Kafu Banta

Kafu means good fortune and banta means cliff, so the name is the cliff of happiness — a viewing point about seventy metres above the sea on Miyagi island, reached over the Kaichu Doro causeway from the Katsuren peninsula. The water below is shallow over white sand and reads as a graduated band of turquoise, and on a clear day the colour is genuinely difficult to believe.

The point sits inside the grounds of a salt factory. Nuchimasu makes salt here by spraying seawater into a heated chamber so that it dries in mid-air, producing a fine powder with an unusually high mineral content, and the factory can be toured. Parking is free and shared between the two, and there is a shop selling salt ice cream, which is better than it sounds.