Through half-closed eyelids, the sea sparkles. A bamboo screen dapples the sunlight, and the world is reduced to contrast, to flashes of light and shade. The air is a hot, distilled essence of summer. Each time the salt dries on my skin, I make the small commute from towel to waves and dive in. The water is azure, clear and cool. When it closes over my head, yesterday and Tokyo both become irrelevant.

Making it to catch the ferry the night before had been a scrambled rush. Our bus ran late in heavy traffic; we arrived breathless at the ticket desk and were met with polite confusion about our reservation. My long-time traveling companion, a student of anthropology, dealt with this and the subsequent rebooking required with his usual admirable patience. I ran out to buy a late dinner of boxed lunches and canned beer. We made the end of the long queue just as it started to move.

The next morning the night ferry dropped us at the port, bleary from a diesel-scented night in reclining chairs and damp from the sea air on the deck. We looked around, wary: we had been warned that Niijima is busy in high season. It was immediately apparent that on the Izu Islands this was not yet high season.