Our First Cat Island

Ainoshima Island in Fukuoka, Kyushu

On the day we set out to visit Ainoshima Island, we slept in and were late leaving town. We figured we could still make the 1:30PM ferry to the island and have the afternoon on the island, so we rushed to the ferry terminal… but it turns out there was no 1:30PM ferry. Unfortunately we misunderstood the timetables on the website (we were looking at the return schedule) so we waited at least another hour till the next ferry docked. There are only 4 or 5 sailings a day.

With an hour to play with, we hung around with a few cats around the ferry building and then took a walk out to the breakwater. The massive concrete breakwater is a popular fishing spot for locals, but we didn’t see any fish.

Ainoshima Island is one of 11 cat islands in Japan. These cat islands began when fishermen introduced cats onto the islands to get rid of rodents… but the cats stuck around. Ainoshima Island isn’t the most famous one, but it still has a tourist brochure featuring cats. The brochure had some points of interest and we decided to take a look around the island first, before hanging around the port with the cats.

There were several rocky beaches but we were surprised to see a lot of garbage around. We think that it might be tsunami debris from a 2016 earthquake, but we don’t know for sure. We did find the skeleton of a puffer fish though!

There is one good viewpoint along the road going around the island, where we could see a famous arched rock.

After the viewpoint, we decided to head back to the little fishing village to play with the cats.

There are around 50 cats or so around the port, just hanging out. We saw one woman feeding them but they are all “strays”.

On the way back we walked along the beach. It’s quite a nice beach and it would have been nice to spend a day there, but we didn’t have much time.