Day 1 – on our way to Shodoshima

We hopped on the local train heading for Kanazawa station.

From there we jumped onto the Thunderbird express bound for Kyoto Station

Then onto the Bullet train/Shinkansen for Okayama Station

We hopped on a bus that took about 30 minutes to get from Okayama station to Shin-Okayama Harbor. By the time we got there, it has already been a long day. I was pretty hungry, so we ordered Chicken Karaage. It costs 600 Yen, which was about $6. To our surprise, it was quite a bit of food, and it was good too. We had to eat quickly, however, since our ferry was leaving soon.

Then we hopped on a ferry bound for Shodoshima!

We walked around the ship for a bit and I found out that the boat was called the “Olympia Dream”. Pretty amusing since the capital of Washington state is Olympia. To come all the way to Japan, in a rather remote part of it as well, to hop on a boat with a name similar to where you are from. Interesting/Omoshiroi.

Pretty much the best part of the boat was the warm foot bath you could take while enjoying the scenery. I would have partaken, however there was no towel in site, and putting wet feet into dry socked didn’t sound fun at all….

I did notice however that the water was very calm. There was pretty much no waves, and relatively little wind on the ride. I’m wondering if we picked the perfect day, or if this is the norm.

Once we arrived, we walked around a bit. The lady at the ferry information desk was extremely helpful. She gave us a few maps and talked to us for quite a while about everything on the island. While my wife wanted to head straight to the hotel, I wanted to walk  around for a bit to get a feel for this place. Looking at the map, it didn’t seem like it would take us very long to walk to “downtown” Tonosho. After a 20-30 minute walk with heavy bags, it became apparently every map on this island is not to scale. Roads that looked short on the map were very long, and roads that were long were very short…. After the 30 minutes of me saying our destination should be right around the corner “based on the map”, I could hear the frustration on my wife’s voice.

At any rate, we made it to the world’s narrowest straight, “Dofuchi Straight”. Who knew it was on Shodoshima… http://www.town.tonosho.kagawa.jp/kanko/tnks/info34.html

According to their website, you could receive a certificate saying you crossed over it at the town hall, but we were in a hurry to get to our hotel before dark, so we skipped the formality.

We hopped on the local bus, and there was a sign that my wife told me said be careful of this spider… I can’t read Japanese, but that picture looks like a Black Widow. So ya, that is going to haunt me while I sleep… and every time I get an itch I going to swat at it like its a deadly spider…

We hopped off the local bus in Ikeda. The hotel had a shuttle bus that drove down and picked us up for the rest of the trip to the hotel. We settled into our hotel room, and enjoyed our boxed lunch/dinner/snacks we picked up earlier.

The hotel had a bit of “locally made snacks” the majority of which were olive themed as olives were what the island was known for. My wife wanted to go see what they had and maybe pick out some snacks. There was no restaurant or convenience store near the hotel. It was a bit remote. When my wife bought some snacks, the guy working at the hotel was a little worried that we didn’t have any food for dinner, and that the snacks she bought was going to be our dinner.  So he handed us some free snacks that tasted like rice crispy treats.

It was a pretty long day, so we got some sleep and prepared for the adventures to come.

*an additional thought from the trip, the ferry was pretty empty… there was like 10 people on the boat and 1 car. I bet summer time is much more busy, but I wonder how they can cover the costs of the ferry with so little passengers. I’m curious if the government is helping subsidize any of it.