Experience the best of Chatan-cho

Chatan stretches along the East China Sea coast of central Okinawa Island, a short way north of Naha. Its best-known district is Mihama American Village, a seafront area of shops, cafés, a cinema and ocean-facing terraces styled on a Californian beach town, popular in the evenings when the sun sets over the water.

Sunset Beach, beside American Village, and Araha Beach, with its marine sports, are the town's two main swimming areas, and the harbour at Chatan lands fresh fish. Naha's Shuri Castle hill and the Kokusai-dori shopping street lie to the south, the Zakimi Castle ruins a little way north, and the Churaumi Aquarium further up the coast.

Evenings are the point of Chatan, when the diners, live-music bars and ocean-view cafés fill up. Okinawan cooking offers goya champuru, a stir-fry with bitter melon, rafute, pork belly braised until tender, and the American-influenced taco rice. Typhoons are most likely between August and October, which leaves the long, bright spring for easy days on the sand.