It looks like someone edited a Greek island into the Inland Sea and hoped nobody would check.
You come off the ferry expecting rural Japan and get terraced slopes, blue water and olive trees, which is not a combination this country is supposed to offer.
Then you walk into a valley twenty minutes inland where the air is thick and sweet and slightly alive, and you realise you are standing in the middle of about forty wooden buildings full of fermenting soy sauce, some of them older than your country's current constitution.
You will buy soy sauce ice cream because it sounds like a dare. It will be excellent. You will be annoyed about this.
Japan has been growing olives on Shodoshima since 1908, when the government trialled three sites and only this one worked. It still supplies most of the domestic crop, and the landscape genuinely does not look Japanese.
The famous attraction is Angel Road: a sandbar that surfaces at low tide, connects four small islets, and then disappears again. The timings are posted daily. Yes, people propose there. No, you cannot outrun the tide, and the board is not decoration.
The part that stays with you is the soy sauce. There is a working valley of wooden fermentation warehouses where small producers age shoyu in cedar barrels for years, and several will let you taste properly — the way a winery would. The difference between this and the supermarket bottle is roughly the difference between supermarket wine and something with a vintage.
Then there is Kankakei Gorge, reached by ropeway, which appears on every Japanese "best autumn colour" list that Japanese people actually use rather than the ones written for tourists. In mid-November it is absurd.
The island is bigger than it looks on the map. Buses exist, but a rental car changes the day completely.
Everyone comes for the olives, which arrived in 1908. The thing that has actually been here for four hundred years is the soy sauce — Shodoshima was making it before Tokyo was Tokyo, because the island had salt, rice, and a sheltered sea route to Osaka. The Mediterranean-looking bit is the recent import. The smell in that valley is the old thing, and almost no foreign visitor ever walks up there to find it.
- Olive cultivation started here in 1908 as a government trial to supply oil for canning sardines. It is the only one of the three trial sites that survived.
- The soy sauce valley is centred on Hishio no Sato; several breweries are open to visitors and the barrels are cedar, some over a century old.
- Shodoshima also hosts part of the Setouchi Triennale art festival, which means you can turn a corner and find a major contemporary artwork in a field.
Getting there
Ferry from Takamatsu (about 60 minutes), or from Himeji, Kobe and Okayama. Rent a car at the port — the island's sights are spread out and the bus timetable will define your day otherwise.