island
Before you do anything else on Hatsushima, treat yourself to an amazing lunch at this fisherman-run restaurant.
Created completely by nature, this is a hidden gem you won’t want to miss during your Japan travels.
You won’t be disappointed if you want to experience an otherworldly atmosphere with plenty of singular photo ops.
Jeep Island lists snorkeling, diving, and swimming with dolphins as its main attractions. But only Japanese people are permitted to visit.
Who wouldn’t want to have their own private island? Imagine being able to get away from the world whenever you liked, free yourself from the stress of the daily grind and just relax under the sun or the nighttime stars on the beach.
Well the best place to start looking for such a private island is Japan. There are lots of small uninhabited islands owned by real estate companies that you can buy one almost as easily as you’d buy a house.
We recently visited one such island for sale to see what it was like and decide whether we should start saving up our pennies to buy one ourselves—after all, Rocket Island has quite a nice ring to it. Read on to see what our trip there was like, and to see some of the surprises that we ran into.
Aoshima (青島), which is incorporated into Ozu City, Ehime Prefecture, is a small, unpretentious island in the Seto Inland Sea of Japan (which one of our English-language correspondents has covered extensively). However, the 0.5 km² island does have one unique claim to fame–it’s known as a paradise for cats and cat lovers.
We actually featured Aoshima on our list of the 11 top cat islands in Japan back in April. After one Japanese Twitter user shared photos of the island’s hordes of cats online, Aoshima has experienced an unprecedented influx of tourists, leaving the local residents baffled and unprepared to deal with the flood of people streaming in.




















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Bamboo trees vandalized near Kyoto’s Fushimi Inari shrine, foreign graffiti prevalent
Nurture your inner cat collector with “Neko Atsume” the kitty-catching game for Android and iOS!
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Japan’s first all-matcha ramen restaurant is now open in Kyoto【Photos】
Chinese government tells citizens to not travel to Japan during Chinese New Year
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