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Awaji Island (淡路島 Awaji-shima?) is an island in Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, in the Eastern part of the Seto Inland Sea between the islands of Honshū and Shikoku. As a transit between those two islands Awaji originally means "the road to Awa province". Awaji was also written as 淡道. Geographically it is separated from Honshū by Akashi strait, from Shikoku by Naruto strait. Since 1998 it is connected to Honshū by the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge. Since the completion of the Kobe Awaji Naruto Expressway, it has been the main eastern land link between Honshū and Shikoku. No airport serves Awaji. The island consists of three municipalities:
Historically Awaji constituted one province, Awaji province since the 7th century. It was a part of Nankaidō. The Nojima fault, responsible for the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake, cuts across the island. A section of the fault was protected and turned into the Nojima Fault Preservation Museum, so as to show how the movement in the ground cut across roads, hedges and other installations. Outside of this protected area, the fault zone is less visible, except for some oddities in ground features (for instance, some ditches have peculiar bends where the fault shifted). One of the famous attractions of the island is the Naruto whirlpools that form in the strait between Naruto in Tokushima and Awaji Island. The English soccer/football team stayed on Awaji during the Soccer World Cup 2002. The Awaji Puppet Theater, a form of traditional puppet theater or ningyō jōruri from which the Bunraku puppet drama of Osaka is thought to have been derived, performs several shows daily in its own facilities in Nandan Town in southern part of the island. The Awaji puppets, which perform popular traditional dramas but have their origins in religious ritual, have enjoyed great success locally and have toured internationally to United States, Russia, and elsewhere. According to ancient myth, Awaji was the first island born from the two gods, or kami, Izanagi and Izanami.
