mountainspring

I'm planning a trip to Japan and it's been recommended that I spend a few days on SHODO SHIMA ISLAND - but I am not sure why. I can't find anything about it on line. Obviously I'm going to follow up with the travel agent to see why they are recommending this island, but I was also wondering if any fodorites had advice/thoughts.

KimJapan

It's a semi-tropical island famous for olives. Do a google search using "shodoshima" and you'll find lots of information, in both Japanese and English. I've never been there, but actually just the other day I was talking about it with a Japanese friend who used to live in Tokyo and she said it was lovely.

mountainspring

Thanks - duh - when I got almost nothing in the google search, I should have changed the search terms: I was using "SHODO SHIMA ISLAND" in quotes and got very little. I switched it to "shodoshima" and tons came up. Glad to hear about your conversation with your friend as well.

nickn

One thing I know is that Shodoshima is the setting of the well known (well, at least by those grew up during war time Japan) novel/movie "24 eyes" by Sakae Tsuboi.
While the story takes place in war time Japan, it is only a background in which the Japanese childhood is celebrated.

Here is one link about this novel:

http://www.aems.uiuc.edu/HTML/ChalkG...four_eyes.html

There are also soy sauce factories you can visit:

Marukin soy sauce: http://www.marukin-chuyu.com/profile...sh/profile.htm about $2 entrance

There are others, Marusima, Yamahisa, Yamaroku,etc but they are small and require reservations.

mountainspring

thanks everyone, I just can't for the life of me figure out why I would take 2 full days out of a 14 day tour to this island. The itinerary they have for me only has 2 days in Kyoto. I think I'm going to say no thanks, give me those extra 2 days in Kyoto.