Sado Island

Many years ago, there was an old chap who ran a noodle shop. He lived by himself, with just a cat for company. He loved this cat just as if it were a real child. But times were not good for noodles (astonishing enough, in a country where there are still a gazillion ramen-ya - or maybe his noodles were just rank bad). In order to repay the kindness shown by her master, the cat transformed herself into a young female singer. She called herself Okei and sang Okei Bushi (Okei's song) in a mournful tone. You can hear it for yourself here (just select track 5. Sado Okesa). Instantly, her sweet voice (sic) became famous and the noodle shop was raking it in.

Most Japanese are familiar with the legend of Okei and "Sado Okesa" has become a traditional folk song, although some might say that it still sounds more like the cat singing.

So why the convoluted introduction? Well it's Golden Week, and we've just visited Sado Island - the home of that lucky old noodle vendor and his moggy. Sado is a fair old schlep from Kobe. It's in the Sea of Japan, north-west of Niigata, over 300 miles away.

We're not getting any younger, so what better way to acquaint ourselves with a life of elasticated-waist slacks, coach trips and set meals than a package tour? We were on the island barely 48 hours, yet we whizzed around a dozen local sights, stayed in a couple of reasonably modern ryokan hotels and were served most of the creatures that live in the sea. Here are the highlights of our lightning tour of Sadogashima:

Tarai-bune
The tarai-bune is a traditional Japanese fishing boat (or, more accurately, tub-boat) used for catching seaweed, abalone and other mollusks. And tourists. It's paddled around the harbour by ladies in traditional costume, looking ever so slightly Welsh.

Sake Brewery

An interesting new take on the working-brewery-as-tourist-attraction experience - you get the hard sell first (what awards they've won, how great their sake is etc) followed by the chance to taste a few molecules of sake - and purchase whole bottles of it of course - followed by making your own way out the back of the building past people working. Work that was very probably sake-related, but was never really made that explicit. Bit of an anti-climax really.

Ibis Sanctuary

The ibis - or toki, to give it its Japanese name - was once seen all over Japan but is now sadly extinct in the wild. Thankfully the Chinese had a few left that they hadn't eaten, and donated a pair for procreation in captivity on Sado Island. Now the Sado Japanese Crested Ibis Conservation Center has nearly 100 toki, and they are preparing to release some of them into the wild this year. Maybe understandably they were a bit over-protective though, and you could just about make out some birds in a cage, across a field, from behind glass. Although they did provide binoculars, which was very thoughtful of them.

Sado Kinzan
Sado Island is most famous for its gold mine, which only closed in 1989 after nearly 400 years production. One of the tunnels has been opened for exhibition and the whole experience - featuring animated miners depicting the various mining tasks - is really well done, even if the "Please do not touch the robots" signs do rather spoil the ambience a little.

And there were temples - there's always temples - and lighthouses, and glass-bottomed boats tracing the craggy coastline. And fish. Lots and lots of fish. They even bottle fish on Sado island...

FOOTNOTE: while researching Sado Island I came across a quite astonishing website, which photographically does the island far more justice than I ever could - check it out here.