Name the closest country (based on distance between capitals) starting with the letters of the country's name. If a letter appears a second time, name the second closet country. If a letter appears a third time, name the third closest country, etc.
If you take the nearest distance, then Australia is surely nearer to Japan than Afghanistan or Azerbaijan. If you take the distances between capitals, then - for instance - the Netherlands would be nearer to Russia than North Korea, although the latter are neighbours, which would be quite absurd.