Perhaps the best part about sailing through the Seto Inland Sea is stopping along the way at the islands. The Inland Sea has over 150 islands, and each one has a different atmosphere. After passing under the Seto Ohashi Bridge, we stopped at a small island called Ushi Shima. The name of the island (Cow Island), as well as its population of just 19 people, had long intrigued me.

No one is sure where the island got its name, but if you spend an afternoon drinking the local sake, then look at the island, it vaguely resembles a cow standing halfway in the water. Since this is the deepest part of the Inland Sea, that would have to be a cow with 70-meter legs, but after having been on a sailboat for a week already, taking a walk around the island was enough to convince me we were walking on the back of a cow -- the island took on the same motion as the sea.

There are no other cows on Ushi Shima, but there is a goat and a "gaijin." Yes, a gaijin! Kurt VanVolkenburgh and Keiko Yokoyama live off the land and welcome strangers such as myself into their house for lunch. They own a guest house called Island Girl, where people can safely enjoy the rugged island life as a weekend-only thing. Their own house Kurt built himself, and for their yard, I am quite sure they scraped off a patch of the English countryside and sent it here by container ship.