Yonaha Maehama Beach: Miyakojima’s Most Beautiful Beach

This post covers Yonaha Maehama Beach in Miyakojima: where it is and how to get there, parking, beach facilities, the showers and foot-washing area, and the beach café. With photos from my September 2025 visit, I introduce the emerald sea, the fine sand and even the hermit crabs.

👋 Haisai! I’m CULT.
Today I’m talking about Yonaha Maehama Beach, the very best and most beautiful beach in Okinawa. Jin Air flies direct from Incheon to Miyakojima, so it’s a great spot you can visit on a short trip of 2 nights and 3 days or 3 nights and 4 days (checked October 2026). Going by Korea’s seasons, consider it as an autumn or winter destination.

Where is Yonaha Maehama Beach? It’s on the main island of Miyakojima, in Okinawa. Public transport on Miyakojima? It exists, but for tourists it’s practically useless. Think of this as an area you visit by rental car.
Yonaha Maehama Beach has no opening hours. There’s no lifeguard either, so if you’re flailing around in the water between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., I guess the guy selling jet ski activities nearby will come to rescue you. After that, you’re meeting the Grim Reaper.

Once you arrive, there’s a public parking lot. Miyakojima is different from the main island of Okinawa: apart from the food alleys in the center of town, there are hardly any paid parking lots at all. And the paid lots downtown are damn expensive too. How expensive? Almost double what you’d pay in Naha’s Matsuyama nightlife district, which has the priciest parking on Okinawa’s main island… Anyway, I haven’t seen a single paid parking lot at beaches like this or in outlying areas yet.

There aren’t any big facilities here. One café, one activity office and two vending machines, and that’s it.

Right next to the parking lot there’s a makeshift hut like this where you can rent water gear or sunbeds, and sign up for jet ski or extreme experiences too. The beach here is huge, so I recommend putting life jackets on kids. The waves aren’t much of an issue for adults, but the waves are a little high for kids.

This is Yonaha Maehama Beach. Still can’t tell what’s so pretty about it? Let’s look at the details.

Pretty emerald waves, right? It’s a sea that looks like a PowerPoint slide made by a college freshman!
And just so you know, I didn’t blur out the detail in the sand. The sand really is incredibly fine. Walking on it feels like stepping on brown sugar. It also feels like stepping on flour, and there are babies who can’t stand stepping on sand, you see? Even those babies wouldn’t hate this sand. If anything, they’d probably like it.

The natural surroundings are well preserved too.. so I did a bit of wildlife watching. One idea I use for baby photos is to let babies observe wildlife, and I like photographing them as they study things like this closely. The curious type, I guess you’d call them?

Usually there are lots of hermit crabs only after the sun goes down, but here they scurry around even in the scorching sun.

The sand here is weirdly soft. It’s like the sand in the Sahara. Your feet sink right in when you step on it.

And this is what it looks like from the top of the dune. If you’re here on a couple’s trip.. I recommend renting a sunbed even if it’s a bit expensive. If it’s a family trip.. it can feel a bit pricey..

Go for a swim in a sea like this.. If you scaled up Minna Island off Okinawa’s main island to a giant size, it would feel like this.

The sea is normally even prettier when the sunlight is really intense.. but it was a bit overcast that day. When I was shooting in Prague, intense sunlight was a serious obstacle.. but in Okinawa it’s actually a plus.

This is what the sea looks like from far away. Mint-colored sea!
The beach is a huge U-shape.

It’s marked as Yonaha Port.. but I only saw small fishing boats and jet skis used for activities moored there.

Take a walk along a pretty shore like this. The sand is so soft it’s amazing.. yep.

Since it’s a famous beach, of course there are coin showers. But only with cash, and only 100-yen coins. There’s no info on how many minutes it runs. Just bring about 200 yen to be safe. It only takes 100-yen coins, so don’t bring larger or smaller ones..

Washing sandy feet is free.

This is how I washed my feet here too. Water is scarce on Miyakojima, so keep it short and turn the tap off properly for the next person.

Since it’s the only shop here, I figured it would be cash only, but they take cards and QR pay too. That’s what surprises me more..

Like I said earlier, it’s the one and only café. It has the whole beach to itself, but the food is.. meh, so I won’t be doing a restaurant review post. It’s not bad, but it’s nothing special.. Anyway, I came to order and there’s a dead cat..

I thought it was a dead cat and jumped, and then the cat suddenly jumped at the sight of me too.. Apparently it always sleeps like this on the counter -_-;;

Such an honest pineapple juice!
Pineapple juice from a plastic bottle, poured over ice right in front of me! Well.. it’s fine. In this heat, I should be grateful I can sit back and drink something like this 🙂
A very honest taste, an honest juice

Me.. I don’t like taco rice. It feels like such a half-hearted dish.. They had taco rice and curry, but since I’d had curry the day before.. it would taste good again, but for variety in my photos I picked the taco rice.

The curry rice is in the post Ohama Terrace: A Café with a Great View.

Stuff like this has to be mixed to taste right.
They say Japanese people don’t understand how Koreans mix their rice.. and I’m the same about how Japanese people eat rice.. I understand it intellectually, but I just can’t relate. I accept it as a cultural difference.. It’s so good when you eat it this way -_-;;

I was so hungry that I ate it all up.
It wasn’t anything special, but it was still decent enough to eat.

Oh, I forgot to mention, if you eat outside here you can look out over Yonaha Maehama Beach while you eat. It’s just a bit hot..

I took different shots of Yonaha Maehama Beach while writing the Okinawa weather report, and you can see them in Okinawa Weather on September 25. It’s the magic of weather photos: I edit them roughly, yet they somehow look prettier.

You can see the photos from a couples’ photo shoot at this beach in Okinawa Photo Shoot, Yonaha Maehama Beach in Miyakojima. I offer Miyakojima photo shoots irregularly.

Direct flights: Jin Air is the first and only Korean airline to fly direct from Incheon to Miyakojima, and a June 2026 article says it marked its second anniversary on the route. The same article says a Busan (Gimhae)–Miyakojima route newly launched in April 2026. Flight days and times can change, so check with Jin Air. (Source: Herald Business (US edition))

Using the beach: The beach is described as open 24 hours with no lifeguard or rescue post. Many sources list the swimming season as April through October, though an Okinawa tourism site also gives mid-March through November, so it varies with the time of year and the weather. Some sources mention jellyfish nets and attendants during the tourist season, but there is no permanent lifeguard. Before getting in the water, check with the Miyakojima City Tourism and Commerce Division (0980-73-2690). (Source: Walkerplus, Source: Visit Okinawa Japan)

Parking and showers: The public parking lot in front of the beach holds about 30 cars and is described as free. Cold-water coin showers are available at two locations and cost 100 yen, and the guide says electronic payment works on the café (MIPAMA ES SU CASA) side but not on the port side. When I went, I thought only 100-yen coins worked, but I’m told electronic payment is now possible on the café side. (Source: Rurubu)

Beach café: MIPAMA ES SU CASA is right in front of the beach, so it’s noted that it can close suddenly in a typhoon or strong winds. The address is 沖縄県宮古島市下地字与那覇1199-1 and the phone number is 0980-76-2177. (Source: Tabelog)