Right now, we are sitting on a ferry leaving Shōdoshima, an Island in the Japanese Inland sea. We spent the last 48 hours on this beautiful island.
When planning our trip to Japan while looking for accomodations in Shikoku, a guesthouse on Shōdoshima island kept popping up again and again. It looked beautiful and we wanted to spend some time on an island with nice beaches.

Check out an interactive Map of the places we visited here. I will update this map as we continue our Journey. This post is about Day 18 and 19.

We drove from Tsurugisan to Takamatsu, which is about 80 km apart from each other. This drive took us three hours (most roads had a speed limit of 50 kph).

We took the ferry from Takamatsu to Shōdoshima. It had beautiful colors. When stopping our car on the ferry, employees of the ferry put wedges under our tires to keep the car from moving about. I never saw anyone do this on any ferry ever before. They even put wedges under the tires of bicycles – that is Japanese dedication! When we reached Shōdoshima, we checked out Angel Road first. This strip of land only appears on low tide. We were lucky that it just happened to be low tide when we arrived. I was surprised at how beautiful the beach was! Of course, nobody was bathing in the water (bathing in the sea is not really a thing in Japan, surprisingly). We then drove accross the island and got to our accomodation (Sen Guesthouse, it is absolutely gorgeous!). This was the view from our room!
The room had completely new Tatami (the stuff on the floor) and comfy Futons. This was the private beach of Sen Guesthouse. Since this guesthouse is a bit far from the rest of the island (5km to the next Convenience Store), it is also very calm and relaxing there. We checked out this concrete observation tower that somebody built into the natural landscape on top of the mountain that is in the middle of Shōdoshima. I like the contrast of this concrete structure to the surrounding nature. The view from the observation tower was quite bad. Even though it was situated on top of the mountain you could not see very much since the trees surrounding the observation deck were just as tall as the observation deck itself. We also checked out another platform from which you had a much better view of Shōdoshima. The island does not have that many tourists compared to other places in Japan, which was surprising to me. On the island, the landscape is very different from north to south. In the north, there are red rocks, very little vegetation – it looks like a desert. The south of the island is green with palm trees and has a carribean vibe.

Traffic is quite slow on Shōdoshima. The maximum allowed speed is 60 kph with most roads having a speed limit of just 40 kph. To travel the island from north to south you need about an hour (for 25km). This low travel speed also allows you to enjoy the landscape and just relax a bit more. Shōdoshima is famous for three things:

1. Soy Sauce
2. Sake (Japanese Rice Wine)
3. Olives

Naturally, we checked out all three of those things on Shōdoshima. Sake and Olives were not that special to us since those two things are produced in lots of places but Soy Sauce is quite unique to Shōdoshima. The island climate is warm all year round but not too hot which is perfect for brewing Soy Sauce as we learned.

We went to Yamaroku, one of the few places left in the world that still produces Soy Sauce like it was produced for centuries before modern processes were developed. Nowadays, only 1% of all Soy Sauce production is done in the way that Yamaroku does it.
The picture above shows were the Soy Sauce is "produced". The ingredients Soy, Salt Water and Wheat rest in wooden barrels for at least 2 years were they ferment with naturally occuring microbes. The barrel that is on the rightmost side of the picture is about 150 years old and is the oldes barrel that Yamaroku has. The outside of this barrel is covered in white particles and kind of looks moldy up close.

We were not allowed to touch the barrels since touching them meant disturbing the microorganisms that live on the barrel. I later realized that I had seen this factory before: You can see it in the Netflix Series "Salt Fat Acid Heat" (obviously it is in the Salt episode).

Our tour guide of the factory had quite an interesting story. He was not Japanese but French and said to us that he does not gets to speak English that much. He had been looking for a job and just asked if he could work at the Soy Sauce factory without knowing Japanese. The owner said yes.
When we asked him if he is interested in Soy Sauce he denied and said that he didn't like Soy Sauce that much. He was much more into Computers. Quite a funny guy actually.

After the tour of the factory, we tried all of the different Soy Sauces that Yamaroku produces and they were all equally great. It is like tasting a good french/swiss cheese after you only had mass-produced american processed cheese all your life. The taste is completely umami and not as salty as industrial soy sauces. We had Maple Ice Cream with Soy Sauce which was out of this world good! If you like Salted Caramel the combination of Maple and Soy Sauce will just blow you away! For dinner, we went to different places but all of them were closed. This is a thing about Shōdoshima: You cannot really trust Google Maps or even the opening hours written on the places themselves. People will just decide to not open if they don't feel like it. Luckily, the Supermarket was open and we just got a bunch of delicious stuff from there and ate it on the front veranda of Sen Guesthouse. This was the second restaurant that was closed.

All in all, I would highly recommend to have a short stay on Shōdoshima. It is such a wonderful place that is not overcrowded, offers some amazing sights, tasty food and great local culture! There is even a craft beer brewery on Shōdoshima that we vistited which had an incredible Olive Imperial Gose made from olives from Shōdoshima. Next, we will go back to the big city.