Yonaha Maehama Beach

Yonaha Maehama earns its fame honestly, and that is rare for a beach this celebrated. Seven kilometres of fine white sand run down the southwest coast of Miyako, so soft it squeaks underfoot, sloping into water that stays shallow and clear and gentle far out from the shore, with the green hump of Kurima Island sitting across the channel. It is regularly called the best beach in Japan, and on the measures that matter for a swim and a walk, the length, the softness of the sand, the calm of the shallows, it lives up to it. For families and unhurried swimmers there are few easier or lovelier stretches of sea in the country.

The honest catch is that the famous part is the busy part. The resort end, by the hotel, is where the photographs are taken and where the watersports cluster, jet skis, banana boats, parasails and paddleboards working the water through the season, and on a summer day that corner fills with people and engines. None of it is bad, but it is not the wild, empty bar the postcards imply. The other honest note is the sea itself. This is a clean sandy lagoon with very little reef close in, so while it is a glorious place to swim and wade, a snorkeller hoping for coral and fish will be underwhelmed and should look to the island's reefier coves instead.

The naturalist's move here is simple, and it is the best advice on the whole beach. Walk. Within a few hundred metres south of the rental zone the crowd thins to almost nothing, the engines fade, and you have a vast soft sand bar and gentle shallows largely to yourself, terns working the shallows and the light going long over Kurima toward evening. Come late in the day for the sunset, which is the beach at its finest, tread lightly on the dune grasses at the back of the sand, take your litter with you, and treat Yonaha Maehama as the easy, generous swimming and walking beach it is. For reef, drive on around the island, and for the photogenic rock arch, carry on to Sunayama up the coast.