The 25-minute hop from Azama Port to Kudaka Island provides just enough time to glimpse back at Okinawa's receding coast before turning to gaze at the shoreline looming — not that I expected a great deal from an island so easily and frequently linked by ferries to the much-developed mainland.

Happily, Kudaka — Kudaka-jima in Japanese — proves that proximity does not always impair authenticity.

About 7 km in circumference, and with a population of barely 200, Kudaka displays the usual features of all the small islands in the Ryukyus group that arcs palisade-like between southern Kyushu and Taiwan, with the East China Sea to the West and the Pacific to the East. So it is that banana groves and plantains, ficus trees and banyans are all to be found there — along with dashes of color provided by hibiscus and bougainvillea.