Not Enough Cheese: A Trip Round The Islands

We climbed a gorge and made moody poses!

A few months ago we decided to do a series of island trips during our final months in Japan. There were several reasons for this. Firstly, we have to save money for our return to the UK and island trips are relatively cheap since they don’t involve hopping on the super-pricey shinkansen. Secondly, we’ve found the islands off mainland Japan (I’m not sure whether you can correctly describe the larger islands of Japan as “mainland Japan” but anyway…) to have a character of their own compared to the mainland. Usually they have been more laid back and there seems to be a larger number of “characters”, in our experience, anyway.

So last weekend, in the final part of our island odyssey, we made our way to Shodoshima. Shodoshima is the largest of the Seto Inland Sea islands (again, this is questionable geography, because I don’t know whether Honshu itself could count as a Seto Inland Sea island, but anyway…). It takes about an hour by ferry, which was enough time to consume my own weight in overly-salty snacks and sandwiches. The bagel that I bought from Bagel and Bagel was not a patch on either Carmelli or the Brick Lane Beigel Bake (sic) but it filled a hole nonetheless. We made the wise decision to rent a car, which gave us a lot of freedom over the weekend and meant we could do some cool drives along the coast and pretend we were in Thelma and Louise. I was Thelma of course, because K Chan never lets me be Louise.

Poser

Now there are an awful lot of things to like and admire about Shodoshima. But it is a Japanese tourist destination and that means you do have to wade through a lot of tacky nonsense. As I’ve said before, Japanese tacky nonsense can have a charm of its own. Shodoshima is “famous” for olives. In that spirit we visited the Olive Park where there was a history of olive production on the island, some Greek ruins and er, a Dutch-style windmill. There really were “Greek ruins”, honestly. We also admired the Visitor Centre’s reproduction of “The Venus of Milo”.

For some reason, the caption on this re-production amused me.

I was continually frustrated by the gift shops on Shodoshima. They sold every type of olive-based product imaginable: olive bread, olive-flavoured seaweed, olive oil, olive jam, olive chocolate etc. But they did not sell olives. The only thing I wanted to buy was olives. This was frustrating.

Also, I had been told to try the olive ice cream. Unfortunately, there seems to have been some terrible olive ice cream related production crisis on Shodoshima because every shop we tried had run out. I did try the soy sauce flavoured ice cream though. I know that sounds dreadful but it was actually delicious-the salt and sweet flavours go together really well.

We hopped into what may well be our last onsen/sento visit in Japan and I enjoyed the excellent views over the ocean whilst chatting to a random Japanese retired gentleman who had previously been a professor of African-American literature and knew a lot more about Langston Hughes than I did. I absolutely love speaking to Japanese academics who have studied English as their range of knowledge is usually amazing and they often have an international perspective that very few people have here, in Okayama at least. This guy had lived in Harlem for several years during the 1970s which is fascinating in itself, but he also talked interestingly about the social and academic stigma of studying African-American literature when virtually nobody in Japan had even met an African-American, let alone read any African-American literature. He had apparently just read a Langston Hughes poem one day and loved it so much that he had decided to spend the rest of his career studying the guy. Man, I love enthusiasts.

We also took a drive along the coast to visit the recreated set of Twenty-Four Eyes, a famous Japanese film, itself based on a book and set on Shodoshima. We wandered around the 1930s-style school room and vegetable patches, wallowing in nostalgia for something we hadn’t even seen. It was pretty though and I really enjoyed the drive.

The Twenty Four Eyes "Set"

I don’t know if we’ll make it back to the Seto Inland Sea. I’m heading to Hiroshima next weekend and then that’s probably it for big trips until hometime. But I’ll always have fond memories of our island adventures. One month to go. We’re nearly at the end now.