It’s been a long time coming, but I’ve finally finished part 2 of Cat Island for TofuguTV. Whew, I can’t tell you how much of a relief it is! Now I can move on to things like monkeys, rabbits and deer… or *gasp* perhaps something totally not-animal related. There were a few of those, believe it or not. The video for Cat Island Part 2 is right there up above at the top of this post, but if you want to see pictures or read a little bit more about what we did, keep on going.

Finding The Cats

It took us half the day to get to the part of the island that actually had cats. Sadly, the first cats we came across were being taken up and hogged by a couple of tourists. They liked taking pictures of cats, which is why they came here

They were having a good time so we didn’t want to bother them for too long and we headed down the road into town to find more cats.

We ran into a store where the other cat-tourist was hanging out, also taking pictures. He was more friendly than the other two cat-tourists and talked with us for a while. There were a lot of fun cats around here, including these ones.

Shinnosuke Instagrammed a shot of the store we just left, then we headed down the road.

Then we headed down the street where we, of course, came across more cats.

This last cat was my favorite of all the cats on the island. We got to see him (her?) several times as we walked around the town. Definitely oen of the more distinct cats, and it had a really cool grumpy look on its face all the time. Chalk me up as a fan of grumpy cats, for some reason…

From here we made our way to the ocean, where we saw a sign to Manga Island.

Manga island was made by Shotaro Ichinomori, a famous mangaka who did things like Cyborg 009 and Kamen Rider. You can actually stay in Manga Island. It’s really just a bunch of buildings that are shaped like cats. I wonder what they do with the ear space on the inside…

We made our way down the hill we had to climb to get here.

It was time to go figure out where the ferry would be picking us up, just so we’d know where to go. If we missed the ferry, we’d be stuck here overnight (not a terrible thing, but lodging was sparse). The ferry was only coming to the island twice per day. Once in the morning and once in the afternoon.

The dock was pretty neat. Unfortunately I heard this is the area that got destroyed by the tsunami, really messing up their fishing industry :( There’s a fund drive going to help them rebuild (and to help feed cats). To donate, you will have to call the organizer (and probably need to be able to speak Japanese). The phone number is 080-2810-2914, if you wanted to help. More info on the help-project here.

We hung out in the nearby park for a little bit, trying to figure out what to do from here.

Watch out, cat! We decided to get something to eat (we were pretty hungry at this point) so we went back up to the store. Good chance to hang out with some cats and get some food, too.

Shinnosuke was a fan of cats.

Here’s the store front, in case you wanted to go.

Fed the cats some cat food. Shinnosuke’s in the background filming.

This cat thinks my backpack is comfortable… or at least the shade is cooling.

I love this green color on the stairs. Reminds me of old copper things. Kind of nostalgic.

We finished our food and started making our way over to the dock where the ferry would come. Guess what!? We ran into more cats.

Even got to see my favorite cat again!

Shinnosuke’s showing us his famous no-look camera technique.

Cool! I wish we saw this map at the beginning and not the end :(

A couple other folks also catching the ferry. They were Tashirojima citizens. Can’t you tell by their age? :/

We headed back to Ishinomaki via the ferry, then made our way back to Tokyo area, stopping to get some Ramen along the way. Oh man, it was tasty.

Cat Island Tashirojima was a lot of fun. Definitely peaceful and a nice atmosphere. If you’re into cats, then it’s the kind of place you’ll almost certainly enjoy. It takes a bit to get out there, but if you time things right you can spend the night and enjoy the island for a bit longer.

If you want to go, I’d probably recommend waiting for a few more months. Maybe 6? The whole area was right next to the earthquake zone and things got hit pretty hard. When you do go, though, definitely spend some money and help out the economy there! I’m sure the people (and the cats) will appreciate it!

If you haven’t seen Cat Island Part 1, you can do so here.

Want to know about future episodes of TofuguTV? Subscribe on YouTube, follow on Twitter, of Like on Facebook for all the latest info! Thanks much for watching, I hope you enjoyed! Also, thanks for waiting for part 2. Sorry for all the trolling about it :P

Cat Island Japan. It’s an island covered in hundreds, maybe thousands of cats. People population? Under 100. This island has become a little tourist attraction for people who happen to like cats. You can take pictures of them, pet (some of) them, stay in cat-shaped lodging, and even visit a cat shrine. It’s a little Cat Mecca of sorts, and it’s also the very first episode of TofuguTV.

In This Episode

I’d recommend watching the video (above) before reading this if you don’t want “spoilers” (I put quotes because there probably isn’t too much to spoil in the way of plot twists, etc… this is a travel show, after all).

In this episode, I’m joined by Shinnosuke (follow on Twitter), a friend from college who’s from the Saitama region of Japan. We traveled to a few different places, one of which was “Cat Island” (aka Tashirojima). Traveling from Sendai to Ishinomaki by train, then from Ishinomaki to Tashirojima by ferry, we arrived in the early afternoon, searching for cats. Unfortunately, finding cats was difficult for a while, since we got off on the side of the island that didn’t have cats.

This episode is all about getting to Tashirojima, as well as our search for the cats of “Cat Island.” Will we find cats? You’ll have to watch to find out.

What Is Cat Island?

Cat Island (aka Tashirojima / 田代島) is a small island off of Ishinomaki (and all of this is east of Sendai, Japan). Most of the population is pretty old, with an average age between 60 and 70 (that’s old!). Their main industries include fishing and people visiting to come look at the cats. A while back, fishermen started feeding the cats thinking it was good luck. After a while, people started noticing the amount of cats on the island, and it became a little tourist attraction.

There are two villages on the island (Oodomari and Nitoda), with Nitoda containing most of the cats. Near the centerish of the island (though closer to Nitoda) is the “Cat Shrine” (猫神社). There are cat shaped buildings (also near Nitoda), as well as various other (smaller) attractions. Although you can walk from Oodomari to Nitoda, most of the “fun stuff” is on the Nitoda side, so try to stop on that side if you’re going.

Earthquake Info: Cat Island was very close to the quake. Although there’s a lot of info floating about in regards to the damage to the island, there’s nothing concrete, and nothing I’d deem as “reliable.” Most of Nitoda is built on a pretty big hill, so that’s a good sign. Oodomari was built a lot lower and closer to sea level. Solely based off of that, I’d say (at the very least) you can assume all the “Tashirojima is submerged in water” headlines are just there to get hits. Aside from that, absolutely nothing reliable has come out. If you want to support Cat Island, wait a year or so and go visit them (and spend money). In the meantime, spreading rumors about Cat Island won’t help, so everybody calm down and wait for good info!

How To Get To “Cat Island” (Tashirojima)

Currently, getting to Tashirojima is probably a bit of a challenge because of the earthquake damage. If you’re coming from the south (good chance you are), you’ll want to get to the city of Sendai. From Sendai, you can take a local train to Ishinomaki (which was pretty heavily damaged in the quake). From there, there’s a ferry (or perhaps… there was a ferry?) that can take you to Tashirojima. We took a cab from the train station to the harbor with the ferry.

Should You Go?

If you like cats, then yeah, it’s awesome. It’s a bit out of the way, and definitely would be considered “rural.” There are places to stay, but the main one (the one with cat shaped buildings) is closed part of the year (for winter). You can definitely make this a day trip (it’s pretty easy to walk across the island in a couple hours, even if you look at things along the way). There isn’t much in the way of places to eat, though depending on when you’re there you might be able to find something. Still, I’d recommend bringing lunch / dinner just in case. Also, bring cat food / treats! It’ll make the cats love you, I’m sure.

You can find more travel information on the island here, though they haven’t (as of writing this) posted anything about the earthquake.

Pictures From “Cat Island Part 1″

These are some pictures that were taken during part 1 of Cat Island. You can view more of these / higher resolution version of these in the TofuguTV Flickr Set.

Getting ready to get on the ferry to head off to Cat Island

On the ferry

Arriving at Cat Island

Shinnosuke walking up from the dock

Heading up the stairs to the temple

Lots of stairs

Left at the Cat Shrine

Cat Shrine on Cat Island

Left at the Cat Shrine

Cat Shrine, Again

A view of all the stuff left behind for the Cat Shrine

The old school

The View from up top

A couple of tourists to the island who came to take pictures

Apparently they’re really into cats…

The next episode will have a lot more cats, I promise! Thanks for waiting all this time, I’ll hopefully get the next episode out a lot quicker than this one. Maybe in two weeks? Hopefully editing will get better too – still learning how to do stuff! :)

To know when the next episode comes out, be sure to follow on Twitter, Like on Facebook, or Subscribe on YouTube (RSS works too).

When it comes to World War 2, there were a lot of funny things going on with Japanese Americans. Land and property were stolen from Japanese Americans, they were put into internment camps (though, not the 157,000 Japanese Americans in Hawaii, including my great great grandmother, who was sending aluminum to Japan to make bombs before the America-Japan conflict started), and now, apparently, there were dogs being trained to sniff out Japanese people. Ironically, they were being trained on Cat Island, a crappy little island just south of Mississippi (and a part of Mississippi too).

Dogs And World War Two

When the US entered the War, it started taking dog donations from civilians. Dogs were used to be sentries, to detect and sniff out mines, and so much more. There was, however, a much more secret dog training mission taking place on Cat Island, where William Prestre (Swiss Refuguee) said he could train dogs to target people of Japanese ancestry based off their smell. According to Prestre, he could train 30,000 dogs that would be released on the beaches of Japanese islands and Zerg rush their inhabitants. Greyhounds would streak across beaches to take out machine gunners (since they’re so speedy), then slower but more terrifying dogs (like Great Danes and Wolfhounds) would wipe the floor with everyone else. Obviously, none of this happened. Thank goodness for the dogs, anyways.

Getting To Cat Island

Cat Island is a little island off of Mississippi that had similar weather and temperature to the Pacific Islands. Apparently, it was also really sulfury, barren, full of alligators and mosquitoes, and a big pain all around. Around 25 people of Japanese ancestry (who were in the U.S. Army) were notified that they would be going on a super secret mission, so secret they couldn’t even tell their friends they were going on it. One of these people, Ray Nosaka, says:

So that morning, they said, “Don’t say anything to your own buddies and don’t goodbye, don’t say anything.” Seven o’clock, we rode the big truck and took us to Wheeler Field [Fort Williams]. And all of us went on a plane.They didn’t tell us where we’re going to go, what we’re going to do.

They got on their plane, stopped off in Tennessee (where they couldn’t get off the plane, because the higher ups didn’t want anyone to see them), then flew to Mississippi where they boarded some coast guard ships which took them to another island near Cat Island called “Ship Island” (seriously, someone should have been commissioned to come up with better island names). At Ship Island, they waited for a while, fished, and didn’t do much. Then, after two weeks, their Major came and told them they would be “training dogs” on  Cat Island. I suppose that’s where the fun starts.

Every day, they’d go by boat from Ship Island to Cat Island, help train the dogs for four hours, then go back home to Ship Island. Besides being attacked by dogs all the time, that’s a pretty sweet gig. Hang out on a tropical island, work 4 hours a day, and drink tons of beer because the water tasted terrible.

We only worked half a day. Half a day, you go back to Ship Island. You go fishing, play guitar and sing a song, things like that, drinking beer. Half a day you work, half a day you’re off. So the hours are very good. That’s why all of us was catching fish. So many fish over there. And now ducks come, shoot the ducks like that. So the life after the four hours we worked is very good.

In fact, at one time we ran out of beer because we cannot drink the water. That thing is so – like rotten eggs. The thing is sulfur, so we cannot drink the water, so we drink up the beer. And, you know, the beer. The thing gone in one week. All gone because we cannot drink the water, we just drink that beer.

So, that begs the question. What were all the secret things they did while they were on the clock, over in Cat Island?

How They (Tried) To Train Dogs To Hunt The Japanese

There were a couple of steps involved in order to try and train dogs to take down Japanese people. The first step was training them to go up to the right people, the second was to learn how to attack, and the third was to play hide and seek.

In the first step, the Japanese Americans would stand there, and the dogs would go up to them. When the dogs went up to them, they’d give the dog some meat and fire a pistol into the air. They did this over and over for four months. I’m guessing the dogs just got good at finding people who had meat on them… yum.

The second step wasn’t as pleasant, unfortunately for the dogs (and the humans involved, too).

And they told us they put a guard over here and we stay like this. And then when the sergeant tell him, “Kill ‘em,” the dog come right up and bite us here, see.  And then finally, the dog got a little more friendly with us. They tied the dog on the fence and they gave me like a whip to hit the dog. I go like this.

Oh, I feel so bad. That’s why I hit like this. I get scolding, tell, “Hit it hard, some more hit” until the thing bleed. That’s why the dog gets mad with you. And they tell ‘em, “Kill him.” I’m like this and, whoa, he bite me all over the place. So I hit the dog until he bled, see. Then he tell me, “Okay, walk ten yards back, turn around and go this way.” The dog was so mad at me because I hit him. Ho, he bite me, bite me like this. And then the sergeant comes, takes him away. And that’s the attack dog.

Lastly, they played hide and seek. They’d go someplace, wait for the dog to come find them, then wait for the dog to go away, then go hide somewhere else. They did all this while batting mosquitoes and avoiding alligators. At least it was only a four hour work day, I guess.

What Happened?

I think you know – the dogs couldn’t tell the difference between Japanese people and other people, and since they were mostly donated dogs from loving families, they’d often just lose interest and become friendly. Our Swiss dog training friend Prestre was fired in Feburary 1943 after a couple of dog shows for the big boys, and the island was converted over to a more traditional dog training island (i.e. no more sniffing out the blood of Japanese people). This went on for a while, but then was eventually closed down in July, 1944 after training approximately 400 dogs.

If you want to read more about Cat Island’s crazy dog training programs, you can read Ray Nosaka’s (one of the 25 Japanese Americans on Cat Island) interview, with the Cat Island parts here and here.

P.S. If you like dogs, you should follow Tofugu on Twitter, Here.

P.P.S. If you like cats, you should subscribe to the Tofugu Newsletter, Here.

Dog trainers of Cat Island

Ship Island is where they’d stay in between trips to Cat Island

Image of Cat Island

Want to read about a more pleasant “Cat Island?” Here’s an island in Japan, populated by cats.