Okinawa is as safe as mainland Japan or more so. On the smaller islands it's not uncommon to leave front doors not merely unlocked, but open all day.
The number one health risk on Okinawa is sunburn, and it doesn't take long at all to get fried to a crisp when it's sunny outside. Slap on plenty of lotion.
Okinawa is also home to Japan's most fearsome array of poisonous critters. While the venomous habu ãã snake gets a lot of bad press, mostly due to its unfortunate habit of entering homes in search of rats and mice, not only are you quite unlikely to encounter one outside a sake bottle in a souvenir shop, but bites have a fatality rate of "only" 3%. Jellyfish ã¯ã©ã²; kurage and a variety of marine creatures that sting if stepped on present a risk, and many beaches have posters in Japanese and occasionally English explaining what to watch out for.
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Er, excuse me?
One of the most distinctive features of modern Okinawan is appending the English ending -er for people who do, well, pretty much anything. The meaning of "boozer" ãã¼ã¶ã¼ is fairly obvious, while a "shrimper" ã·ã¥ãªã³ãã¼ is just somebody who likes shrimp. However, the common semi-affectionate "beacher" ãã¼ãã£â does not refer to someone who enjoys healthy marine sports, it means an alcoholic drunk!
Okinawa has its own language group, known as Ryukyuan ççèª ryÅ«kyÅ«go in Japanese, which it shares along with much of its culture with the Amami Islands in Kagoshima prefecture. These languages are related to Japanese together, they form the "Japonic family", but are generally incomprehensible to Japanese speakers. The largest of these languages, the Okinawan language Okinawan ucinÄguci, Japanese æ²ç¸èª okinawago, is spoken on the main island of Okinawa and the surrounding islands, and is not used much these days. Most people under 20 can't speak it, the most common exceptions being people who were raised by their grandparents and people who grew up in rural areas. To further complicate things, each of Okinawa's major islands has its own distinct dialect, some of which are different enough to be considered their own languages by some.
In the Daito Islands, the obscure Hachijo dialect of Japanese by immigrants from the Hachijo Islands is the native language. The Hachijo-Daito dialects are direct descendants of the Eastern dialect of Old Japanese, while all mainland dialects are descendants of the Western dialect.
All Okinawans speak standard Japanese, and many understand English as well, particularly on the main island which has several large US military bases.