Getting Oriented

Island-hopping outside Okinawa Honto means traveling among several disparate clusters of islands; Okinawa Prefecture is a conflation of smaller archipelagoes gerrymandered together, not a steady string of pearls. Traverse the long distances by plane and use ferries to get from one nearby island to another; on the islands themselves you'll enjoy the most freedom with your own transportation, but whether a bicycle or an automobile is more appropriate depends on the size of the island.