Spontaneous Okinawa Diving Trip — The Ultimate Lazy Traveller's Guide

The Editor says: As more and more Okinawa diving articles have been shared on the site, the Editor has noticed that friends are starting to head to Okinawa for dive travel one after another. Many thanks to neal.chen for his sharing on MOBILE 01, which gives us a traveller's-eye view of everything you need to know about visiting Okinawa!

Although I've already earned my PADI AOW certification, my overseas diving experience is still fairly limited — at most it amounts to the Northeast Coast, Kenting, and Xiaoliuqiu. I've never even set foot on the outlying islands of Green Island or Orchid Island. But~~~here's the big "but"~~~last year I went straight to Bali~~though this post isn't about Bali diving; it's about Okinawa!!! (There aren't many Okinawa diving overviews on the site anyway.)

Why Okinawa?

There were actually seven reasons: 1. The latitude is closer to Taiwan's, and the distance is short 2. Less heavy-industry pollution (Okinawa's economy is mainly agriculture and fishing) 3. The whole point of earning money is to support your lifestyle 4. So life needs to be more colourful, to remind yourself why you work in the first place 5. A friend of mine happens to work as a dive instructor in Okinawa — Olive 6. My wife needed more diving experience 7. Cheap flights (honestly, this was the main reason XDDDD)

The stars really did align. In early January I spotted flights for late March to early April (just before the Tomb Sweeping holiday), swiped my card without hesitation, and just like that our independent Okinawa trip was born!!! Alright~~~this post will cover costs, gear, and diving-related details.

Flights

Outbound: Peach Aviation MM924 / Return: Peach Aviation MM925 Round-trip airfare: NT$7,335 (tax included) (Peach often runs flight promotions — I didn't buy during a sale, otherwise it would have been even cheaper)

Accommodation

4 days, 3 nights — NT$4,603 (tax included)

Boat Dive Costs

Dive site: Kerama Islands; boat diving over 2 days, 6 tank dives total Cost: ¥41,040 (tax included)

Gear Costs

Since I don't dive that often, I haven't bought my own gear yet. Full gear rental: ¥8,640 (tax included) That said, I did bring my own dive computer~~~

The JPY exchange rate at the time was approximately 0.2813. All costs above except accommodation need to be doubled, since there were two of us~~~XD Total: flights + accommodation + diving ≈ NT$47,223 (tax included) Our independent trip included plenty of other activities, but this post focuses exclusively on the diving.

Accommodation

First, a word on accommodation. For convenience when it came to food and getting around, we chose to stay in Naha city. Since I was travelling with my wife, a guest house was obviously out of the question. I initially thought about searching on Airbnb, but I had a bad experience with it during a previous independent trip to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam — and besides, Airbnb apparently operates in a legal grey area in Japan. So we used Booking.com to find a hotel instead.

We stayed right next to the Yui Rail Asato Station, with a 24-hour supermarket directly across the street and several great izakayas nearby — so we picked a hotel in that area (I'm afraid I can't provide photos, since they're all available on Booking.com and we didn't take any ourselves XD).

Okinawa Diving — Choosing a Dive Shop

As mentioned above, a friend of mine works at a dive equipment store in Okinawa (mic21). In addition to selling dive gear, they also arrange diving activities for divers.

For this trip, all our diving was guided by staff from mic21 (including my friend Olive). The day before each dive, they confirmed our schedule and arranged the morning transfer. We had planned all boat dives, but the sea conditions at the second day's original dive site were poor, so we ended up diving at the Kerama Islands on both days. (We were supposed to dive Manzamo on day two~~so sad)

Diving Impressions

Cost: Having dived in Bali before, the overall cost here felt a bit higher than some other destinations — but personally I found it acceptable.

Experience & dive sites: Water temperature at Kerama in early April was around 20–23°C, with visibility consistently above 15–20 m. Since my main focus was helping my wife build up her diving skills, and we also had other Open Water divers in the group, we didn't venture to any advanced sites. The dive guide kept everyone within a safe depth of 18 m, and we spent most of the time critter hunting.

Gear: Since we didn't have our own equipment, and knowing Okinawa's water would still be on the cool side, we wore a hood and vest plus a 5 mm wetsuit. The fins were the TUSA LIBERATOR X TEN (I found them a bit soft, with not quite enough thrust). Overall the rental gear was in good shape (very well-maintained!!!), but not having my own BCD meant I was rocking around a bit (the steel tank may have contributed to that too).

Dive computer: A dive computer is absolutely essential!!! ATMOS Mission ONE (I can't share any underwater photos of the watch, as I don't have an underwater camera — but I do have the post-dive log)

Weighting: With a hood, vest, and 5 mm wetsuit I was worried about sinking, so I started with 4 kg on the first dive — and ended up listing to one side it was so heavy. From the second dive onwards I switched to 2 kg. One more thing: the cylinders appeared to all be steel tanks — heavy!!! VERY heavy!!! It takes a bit of time to get used to.

Without further ado, let's get to the photos~~

You might notice I was wearing gloves underwater — but not dive gloves. They were actually motorcycle riding gloves. In the photos they just look like a dark blob, which made hand signals pretty hard to read. Whenever the dive guide asked how many bar I had left, I had to use exaggeratedly large gestures just so they could see!

Further reading:

• MOBILE 01 Original Post

• mic21 Naha, Okinawa Store

• The Most Complete Okinawa Diving Guide — Stop Saying Diving in Japan Is Hard!

• The Perfect Beginner's Dive Site in Okinawa – Sunabe

• Okinawa-Exclusive 35-coffee: Giving Bleached Coral a Second Life!