Ocho on Osaki-Shimojima Island

Ocho, now known as Yutakamachiocho, is a small port on the NW coast of Osaki Shimojima in the Aki Nada chain of islands in the Seto Inland Sea.

In the past when the Inland Sea was the superhighway of Japan it must have been quite a busy and prosperous place, but since the advent of powered ships and then the railways and finally the roads it lost its prosperity and is now little more than a fishing village.

In the afternoon of my second day walking along the Aki Nada Islands via a series of bridges that connect them to the mainland, it was from here that I needed to take a small ferry across to the bigger Osaki Kamijima Island.

I like these kind of places. Slow quiet, and absolutely without pretensions, they are to me typical Japan, which is after all,  thousands of islands with countless little coastal communities. Though I often read that growing rice was the base of Japanese tradition, I think living by, from, and on the sea, is a stronger historical tradition.