Written by Dave

Aoshima rest day

We’ve had a relaxing day here in Aoshima. We were still up early as it’s hard to break a habit and tomorrow we have an early start so no sense in over doing it today, right Nancy?

Our first stop was the Ulu coffee shop, recommended by our guest house manager. They were just taking chocolate chip/hazel nut scones out of the oven when we walked in so we knew there was a chance.  We were the only customers but the gal working there was really afraid of making us coffees as we like them. Later in the day we ran into another reluctant barista but talked the second one through what we wanted. It all comes down to how willing the barista is to working with us. Some folks are ok; others almost seem scared to death – even though Nancy is pretty good with her Japanese. The first gal made ok coffees, the scones were quite nice.

After brekkie we headed Aoshima Shrine out on Aoshima Island. If you Google Aoshima Island, we are not at the one full of cats, but rather, the one off the coast of Aoshima where the Aoshima Shrine is – got it? It does get confusing sometime. Anyway, the shrine gate and shrine were quite nice, with only a few folks milling about. It was quite peaceful (unlike yesterday afternoon when there were absolute hoards heading out over the bridge to the island).

The shrine is thought to be about 1,200 years old. It is famous as a shrine which answers prayers for fruitful marriage. In ancient times, supposedly the entire island of Aoshima was considered an extremely sacred place, and only selected individuals were allowed to pray at the Shrine. Today, punters (like us) wander the island, fishermen work the waters and couples hang hand painted wooden hearts near a big tacky red heart arch. Times have changed.

The island is also known for its unique wavelike rock formations, called Oni-no-Sentakuita (Ogre’s Washboard or Giant’s washboard or Devil’s washboard depending on where you look). The rock formations and vegetation on the island are both designated as natural monuments. I’m not too sure about the vegetation but the rocks were interesting.

Wandering town this morning we got a photo of a more mundane element of Japan – that is weekly garbage pick-up. Locals save their garbage at their homes until garbage day then on the day, take it all outside and put it under some netting for pick-up. The netting keeps the critters away. They separate everything here – plastic, glass, plastic bottles, metal cans and burnable. I’m not sure if plastic and burnable don’t end up in the same place but for sure the average home owner is extremely diligent in their separation.

In public, there are very few places to dispose of trash and many shops have signs telling everyone to take their garbage home with them. This all is fine if you have a home but for us it is not workable. Add to this the amount of extra wrapping that they but on everything and we end up with a bit of waste disposal challenge every day. At the guest houses it’s ok but camping, where they don’t have bins, we are a bit of a loss what to do. We often use the convenience stores but I’m sure this is frowned upon. We would never dump anything roadside but sometimes it feels like we have little choice.

After the island we strolled through the Aoshima botanical gardens. They were nicely groomed but not super big. There a couple trees that looked like the Australian Wollemi pine. I later check the web and indeed Aoshima is the home to a few Wollemi – how exciting.

We did some more forward planning to fill the rest of the morning, then went for another nanban chicken for lunch. I was pretty keen to have a second. Nancy, not as much – but she’s a good sport. After lunch we tried the second coffee barista noted above and had one of the best cortado coffees that we’ve had in Japan. The gal making them at first quickly said “we don’t have them” but she was open to experimenting and we got there in the end.

For dinner we started at the Aoshima Fisherman’s Restaurant, hoping to have some of their delicious looking ebi tempura rolls (ebi = shrimp) that were pictured on the windows. This is one on Nancy’s favourite Japanese dishes and she did let me have the chicken for lunch so it only seemed fair. Well, scratch that as they were out of ebi. We ended up at a izakaya, sort of a local bar cum restaurant in Japan where we had of all things, tacos. Most izakaya have a limited menu, mostly bar food and this one did tacos. Not what we expected but the atmosphere was nice and the hosts friendly. We have try a few more izakaya just for the entertainment value.

We’ve got about the next week planned and are ready to tackle Cape Sata in two days time. Our guest house manager said that there is nothing there but nature, so it should be fun. The forecast is good and we have plenty of food. We’ll be camping at the cape, and staying shipping containers tomorrow. Should be fun.