I have been long fascinated by the rabbit island of Japan, or more officially known as Okunoshima. There are lots of videos on YouTube showing tourists being chased by a flock of rabbits. I dreamed to visit this island one day and on this trip I decided to give it a go. This island is quite off-track from the popular destinations, and there aren’t a lot of information you can find online about this island. Thus I decided to provide all the information that I have personally experienced myself – especially about the transportation – on this blog post.
Firstly let’s look at the location of Okunoshima on the map:
Zooming in, we can see that Hiroshima or Fukuyama are the only option for base camp – unless you want to stay in the Okunoshima itself. Also Okunoshima was not on the Sanyo Shinkansen line (blue-white line). The nearest shinkansen station is Mihara, from which we need to take the JR Kure line (grey-white line) towards Hiroshima, and stopping at Tadanoumi (not pictured).
Our choice to visit Hiroshima was partially influenced by this fact that we need a base camp to visit the rabbit island – and Hiroshima fits the schedule well. We started early in the morning, taking the 6:54 AM Shinkansen Kodama 728 to Mihara. Do take note that not all shinkansen stopped in Mihara, most Kodama trains did, but Hikari and Sakura trains didn’t.
This train arrived at Mihara Station at 7:21 AM and we have ample time to go to toilet and buy breakfast before transferred to 7:32 AM JR Kure line. The train direction is towards Hiroshima (see map above) – which confused us at that time since we did not refer to the bigger map. Fortunately it was easily solved by asking a train officer, pointing the train and saying “Tadanoumi?” “Tadanoumi, hai.” “Arigato gozaimasu.”
The Kure line is a local train connecting coastal towns – and you can see the inland sea scenery after a few stops.
Our stop will be Tadanoumi station – scheduled to be at 7:54 AM with this Kure line train. Don’t fall asleep since Kure line trains are not too frequent!
Tadanoumi is a small, quiet port city – I wonder what does the residents do in this city? We passed by a research center, a small hospital… and we didn’t see so much people. Anyways upon exiting the station you turn right, and walk down the road for a few minutes to find Tadanoumi port.
Minato OASIS Tadanoumi was the place where you can buy the ferry tickets that will get you to Okunoshima. It is located just directly in front of the port. Tickets were bought from the vending machine in front of the shop, it’s marked with a rabbit image and it costed 620¥ for round-trip journey. You can also buy rabbit food (pellets) here, but they didn’t stock a lot. I believe if you came later in the day they will be definitely out of stock. We bought a few packets to complement our fresh lettuces bought in Hiroshima. Below is the picture of the place:
I spoke to the shop lady, since she spoke English – and I found the timetable of the ferries and boats inside the shop. I think this will greatly help people planning their journey to Okunoshima. Your round trip ticket can be used in either the ferry or the passenger boat, so you can pick and adjust your schedule accordingly. Here we took the 08:30 ferry. It’s not a rush, we arrived at 07:54, enough time to walk towards the port and buy the tickets, and of course take a few photos.
Our return plan was to catch 11:27 Kure line train from Tadanoumi back to Mihara (because we wanted to go Miyajima afterwards). Thus my initial plan was to take the 10:13 ferry back to Tadanoumi. I didn’t know that there was a passenger boat in service too, so after seeing this table I adjusted our schedule so that we take the 10:45 boat instead. That means another half an hour with rabbits! 😀
Some of you might be wondering what’s the difference between a passenger boat and a ferry? Well, I have pictures for you:
We boarded the 08:30 ferry and we finally departed to Okunoshima! The weather was really nice that day, sunny and windy, perfect for an exploration.
The ferry ride only took 15 minutes. Stepping our foot in the island for the first time, and guess what greeted us? A flock of rabbits! How AWESOME.
The excitement of meeting a lot of rabbits for the first time delayed our exploration a little bit… but we finally managed to drag ourselves down to the road and we started exploring the island. There was a walking trail beside the road and we decided to just follow the walking trail until we ran out of time.
There was an uphill trail which was quite interesting so we thought why not? So up we went… and we found a lot of good stuff!
Needless to say that the uphill trail was certainly amazing, with rabbits occasionally came out from nowhere to greet you and asking for food. The uphill trail ended in front of the one and only hotel in the island. Here you can finally see more people, with a lot of kids chasing around and feeding rabbits. Most of the rabbits in this area were BIG. Probably because the hotel guests fed them very frequently, compared to those bunnies in the more secluded area.
By then we had not so much time left so we quickly tracked back towards the port, and generously feeding rabbits along the way. It was so much fun! We took the 10:45 AM boat back to Tadanoumi port. The Kure line back to Mihara was due to arrive on 11:27 AM so it’s just nice that we could have some time to rest but not too long of a wait. There was a waiting room/reading room on the Tadanoumi station for people to rest.
That concludes one of the most awesome travel destination that I’ve ever experienced. Our journey was pretty much smooth with no hiccups – thanks to the weather especially – and I have a few tips for you if you’re planning to go to Okunoshima:
- Go early in the morning. This gives two benefits, first is that the island won’t be crowded with tourists yet, and the second is that the rabbits are still hungry! They will run after you with just a plastic bag shake! 😀
- Bring your own rabbit food (vegetables – lettuces and carrots will do just fine). This is just in case that the shop ran out of stock, and it will greatly compromise your fun. Supermarkets or convenience stores should have it, I bought 3 packs of lettuces in 7-11 in Hiroshima.
- Since I made Okunoshima as a side trip, that means Hiroshima is the most likely option to be your base camp. If you do, you could follow my timing as I mentioned above. Just make sure that the train timetable hasn’t changed (this journey was on March 2015).
- If you don’t like going early in the morning, you could try staying in Mihara or Tadanoumi, there will definitely be hotels or guest rooms available, the only catch is that English information might not be so easily available. Alternatively you could stay in the Okunoshima hotel itself.
- JR Kure line train is infrequent, make sure you check their schedule on Hyperdia to avoid leaving Okunoshima too fast and ended up waiting too long in Tadanoumi. Also detouring back to Mihara and then Shinkansen to Hiroshima is much faster rather than riding Kure line all the way back to Hiroshima.
Go to Part 5 – Himeji and Kobe >>>
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