Okunoshima

Nothing prepares you for the moment the ferry ramp lowers. We stepped off onto Okunoshima and there were already rabbits waiting on the concrete, noses working, completely unbothered by the boat or the crowd, as if they’d simply come down to see who was arriving. A child ahead of us shrieked with joy. Lia made a sound I’d never heard her make before, somewhere between a gasp and a giggle, and crouched down, and a brown rabbit hopped straight into the crook of her arm to check her pockets. Within a minute she had sat down on the grass entirely, and within another minute she had genuinely disappeared under a mound of them. I stood there holding both our bags like a very happy idiot.

An Island That Runs on Rabbits

There are hundreds of them, maybe over a thousand, and they own the place completely. They lounge on the paths, doze in the shade of ruined walls, and materialize from the undergrowth the instant you rustle a bag. The accepted wisdom is to bring rabbit-safe pellets, not human snacks, and to sit low so they can come to you rather than chasing them, which never works anyway. We learned quickly that the moment you sit down you become furniture, and rabbits will climb you to reach whatever they think you’re hiding. Lia named three of them within the hour and mourned genuinely when we couldn’t tell them apart again. The whole island is car-light and gentle, a loop road you can walk in a couple of hours, and it hums with a low collective happiness you rarely feel in a crowd of strangers.

The Ruins Behind the Cuteness

And then you round a corner and find the crumbling concrete shells of factory buildings swallowed in vines, and the mood shifts. Okunoshima has a darker history than its fluffy present admits: during the war it was erased from maps and used to secretly manufacture poison gas, and the ruins of that industry still stand, roofless and silent, among the grazing rabbits. There’s a small, unflinching museum near the pier that lays it out plainly, and we went in quiet and came out quieter. Nobody knows for certain how the rabbits got here, whether they descend from test animals or were later releases, but standing among those ruins with a rabbit calmly eating clover at my feet, the contrast was almost too much to hold. Lia squeezed my hand. Neither of us said anything for a while.

The Slow Loop and the Sea

We walked the island’s perimeter in the afternoon, past the old brick power-station ruin and up to the lookout, where the Inland Sea spreads out silver and dotted with islands and the strange tall tower that once served the mainland military. The rabbits thin out on the higher paths, and it becomes just a beautiful small island with a beach, a lighthouse, and the sea working quietly at the rocks below. We took off our shoes and put our feet in the water and a single ambitious rabbit followed us all the way down to the sand, apparently on principle. Watching the last ferry crowds gather, everyone reluctant, everyone with grass stains and a phone full of the same photo, I thought there are worse things a place can do than make a boatload of tired travelers uncomplicatedly happy. Even one with a history this heavy.

Getting There

Okunoshima is reached by a short ferry from Tadanoumi Port, and the port is a five-minute walk from Tadanoumi Station on the Kure line in Hiroshima Prefecture. The crossing takes only about fifteen minutes, and ferries run regularly through the day, though they get busy on weekends and holidays, so aim for an early boat. Buy rabbit-safe pellets before you board, either at the mainland shop by the port or on the island, since there’s little else to feed them and human food makes them sick. There are no shops to speak of once you’re across apart from the single resort hotel, so bring water. Pair the visit with Takehara, one stop up the line, and you have a perfect Inland Sea day: rabbits in the morning, old salt-merchant streets in the golden afternoon.