TacoCat’s Travels #158 (Hiroshima): Visiting Rabbit Island! 🐰

Hey Hive!

If you missed the last few posts, we're recounting our trip to Hiroshima back in April 2019! Sean had won some free air tickets to Hiroshima from a lucky draw sponsored by one of the local banks in Singapore, DBS! Since we've never been, we decided that was a good chance to explore the Chūgoku region!

So last week, we had a very relaxing day at the AEON Mall not too far from our apartment. We explored the huge supermarket and the shops at the mall, including my favourite Snoopy Town Store! And we had a lot of yummy snacks from different pastry shops! It was nice just spending the day relaxing after the long previous day at Shrine island Miyajima.

We had some big plans for this day which I teased about at the end of the last post so let's get into it!

13 April 2019. Saturday.

Today was special since we were going to visit Rabbit Island! Also known as Ōkunoshima, it is a small island is considered to be part of the city of Takehara in Hiroshima Prefecture. We'd read about this island online and were really curious to see what it was like to visit an island full of wild rabbits! And it actually wasn't going to take us that long to get there from where we were staying, so why not check it out!

It's actually pretty perfect that I'm posting this on Easter Monday! >.< But here's some information about Rabbit Island, home to over a thousand wild rabbits!

Source: rabbit-island.info

The website is actually really helpful with directions and other important information and they highlight several ways to get there.

I don't really remember which route we took exactly, or maybe we took a whole other route not shown here but either way, we left at about noon and arrived in this train station where they were advertising the Daruma festival?

And we also saw this bakery shop with a lot of lovely looking buns and pastries that was so tempting! But they were kinda kept out in the open so I think they got cold really quickly.They did look good though!

I'm not too sure what train route we took, but we ended up in a train that took us across the water! It looked so cool to be crossing the sea in a train!

We even passed by a beach and could see some kids playing in the water and tankers in the background.

I don't think we've ever taken a train like that before but we were literally beside the beach next to the ocean! When would you ever enjoy an ocean view from a train?

After about an hour or so, we arrived at Tadanomi Port and found the Rabbit Island Ferry Ticket "booth"! I'm not sure what to call it because it's not really a booth since it looked pretty fancy.

It even had a fancy clock on the other side and a cafe too!

Inside, there was actually a photo booth which you can take pictures in for a souvenir!

Normally we'd do this but it was pretty crowded since the ticket machine was right beside the photo booth and everyone was trying to get tickets.

It was getting kinda cramped so we didn't stick around in there. We bought our tickets for the next available ferry and left.

It was definitely one of the fanciest ticketing booths I've seen though! And all that just for the ticket machine. Well I guess there were other stuff too like souvenirs I guess.

Thankfully they had ferries going to and from the island pretty frequently so we only had to wait about 15 minutes for the next one. The ferry itself wasn't much to look at; it was a pretty small boat with an indoor cabin for all the passengers. It got kinda stuffy after a while so thankfully the journey only took 15 minutes.

Soon enough, we arrived at Rabbit Island! And I guess this island is also part of the Satonaikai National Park.

We walked along the main pathway and already saw quite a few tourists and some rabbits on the ground!

The website actually highlights some Dos and Don'ts like not carrying/chasing them, what kind of food to feed them and of course not abandoning your own rabbits there or bringing any of the rabbits back home with you.

We made sure to keep those rules in mind when visiting the island and there were even some signage up to remind visitors as well.

There were already some rabbits on the ground from where we arrived! I thought there wouldn't be as many near the entrance since that's where most of the people would be but thankfully they're not so scared of humans. I guess they just became more immune to human presence with the tourists.

There were also a lot of burrows as you can see. Just look at these 2 chilling in a hole.

I wanted to get a close-up of one of the rabbits but was scared they would bite me since they are wild and all and might not be the cleanest. But this one was distracted with some cabbage so..

There was also this chonky bunny just relaxing on a tree trunk. I don't think this picture is sideways either the trees were growing on a cliff.

The surroundings of the island were really beautiful as well and there was even a tour bus operating there! I guess it's for convenience or those with disabilities.

The water around the island was so clean too! Just look at this little cove.

There were so many rabbits just seeking shelter under these bushes. And ther were also a lot of random food scraps on the ground like cabbage leaves and carrots.

We bought a bag of treats at the ferry terminal so feed the rabbits and were looking to see which one we could approach. Most of them looked pretty satisfied though.

Then we spotted this lone rabbit near the pavement and I managed to pet and feed it! His fur was quite rough but he did eat the treat from my hand so.. Success!

We were just walking along and saw some people actually camping out on the island, with tents and everything. I could even smell some barbequeing!

I'm not sure who would be camping on this remote island with over a thousand wild rabbits but there were quite a few tents set up!

There was this very nice view of some surrounding islands and the ocean though so maybe they wanted to enjoy the view with the rabbits?

The rabbits seemed pretty well-fed though, we saw these rabbits that had a whole stash of cabbage!

We did enjoy the ocean view and breeze but there was still much to see inland.

So we walked further in and saw some roads that were blocked. This rabbit looked like it was guarding the road so we made sure not to anger it >.<

I managed to get a few more closeups of the rabbits! While trying to avoid their poop.

Most of them looked pretty docile though, which was good. I was scared there would be rabid rabbits. xD

Here's a map of the whole island. Unfortunately it was all in Japanese so I couldn't read it.

But there was also a very lovely and majestic-looking sakura tree nearby!

The bench in front of it was actually super low and short, but I thought it made for a nice picture. And maybe it was for the rabbits to sit instead of humans?

It looked like a mini cherry blossom grove, but there was also this shelter of colourful origami crane chains! I'm not sure what they were for but they looked so pretty and I think the local "residents" appreciated them!

And we managed to take a pic with this little bun.

There was also this rabbit with an interesting coat just nibbling on this lettuce.

I asked Sean to try and feed one and we saw this cute little rabbit all by himself! He looked like a baby-ish rabbit and seemed relatively safe to approach.

He was so cute! And reminded me of my virtual pet bunny I used to have in Maplestory lul.

But I think that's gonna be it for today! Sorry for the abrupt end but there's still a lot more pics to come from our adventure to Rabbit Island so stay tuned!

Thanks so much for reading!

To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!

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Check out my previous post in this series!

TacoCat’s Travels #157 (Hiroshima): Shopping for Special Seasonal Snacks! 🍮

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