Okinawa | Miyagi Island's Secret Beach and Ancient Huts

Mar 23, 20223 min read

Updated: Sep 18, 2022

Date I went: 03/27/2020 and 03/28/2020

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Hello and welcome back my valued Oritabi blog reader! For this post I am going to focus on this really cool island in Okinawa you can access just driving to it over a long and not so ancient bridge.

I decided to rent a car for the later half of my stay as I wanted to get the most out of exploring the island. There is public transportation, but it can take quite a while for it to get around the island. There's plenty of car rental agencies to pick around Naha, I just went with the one my Airbnb host recommended.

I left Naha on March 27th, 2020 to move to a new accommodation closer to Chattan and the American village featured below. It really feels like one of those half forgotten theme parks here at the American village.

It's got a very cute cooky kind of feeling in the American village, and personally I was digging it. There's lots of small vendors, and plenty of cafes around the area as well.

Sunabe Beach (砂辺海岸)

I first checked out Sunabe Baba park in the area before getting the day started. A fighter jet flies over the area as the Kadena Air base is nearby. I saw 3 fly over the area within the span of 10 minutes. It's a constant reminder of the American presence here on the island.

A few days before I struck up a conversation with a local Okinawa resident at the Aeon mall in the American village area and she agreed to tour me around the island a bit this day.

She suggested we drive up this highway called the E58 as it's the fastest way to get around in Okinawa. There is a toll fee as well for using this road, and you don't see much of the island from the highway just as a heads up. But for our purposes it was very convenient to save some time and drive on some of the more northern coasts of Okinawa.

Gorilla Chop (ゴリラチョップ)

We made our way on the 449 freeway to this very famous snorkeling/diving spot called Gorilla Chop, Oo'oo Ah'ah Hiiiiyaaaa... It was deserted and quite a nice view to lookout from. It was still a bit too cold in March to go into the water though. You can see the gorilla chopping in the bottom left picture above.

Miyagi Island (宮城島)

The following day I went on an outing with another resident of the island. We decided to make our way to Miyagi island, one of the few islands in Okinawa that is accessible by bridge.

It's not very far from Chattan and the American village (only 31 km), but it still took an hour to drive there as there is no real direct highways going across Okinawa. You can start to see Miyagi Island come into view on the road going there as well.

Henza Mid-Sea Bridge (平安座海中大橋)

To access the island you cross this super long (4.7 km long) bridge called the Henza Mid-Sea Bridge.

There is even this nice lookout around the bridge crossing area, with what I'm assuming is a special rock... there were no signs to indicate its origins. Definitely no climbing on this rock though.

Driving through Miyagi island is about as rural as my time driving through Zamami. There's cars parked at the houses, but I don't think we saw anybody walking around.

The flowers are really similar to Hawaii's as it is a tropical area.

Quite a number of houses just look abandoned actually.

Ikei Island Bridge (伊計大橋)

There's one more bridge you cross before getting to the tip of Miyagi island called Ikei Island Bridge. There's a little parking lot at the beginning of the bridge and you can walk down from here to see the sea up close and walk around the secret beach.

Ikei Beach (伊計ビーチ)

The beach is really deserted here too, but there's a few families enjoying their day here.

Nakahara Ruins (仲原遺跡)

The last stop we made was at this really cool archeological site. These were the original Okinawan huts of ancient times! Currently they are uninhabited.