Japan 2023 Day 13: Okunoshima Island (aka Rabbit Island)
After leaving Okayama, we originally planned to head directly to Hiroshima for our last two nights. However, I wanted to visit Okunoshima Island while we were in Hiroshima, and then Nick did some research about getting there, and realized that we could actually visit it on the way to Hiroshima. So we took a shinkansen to Mihara station, where we found some coin lockers to store our luggage while we headed off to Okunoshima Island. The night before, we found a bakery to get some pastries for our trip because we read that besides the one hotel restaurant on the island, there’s no other food option there.
Since we still had some time before we needed to board the train to Okunoshima Island, we wandered around outside, where we were greeted by a couple of sculptures:
As far as we could tell, there were no coffee shops open nearby, so we ended up running back into the station and getting some bottled coffee from the convenience store. Not the best coffee, but it’s better than nothing…
It was then time to grab the 25 minute train to Tadanoumi station, where we would eventually catch the ferry to Okunoshima Island. Once we arrived at Tadanoumi, it wasn’t hard to figure out where to go because everyone on the train got off here, and we followed the crowd to the Rabbit Island store:
Inside are a couple of vending machines where you will need to buy your ferry tickets for Okunoshima Island. You can also buy small bags of rabbit food for ¥200 inside the store. As far as we could tell, there wasn’t anywhere to buy rabbit food on the island, but many visitors brought their own food to feed the bunnies there.
As we waited in line for the ferry, we could see it arriving:
It’s a short ferry ride (about 15 minutes) to get to the island, and basically, once you step on the island, there will be rabbits. We were told not to feed rabbits near the port or on the roads, so Nick and I kept walking down the shoreline away from the busy area, where I encountered my first rabbit to feed:
Hooray for the Asian squat!
We had planned to stay on the island for 3 hours, which we thought would be more than enough time to interact with the bunnies and to learn about the island itself. As it turns out, rabbits eat very slowly, and I apparently can’t help but try to feed every rabbit that I see…
Besides the rabbits, Okunoshima Island is also known for being the place where Japan would manufacture poison gas during World War II. Because of the island’s remote location, Japan was able to keep this a secret until many years after they stopped making poison gas. Now, it’s essentially a large park primarily occupied by many rabbits. Ruins of the old poison gas manufacturing buildings can be found on the island. There’s also the poison gas museum, which has a small exhibit about the history of the poison gas production as well as the deadly effects it had on those working in the factory. There’s a rather dystopian feel to stand in front of a dilapidated building created during war, and it now being filled with cute rabbits:
There are also a few viewpoints that are accessible through some short hikes, and because fewer people venture up there, the rabbits you find along the trails are very excited to be fed:
As we continued to explore the island, Nick reminded me that we had 45 minutes to make it back to the ferry in order to make it to our reserved shinkansen ride from Mihara to Hiroshima. During this time, I’m thinking that this is plenty of time to see some more derelict buildings and feed rabbits. Well, only one of those things ended up happening, as evidenced by these photos:
Ok, that’s not entirely true. We did see some buildings, but we ended up hustling back to the port because I spent waaaaay too much time feeding rabbits. In the end, we missed a few sights that would have been interesting to see. I guess we really needed like 5 hours on the island.
The ferry back to Tadanoumi was much smaller than the one we took to the island, but it was pink, and cute:
We then backtracked our way to Mihara, where we spent an hour waiting for our shinkansen (the train times for this route were not as well coordinated as Naoshima Island).
During that hour, we walked out of the station to find some dinner to take on the train, but we didn’t have much luck, so instead, we found a Family Mart. I feel like we’ve seen too many videos of Chris Broad praising the fried chicken at Family Mart, so we had to go try it out. After thoroughly confusing the poor woman at the counter as we were ordering our chicken, we eventually walked to the station with our two fried chicken bites:
So it turns out that these are served cold, and that you actually need to use the microwave in the store to heat this up. We weren’t aware of this, so we ended up eating cold chicken, which wasn’t entirely terrible, but I’m sure it would have been soooooo much better warmed up. In any case, it was still a good snack to hold us over until we got to Hiroshima.
We eventually made it to Hiroshima, and checked into our hotel. We spend some time exploring the station to see if there were any good dinner options, but the entire area was incredibly busy; there were lines at almost every restaurant. And then I remembered that we should try some Hiroshima style okonomiyaki, so Nick did some research, and we headed a few blocks away from the station to this cute little okonomiyaki restaurant:
Unlike the Osaka style, where all of your fillings are mixed into the batter and cooked, the Hiroshima style of okonomiyaki tends to be layered and commonly includes noodles in the pancake. I forgot what type of fillings we each ordered, but we both agreed that we liked this one better than the one we had in Osaka. I think the mom & pop feel of the restaurant gave it a very authentic feel, but the okonomiyaki alone was delicious:
And with that, we headed back to the hotel to rest up from our busy day of traveling to see rabbits. Tomorrow is our last day, where we meet up with my cousin and fiancee and explore Hiroshima together!