{"id":402,"date":"2013-10-21T12:35:13","date_gmt":"2013-10-21T12:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ippei-janine.com\/travel-japan-islands\/?post_type=portfolio&p=402"},"modified":"2025-11-10T14:06:02","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T14:06:02","slug":"zamami-kerama-okinawa","status":"publish","type":"portfolio","link":"https:\/\/ippei-janine.com\/travel-japan-islands\/destinations\/zamami-kerama-okinawa\/","title":{"rendered":"Zamami Island of the Kerama Islands"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Morning greetings from local sea turtles, and numerous secret beaches which will take your breath away. Zamami<\/em> is a small and hilly island packed full of natural and easily-accessible beauty. Zamami’s most famous beach, Furuzamami Beach is popular for snorkeling with beautiful coral and many different kinds of tropical fish. Ama Beach boasts the highest chance to snorkel with sea turtles on the island (best in the morning).
\nZamami has more than a few idyllic wild beaches which we highly encourage you to check out. Around Zamami, there are several idyllic deserted islands (we’d recommend Gahi Island) which are great for a half-day or day-trip by taxi boat (10 mins).
\nZamami is the most popular of the Kerama Islands for international tourists, and has a well known campsite which hosts many of them!<\/p>\n

For those who are considering traveling to the Kerama Islands outside summer months of May to October, especially for avid snorkelers, we recommend the Miyako Islands<\/a> or Yaeyama Islands (such as Ishigaki<\/a> and Iriomote<\/a>) over the Kerama Islands because of warmer temperatures for both air and underwater. The Kerama Islands and the other northern islands of Okinawa Prefecture have a humid subtropical climate (Cfa), while the southern islands of Okinawa Prefecture (the Miyako Islands and Yaeyama Islands) have a tropical rainforest climate (Af). This results in noticeable differences in both air and water temperatures from November to April.<\/p>\n

The number of international tourists visiting the Kerama Islands has increased significantly in the last 10 years. Even still, it doesn\u2019t feel busy even during peak seasons due to the limited number of accommodation and also the limited number of seats on jet ferries for day trippers.
\nHowever, water accidents have also increased in recent years with more tourists. Because of this, most tourist beaches with lifeguards on the Kerama Islands have started to ask people to wear a life jacket (or wetsuit) whilst snorkeling, especially in the “swimming surveillance area”. Alternatively you can just go to non-tourist beaches which have no lifeguards.
\nFor experienced snorkelers who want to snorkel without restrictions, Aka Island (Aka-jima) is our choice among the Kerama Islands for easily accessible non-tourist beaches for a great snorkeling experience.<\/p>\n

About the Kerama Island Group:<\/strong>
\nThe Kerama Island group is known for some of the world\u2019s clearest waters\u00a0reaching 50-60m visibility. If you want to enjoy just beaches and snorkeling or scuba diving, rather than combined with jungle trekking or mangrove river kayaking, the Kerama Islands are highly recommended. The beaches on these islands are very beautiful but off-the-beach snorkeling is not the best since a lot of coral close to the beaches were damaged by El Ni\u00f1o in 2007 and 2016, although they have started to recover recently. If you can swim to the outer reef or go snorkeling or scuba diving from a boat, you can have a great experience (however, not as great as you would in the Yaeyama Islands and the Miyako Islands). The Kerama Islands are easily accessible by ferry from Okinawa Main Island (Tomarin Port) in 30 mins to 2 hours depending on your destination island and the type of ferry. If you want to have a car-free holiday, these islands are perfect as each of these islands is small enough to explore by bicycle\/scooter.<\/p>\n[put_wpgm id=15]\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":706,"parent":0,"menu_order":11,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"portfolio_category":[],"class_list":["post-402","portfolio","type-portfolio","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ippei-janine.com\/travel-japan-islands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio\/402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ippei-janine.com\/travel-japan-islands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ippei-janine.com\/travel-japan-islands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/portfolio"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ippei-janine.com\/travel-japan-islands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ippei-janine.com\/travel-japan-islands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/ippei-janine.com\/travel-japan-islands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio\/402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67932,"href":"https:\/\/ippei-janine.com\/travel-japan-islands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio\/402\/revisions\/67932"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ippei-janine.com\/travel-japan-islands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ippei-janine.com\/travel-japan-islands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"portfolio_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ippei-janine.com\/travel-japan-islands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio_category?post=402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}