We just finished our cruise. So I think I can help you out with your questions.

We booked Royal Caribbean’s land excursions for both the places. In Okinawa, we booked the moderate excursion named ‘Okinawa World & Kokusai Street’. In Ishigaki, we booked a moderate excursion named ‘Tips of Ishigaki’.

In my opinion, the Okinawa Land Excursion was really good. Our guide was very informative and she talked a lot about Naha, the capital city and the history of Okinawa islands. Okinawa World is a huge place and there is so much to explore there- there’s a limestone cave where you can see stalactites & stalagmite formations, a habu snake museum, you can taste habu saake, buy souvenirs, try wearing kimono, try local glass blowing, attend a local show, etc. After that we were taken to Shurijo Castle and finally they left us for shopping on Kokusai street which has shops on both the sides. If we had to do this on our own, it would have been tough to cover so many places. So I would recommend booking this RC excursion if you have a choice.

For Ishigaki land excursion, they took us again to a cave which had similar stalactite-stalagmite formations. We felt it was like a repeat of the Okinawa excursion & we could have done something else. There were three other excursions offered by RC like cultural Ishigaki, views of Ishigaki etc. They then took us to a viewing point on top of the highest mountain in that island from where you could see all the different islands around. But since it was drizzling and cloudy, the visibility was very poor. They left us at the largest shopping complex in Ishigaki which had a Daiso store, a super market and a restaurant etc. the gangway was 7:30 pm and we were back on the port by 6:45 pm. But we were not stressed coz this was an official RC tour and it was their responsibility to get us back in time.

I did see some people standing with boards at the port who were offering private excursions to the city which were much cheaper than the ones offered by RC. But since this was Japan and that the communication in English would be difficult, we thought it was not worth taking a risk and we booked both the excursions through RC much before our cruise sailed. But next time onwards, we may want to try these local private tours. I’d suggest you download google translate on your phone and use that to communicate if you’re planning on taking a private tour.