Today I went with a friend to Tojimbo and the haunted island of Oshima. Tojimbo has these famous rock formations that are apparently only found in 2 other places in the world (not sure where though). I would tell you more about them but all the informational educational signs were in Japanese so I really can't. Although unscientific, let's just leave it at-- they were really cool! It was a beautiful day- sunny, only mildly cold and not snowing! It was so nice to be able to brave the outdoors without 500 layers of clothing and risk of frostbite (it's been awhile). After viewing the rocks and eating lunch (yummy yummy echizen crab) we went to the haunted island (scary background noises begin). Apparently lots of Japanese people like to commit suicide somewhere near Tojimbo and Oshima (the Japanese don't seem to attach the same stigma to suicide as the west does). Something weird about the currents causes a lot of the bodies to wash up on this island that has had a shinto shrine on it for 300 years. So because this island was already a sacred place and all these dead bodies are washing up there, it has become haunted. If you walk around the island the wrong way (wrong for who?) you can see ghosts (or so the story goes). Well, we couldn't figure out which way to walk to see the ghosts (there weren't any signs saying "Ghosts this way." and if there were they were in Japanese and we couldn't read them anyhow). So we had to call a Japanese friend and ask which way to go. She told up right, so right we went. Maybe she thought we didn't want to see ghosts, because there were no ghosts to be seen and all the Japanese people were going the opposite way. We even tried taking some pictures (shown below) but no ghosts in the pictures. My friend tried to convince me that the stump next to the shrine was really a ghost in disguise, but who ever heard of a ghost needing a disguise? The island was beautiful, but eerily quiet and disconnected from the rest of the world. The atmosphere did feel different, even spooky, but I couldn't figure out if that was because of the presence of something supernatural or if I was just hoping for the presence of something supernatural. So, no ghosts for Carissa, but I did have a beautifully lovely day!