We decided a week ago to fly out of Osaka since it’s a flexible and cheap place from which to depart Japan. We wanted to visit Okinawa before heading to Taiwan but the weather forecast suggested rain the whole time we were planning to be there so we’re on our way to Seoul instead.

This all translates to us traveling back from Hiroshima to spend our last night in Osaka, but to break up the journey we stopped by Bunny Island, which as the name suggests is full of rabbits (it’s proper name in Japanese is Ōkunoshima). For whatever reason the Japanese love their islands and parks filled with tame or semi-tame animals. In addition to the famous deer of Nara and Miyajima, and the heretofore mentioned Bunny Island, they also have several cat islands and even a village of foxes.

There are two competing theories as to why there are so many rabbits now on Ōkunoshima. The first is that the island formerly was used for chemical weapons testing, and the current rabbits are the descendants of rabbits used as subjects of these tests. It’s a fairly grisly thought, and while the testing practices are known to be true the rabbit lineage is not. A second theory posits that a group of school children visited the island and left eight rabbits who being rabbits quickly became several hundred. In either case there aren’t any natural predators (for the life of me I don’t understand why there weren’t hawks or eagles about) and so the rabbits have thrived. The locals like them, and perhaps consider them lucky, and have kept them protected since. And now with the rise of the internet and pictures of people buried under bunnies the place has become a spot for tourists.

While there are several public transit options to the island, they’re not timed very well with each other (an oddity in Japan, which is normally highly efficient) and so it took us the morning to get there. But when we finally we arrived we were greeted warmly by the furry creatures who were more than a little excited by the prospect of food. The locals sell veggies or pressed rabbit kibbles that they seem to enjoy. And there really isn’t much more to it than that – it’s a small pretty island to walk around filled with rabbits to feed and play with. Oh and of which to take lots of photos.

We did a little walk around corralling as many rabbits as we could until running out of food. While there is a hotel on this island and museum covering to the old chemical testing labs there is little else so after a few hours we departed for Osaka.