Tashirojima (Cat Island)

 There are a bunch of islands in Japan that claim to be "Cat Island". Tashirojima is one of them. It's a 30 minute ferry ride from Ishinomaki terminal, and there are only three ferries per day, so we made sure we got up and moving early. Arriving at the dock, we saw the Mangattan Museum, nestled on it's own island in the bay.

Mangattan is dedicated to Shotaro Ishinomori, which may not be a common household name these days, but he was the creator of Kamen Rider. If you don't know Kamen Rider...here's a short sample

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCSbh6nk4bs

Kamen Rider predated Super Sentai (you know, Power Rangers) by 5 years and was (and still is) hugely influential. But that's not we were here for today.

We're here for the kitties!

The mighty vessel "See Cat"

Tashirojima is an accidental Cat Island and is not advertised as heavily as some of the others. The human population has been declining rapidly on the island so currently there are only about 80 people living on the island (down from 1000 in the 1950s). Cats were introduced to the island initially to handle the mice population and protect the silkworms that were being raised for textiles. In 1602 there was a famous decree from the government to set all pet cats free to combat the out of control rat population decimating the silkworm and rice crops. Long story short, eventually all cats were set free. Here in Tashirojima, there are no natural predators so the cats thrived living alongside humans.

Nowadays, there are several hundred cats on the island. They are all very used to strange humans asking to pet them and taking pictures of them and take it in stride. There are strict rules against picking up or feeding the cats. They are wild animals, after all, though very socialized with humans, and the residents of the island don't want cats begging and mobbing tourists for food.

Most signs on the island look like this

Most are mutts, but there is a strain of Japanese Bobtail that is common here

They were everywhere, hunting, sleeping, eating, playing. Compared to the Bunny Island that we visited last year, this felt much more natural. Cats are a lot smarter and more interactive than rabbits, so seeing them out and about on their own was a lot cooler than the clusters of hungry bunnies that only come up to you for food. 

We stopped to have a snack and one particularly brave cat at first came up to us to see if he could maybe steal some food, but eventually, after a lot of ignored pleading and staring, just hung out with us while we ate.

There is also a rather cute campground near the town that is Manga and Cat themed. We took a hike up to the site to get some pictures of the cabins they have there.

"Manga Island"

Yes, we looked into staying in one, but there were a lot of complications between biking, the fact that they only have (short-looking) bunk beds, no food on the island, etc. The view from the bluff is pretty cool.

There is also a small cat shrine in the middle of the island.

The shrine

The offerings

After wandering around for the morning, we caught the ferry back to the mainland and got everything ready for leaving tomorrow, including laundry, shipping our luggage (at the very conveniently located Kuroneko depot literally behind our hotel. The owner, Sacho Mino, remember him? He happened to be in the parking lot when we were getting ready to drag our luggage to the convenience store, and told us about it or we never would have known it was there), and getting some food.

The aftermath

We have some decisions to make soon. There is rain in the forecast, and depending on how bad and how long, we'll either plow through it and hope for the best or cut the biking short and head back to Tokyo. We've have wonderful weather the entire trip (even the rain on the first day wasn't that bad), so we're willing to put up with some rain, but it can get dangerous in the mountains with too much.