That was quick test to see if you are an anime fan or marine biologist.

If you are an anime fan visiting Japan, and still have not been to Awaji, stop pretending you like anime. Seriously. You must have watched Naruto, and you must have set Naruto Whirls at Awaji island as your number one destination in Japan.

I have never been an anime fan, so please do not assume I planned to go here – I did not even suspect such thing exists till the last part of my stay in Japan.

I lived at Tarumi station in Kobe, so I walked my way to the very shore where the root of the bridge to Awaji Island hosted a couple of public transit stations, including the Naruto tours.

There are only three companies that offer ship tours to the whirls. Now, most tourists fall for the two most advertised ones – which I believe are under one ownership (to be honest). Their bus would go past Awaji, and the ships would depart from the opposite shore. My ship, on the other hand, was specifically at Awaji, and was built in a fancy Victorian style. The other two were just regular shippy-style-like ships.

Hope it all makes sense.

Going back to Tarumi station – you board a Naruto decorated bus, and the journey starts off with crossing the bridge from mainland to Awaji.

Why am I keeping mentioning this bridge all the time?

Just because it WAS SO AWESOME.

The view through the bus window of the calm water sparkling in the sun, clear horizon, bright green fluffy trees and Japanese villages, combined with an excitement of expectation was… ahhhh. I was very close to deciding to never leave Japan.

It took me around 1.5 hours to get to the Naruto pier. You might see many images of an onion in my pictures – that’s because Awaji island is famous for its harvest of onions, which feeds the whole country; thus they made a cute smiling onion bulb as their mascot.

Naruto whirls are kind of a big deal, since there is only one similar phenomena somewhere in the US. There were not as big as I expected, and certainly not strong at all. There are certain days when they are stronger and certain days when they are weaker. On a scale from 1 to 5, I came on a day when they were 4. I do not imagine them being too much stronger if it was a 5 – unless the scale is logarithmic 🙂

This day was one of the brightest memories I brought home from Japan.