and mangrove rivers of Iriomote, Taketomi's coral-sand lanes, the cattle pastures of Kuroshima. Boats leave Ishigaki's island terminal all day, and the furthest go to Hateruma under the Southern Cross.

Yoron belongs to Kagoshima but sits within sight of Okinawa's northern cape. A road loops the whole island, and at low tide a sandbar called Yurigahama rises out of the lagoon.