With the benefit of hindsight, it was inevitable. It didn’t matter that we landed on a blustery, rainy afternoon: Amami-Oshima was a siren calling and we, unlike Odysseus, weren’t tied to the mast.

No one is sure of the origin of its name. Some think that Amami is an assonance with Amamikyu, the goodness of creation in the Ryukyu Islands’ indigenous faith. Other theories are available. What I’m certain of, however, is that Amami translates to “love me” in Italian and that’s an easy request to comply with.

Shaped like an arrow pointed towards Japan’s mainland, Amami-Oshima is an island placed roughly halfway between Kyushu and the country’s seaside playground, Okinawa. But while dozens of airliners descend towards Naha airport every day, only a couple of 737s link Amami with Tokyo. Why that’s the case is, much like the reason why a North Korean spy vessel decided to stage a battle in the waters out here, a mystery we won’t be able to solve.

We hire a tiny Toyota with an asthmatic engine, set up base in a house by the beach and head off. Our village has a bakery, a convenience store, a couple of restaurants, a swing hanging above the foreshore and the world’s most indifferent cats. Apart from spotting sea turtles at 6:30 AM and Maruchi-san’s amazing breakfasts at 08:00, we have no plans. The days are a blank canvas, ready to be painted with the beauty of this incredible island.

The coast twists and turns in a fractal jumble of coves, bays and peninsulas. Sandy beaches are followed by towering cliffs with pebbled littorals thrown in for good measure. Coral reefs stretch into the blue depths and, watching from up above, it’s all too easy to imagine the Amami pufferfish – Hoshizura fugu – out there, building intricate structures in the sand, crop circles made from crushed coral.

Away from the coast, it’s not long before sugarcane fields and Daihatsu dealerships give way to nature. Jungle carpets the mountains and mangrove dot the marshes. Egrets strut in the shallows like distinguished gentlemen out for a stroll. Up on the ridges is where Amami dons a prehistoric look: thickets of ferns rise skywards, and the poisonous habu snake slithers through the undergrowth. Sometimes it’s as if they aren’t the only reptilians on the prowl: one day, low clouds hugging the hills, we corkscrewed down slippery roads towards Katoku beach. If you told me, in that moment, to watch out for velociraptors, I’d have believed you.

An artist named Tanaka Isson spent the latter part of his life in Amami. Rich in talent but not in recognition or cachets, he led a frugal life, shuttling between his paintbrush and menial jobs that earned him enough to get by. The beautiful museum dedicated to his life painted a rather sad picture of his condition but, in his works, we saw a sense of peace, of calm contentedness. The same feeling that was growing in us too.

Amami is a blend of tropical idyll and that sort of rural serendipity that, so often, you meet in provincial Japan. Storms painted the night sky bright with the flash of long lightnings, leaving the streets littered with fronds and limes ripped from the groves; yet, by midmorning, industrious hands would sweep away the detritus. Schoolchildren walked to lessons with their immaculate shirts, bright hats and square backpacks, waving at every driver that stops to let them cross the road. Boxy kei cars cruised by, surfboards fastened to their flat tops. I saw a barefoot postmaster whistling away in his office in the suburbs of Naze, the main city, and we drove by adolescents practicing sumo boxing on a dohyo ring by the seaside as the sun fell behind the hills. The chirp of cicadas and the buzz of dragonflies. Dinners by the sea, local beers and the chance encounter with a teenage waitress eager to practice her great English.

Island time. I used to consider it a platitude, an invention from some tourism commercial, vapid nonsense used to sell more bottles of coconut-flavoured rotgut. But time – and trips to Bermuda, Easter Island, the Ryukyus – suggested that there might be some truth in it after all. Amami is the final proof: there is something in these islands in the sun, a whispering voice that suggests, ever so calmly, to take it slow. Savour the moment, embrace the sweat in your eyes, the sun beating on the head and the salt on the skin. There’s just a difference, this time.

I can swim.

A few lessons haven’t turned me into Michael Phelps, and there’s plenty to indicate that I never will, but I can now snorkel in the shallows, feel the pull and push of rollers, and I can accompany the tropical fishes in their mysterious errands.

The only thing that hasn’t changed is that I’ve gotten sunburned again.