Japan Actually Has A DOZEN Cat Islands, A Bunny Island And A Village Full Of Foxes

At some point, in the time between when you went to bed last night and checked your phone this morning, someone out there recklessly uttered the words “cat island” and the entire internet has been drunk with excitement ever since.

Yes, there is a small island in Japan’s Ehime Prefecture which is occupied by only 22 human people and more than 100 cats. Aoshima Island drifted into the Japanese news two months ago due to a huge boom in tourism and now it’s no doubt in full-on apocalypse mode preparing for the next influx.

Reuters have sent video crews and the whole thing has been re-reported in the past 24 hours by The Washington Post, Sydney Morning Herald, ABC, International Business Times, USA Today, Huffington Post, The Independent and The Telegraph among literally hundreds of other titles.

And, though most of these articles quote from the original piece in the Japan Daily Press, pretty much all of them fail to mention the most important fact mentioned therein: “there are a dozen ‘cat islands’ in Japan.”

A DOZEN.

Basically, Japan is less of a country and more of a disparate collection of makeshift civilisations erected to please their niche animal overlords. As such, here are a few more stops you should take on that weird secret holiday you were already planning.

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Tashirojima, Enoshima, Okishima Or Literally Any Of The Others

Though Aoshima has an impressive ratio of smug cats to terrified humans, these other “cat islands” provide the same amount of crazy feline fun while also offering the luxury of human interaction and Other Things To Do. Tashirojima, for example, has the same number of cats but a larger population of 86; Okishima is a surreal island which floats in the middle of a lake and is called home by around 650 people; and since Enoshima is just a short day-trip away from Tokyo it has a bunch more residents.

RocketNews were way ahead of this trend and compiled a full list of these destinations for you last year, but what they all have in common is the fact that they were originally fishing towns. The cats were introduced as a way to keep the mice away from the silkworms that the fishermen needed to make net.

Now, they just kind of lounge around like big fat jerks while people rub their bellies and build cat-shaped houses in their honour.

Bonus: Malta. Despite the fact it has a population of around 420,000, this bizarre Southern-European country is home to a staggering 800,000 cats. Malta, stahp.

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Ōkunoshima: Bunny Island

THIS PLACE IS BEYOND INCREDIBLE. Despite being a signatory to the Geneva Protocol which banned chemical warfare, in the 1920s the Japanese army decided they wanted to start developing a big ol’ bunch of poisonous gas. Because they had to do this secretly, they built a manufacturing plant on one of the most isolated places they could find: Ōkunoshima.

When opening the factory, the Japanese army imported a colony of rabbits and from 1929-1945 they produced more than 6,000 tonnes of gas. The gas caused mass casualties when deployed in the nation’s attacks against China, and when the factory was shut down after the war, the rabbits just kind of stuck around.

Though the rabbits from the testing facility were supposedly euthanised, the theory goes that eight lucky bunnies were released by schoolchildren in the early ’70s and eventually populated the island with the hundreds we see today.

Now, though you can do tours of the poisonous gas museum — what could possibly go wrong? — Ōkunoshima is a hot tourist destination where people get stuck in bunny stampedes and spend their days doing things like this.

Bonus: This island in the Caribbean near exclusively populated by hedonistic swimming pigs.

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Zao Fox Village 

Though it’s less of a fully-fledged village and more of an elaborate animal sanctuary, Zao Fox Village is pretty goddamned magical. Here, visitors are encouraged to roam around and live out the plot of Fantastic Mr Fox with more than 100 glorious wild animals from six different breeds.

If you can’t afford the airfare, please enjoy this adorable slideshow someone in Japan prepared earlier.

Bonus: This similar sanctuary in the US that encourages unlikely animal friendships.

TL;DR the world is incredible.

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Feature image via Kim Bui/Flickr CC; Jerk cat via Flickr CC.