How, specifically, can I travel between Taiwan and Okinawa by sea?
- By
- Aparna Patel
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- 25 Jul, 2023
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According to the Ryukyu Shimpo, a new service was started in the spring of 2016 between Taiwan and Ishigaki (Okinawa) once a week. The ship that makes the trip is the Natchan Rera. The route was just put on hiatus last month (Mainichi Shinbun article) but is expected to resume from May 2017 as a charter service.
Wagon Group cruise line (Chinese only)
Press release by Wagon Group (Chinese only)
Besides the home ported Star cruise ships in Keelung, other cruise lines like Princess, Royal Caribbean, Costa offer short itineraries including Okinawa, a sea journey of 16 hours, but sometimes with an extra ‘day at sea’. Your stay in port is all you’ll get, it’s back on board after the usual 8 hours ashore.
The Okinawa ferries ended service in mid 2008 and are not likely to reappear in port.
A better option is to fly on the low cost Peach airline. For a total of less than what is often a casino cruise you can fly daily between Taipei and Okinawa in 1:30 hours. Also daily to the nearby island of Ishigaki via Osaka, which serves Taipei and Kaohsiung.
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Star Cruises operates cruises in 2013 from Keelung, Taiwan to Naha and Ishigaki in Okinawa. Their website is astonishingly disorganized, slow and flaky, but a search for cruises in July 2013 from Keelung indicates that they operate the Keelung-Ishigaki-Keelung route almost weekly in summer, with departures on July 3, 10, 24 and 31, with two-night cruises from TWD 15,000 (~US$550) and some boats going on to Naha.
The interesting question is whether they’ll permit one-way passage, or if you have to return to Taiwan afterwards; a quick read of the passage T&C didn’t find anything one way or the other. I suppose you could always pay the full fare, hop off in Ishigaki/Naha and just not return, but you’d need to ensure that you get a full-fledged tourist visa at Japanese immigration and not just a cruise landing permit.
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If I am reading multiple place on the Interwebs you may be out of luck. There were ferries running regular scheduled service from Taiwan to Okinawa but they apparently went bankrupt (OpenJourney confirms this as well).
If one to believe Wikitravel there is an irregular service offered by Star Cruises but I can’t confirm through their website this to be true.
Japan Guidebook site still refers to a ferry service on a now bankrupt line but also gives a referral to another line which may provide ferry service to Okinawa from Kagoshima but that’s about it.
EDIT
Tried looking for freighter sailings between Taiwan and Japan. There are cruises that run along the China coast with stops in multiple ports including Keelung and Kaohsiung in Taiwan with other stops in Pusan. It is possible that if you’re really set to travel without flight you might be able to catch a ferry from Pusan and then take one of the ferries running to Japan and then catch one or 2 of the Domestic Ferries running to Okinawa. I am not really for this mode of transportation but if you’re set to travel by sea connections via South Korea and Osaka would be your best bets.
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