It takes about 45 minutes of fairly easy climbing to reach the top of Mount Nosoko. At 282 metres, it’s not Ishigaki’s tallest peak – that honour goes to 526-metre Mount Omoto – but the view of the island makes it one of the “must do” experiences on any visit to Japan’s Yaeyama Islands, which lie about 400 kilometres south-west of the island of Okinawa and are only some 200 kilometres from Taiwan.