Parking in Tokyo

Last ride in Japan... from my hotel in the morning to my office... and then late in the evening from a more or less illegal parking lot outside on the street to the safe cosiness of my desk in Tokyo office... waiting to host the bicycle for the next many months to come.

Golden Week 2019 - The plan GWの計画について

I am back in Japan for 2 month of extended business trip. In the middle of this time there is however Golden Week, the longest ever, 10 days off in a row. (Thanks to the tenno abdicating). 

I organized these 10 days at end of January, while waiting for a flight to Sapporo, that brought me, among other wintery things, to these very cute penguins in Otaru: 

Now this is no excuse for organizing a GW that is counter intuitive. Essentially the plan is:

- Day 0 (= Friday): depart from Osaka to Tokyo
- Day 1 (= Saturday): Tokyo with NPC friends
- Day 2 (= Sunday): Tokyo with more friends
- Day 3 (= Monday): move back (by train) to Kansai and stay in Yamatoyagi, in inner Nara prefecture, where I was already 1.5 years ago and liked it a lot.
- Day 4 & 5 (= Tuesday & Wednesday) in and around Yamatoyagi: Day 4 Miwa, Day 5 Asuka
- Day 6 (= Thursday), ride down towards Wakayama

Until here while illogical to move first from Kansai to Kanto and then back again, the plan isn't too bad. (Note that the Tokyo stint was conditioned by the date the NPC friends meet). Now the following part has me moving (by train) across a lot of land... to get to Matsue and Izumo. Why? Because I have never been even anywhere close to that region, it seems to be very cycling friendly, and I simply wanted to go. So...

- Day 7 (= Friday), moving by train (and a bit of bike) from Wakayama to Matsue
- Day 8 (= Saturday), Matsue
- Day 9 (= Sunday), from Matsue to Izumo
- Day 10 (= Monday), Izumo and flight back to Haneda for my last 3 weeks of business trip in Japan.

On Google maps these 10 days look like this:

GW 2019 - Day 10 Izumo and back to Tokyo 出雲大社から東京へ

Bicycle: 15 km

Bus: 20 km

Plane: 800 km

Route: Izumo - Izumo Taisha - Tokyo

Total riding time: 1:14 h

Total ascent: 61 m 

Average speed: 12 km/h

Weather: Surprisingly cool and very, very windy, some drops of rain,  21 C

After the heat yesterday and the day before, today it was surprisingly cold and very, but very windy. The place where I was yesterday evening for taking sunset pictures and where I had decided to have my second breakfast today, was just tooooooo windy to sit down comfortably there.

Luckily I found an other spot not too far away with some benches and it had also stopped raining by then... So I had my breakfast there. Then I continued along the coast on the bicycle road towards the Izumo Taisha. Close to it there is this rock in the sea with a torii on top:

Izumo Taisha apparently is the 2nd most important shrine in Japan (after Ise shrine where I was 1.5 years ago). 

But probably one needs to be a historian or a devote shintoist to appreciate the shrine. For me, it seemed to be similar to many other shrines I have seen, even probably a bit less interesting, as it seemed to be newer than many other shrines.

However close to the main shrine on this weekend there were some traditional performances, so I enjoyed those.

 After the performance the dragon even came through the audience and did - ritually - bid us all in the head. I guess it is helpful... but actually in the moment it was a tiny little bit painful.

Yes, I would have had the time, but not the energy due to an upcoming cold, to ride to the airport. And well, there was a very convenient direct bus from Izumo Taisha directly to the airport. So I hopped on to that in the early afternoon. At the airport I then had a rather long wait, but I got some lunch and rested some more. For sure this all contributed to the fact that finally the cold did not develop into a full blown cold.

What I discovered only after coming back to Tokyo, was that I missed out on Tamatsukuri onsen! Well, at least that way I have a reason to come back to the region! 

GW 2019 - Day 9 Matsue to Izumo 松栄から出雲へ

Bicycle: 59 km

Route: Matsue - Izumo

Total riding time: 3:50 h

Total ascent: 146 m 

Average speed: 14.7 km/h

Weather: Sunny and too warm, but also quite windy, 27 C

Heading to my last destination for this Golden Week, I set off today in the morning from Matsue for Izumo. I knew that there was supposed to be a cycling lane along the lake and then into Izumo. Now along the lake it was mainly just the sidewalk of the road. Every now and then there was a small village which offered an alternative route. The real cycling lane to Izumo Taisha doesn't start until AFTER the lake has finished, but then goes all 30 km to the shrine (which I will visit tomorrow). 

Although this cycling road exists, and clearly the prefecture (and Giant) want to market Matsue / Izumo as a great cycling destination, there were not a lot of cyclists around, for being a Sunday with sunny (hot) weather. 

Shortly after leaving Matsue I stopped at "merci" a French bakery in a unreal spot along the sea shore in the private house of someone (the baker, I guess) to get a second breakfast.

Then I continued along the lake. With the road right besides it is not that romantic as it could be, but for sure it must be better than the other side of the lake, where I would expect more traffic to come through. 

It was quite hot today, but luckily we are in Japan, so rest places are frequent, and right when I needed a toilet and rest area, there was a small station with toilet and waiting hall. I wasn't even the only one finding refuge of the heat in the waiting hall, there was a Japanese men, training for a long distance run in a few weeks.

After a while I continued on and soon came to the "real" cycling road which is far from any car traffic, but close to a lot of fields. While when I travelled through Japan 1.5 years ago, it was time for rice harvest, now it was time for rice planting. The small plants get grown somewhere (see Day 4) and then get planted, one by one in a row:

After a further rest along the way, I continued on... and rested again this time taking also some time to write the blog post:

From 16:00 onwards temperature became much more agreeable, so I continued for the last few km to my hotel. After check in I was kind of unsure what to do next, as it was still rather early... and finally my curiosity won over my laziness and I set out on a ride into the sinking sun ...

... to finally see the Sea of Japan and the sunset. The sun was incredibly round. I know this sounds stupid, but it was a very well defined round shape.

After sunset I returned on my footsteps (tyre profiles ?) to Izumo, to visit an onsen right besides the station. While it is right besides the train station, it is quiet and even has a rather large (well, for Japanese onsens at least) bamboo grove. There are however not that many different pools. Essentially only 3:

• one warm inside pool 
• Three single bath tubs outsides
• and one cold water tub, also outside

I.e. there is no communal bath outside. However it was not a problem, although the onsen was busy, I always got a bath tub for myself. Inside the onsen also smelled really nicely of wet wood as it was all constructed in raw wood.

Ride into the sunset: 

GW 2019 - Day 8 Matsue castle and Matsuri 松江城とホーランエンヤ

Bicycle: 26 km

Route: Matsue and surroundings

Total riding time: 1:52 h

Total ascent: 53 m 

Average speed: 13.7 km/h

Weather: Sunny and too warm, but also very windy which was rather cool, 24 C

Although (or maybe because) the day did not go according to plan, I had a marvellous experience at a local matsuri which was the local part of a famous matsuri that is hold only once every 10 years in Matsue, the Horan Enya.

In the morning I had visited Matsue castle (more about that below) and then was facing the decision if to continue with the route I had planned, out on an island in the middle of Lake Nakanoumi to visit a famous garden: Yushien or to abort and just do a bit more sightseeing around the castle and return to my hotel. I am kind of coming down with a cold, but taking Frenadol... but it's not too bad either. So well, I decided to head out to the garden.

The way there lead me through some country roads along the river that connects the two lakes by Matsue.

However it was windy and hot, although the air was quite cold, and I got more and more tired... so I decided to just head to the next bridge and return on the other side of the river, as I had come yesterday from Yasugi into Matsue. Shortly before arriving to that bridge however I passed a very small fishermen village and there was clearly something going to happen. A good number (maybe 20) photographers with enormous objectives had gathered and were waiting... I had no idea for what they were waiting, but decided to wait as well. It was kind of clear that it must be a local festivity.

After a while from the village these two appeared and offered to take a picture.

More and more people appeared and all headed to the small jetty to board a ship that was moored there, but before that it was the turn to take the official pictures. One of the many photographers was the official one, plus two TV channels were there taking some pictures and many amateur photographers.

Overall however there were not that many people around, and getting a clear shot was easy.

And finally the boat headed out into the river between the two lakes, while one man was dancing with a ceremonial rudder at the bow while an other one was dancing with two long lace decorated sticks at the stern, the men in the middle of the boat were rowing (only for show the ship actually moved with a motor) and singing Horen Enya. (See video at the top of this post).

I later learnt that this matsuri is conducted only every 10 years with many more boats that go to Matsue to pick up at the Inari jinja (close to the castle) the local god and bring it to an other jinja at the Nakanoumi and then pray there for 10 days, before herding it back to Matsue and its own shrine. The next time this matsuri will be celebrated is from 18th May onwards and it will be apparently everywhere very crowded. But not so today on the local version of the matsuri.

While enjoying the sight at some moment I was approached by one of the TV guys, and even gave an interview about my impression of this festival. Which was obviously very good, so colourful and not your normal Mikoshi matsuri, but one on boats.

So finally I didn't make it to the garden and not even to the bridge where I had thought to return, but spent a nice and unexpected afternoon among the celebrating fishermen seeing from the first row a small glimpse of one of the most famous matsuris in Japan.

When the boat after 3 rounds in front of the pier came back to the shore I made my way to return to Matsue.

In the morning when visiting Matsue castle I had seen that the samurai houses were open until about 17:00 (or maybe even longer), so I decided to go and at least visit the Hearn Residence. Well, it is a rather small Japanese house, with an even smaller garden. Nothing special, but it is in a row of other preserved Samurai houses many of which one can visit. What was interesting though where the trees behind those buildings which were full of cranes making their nests:

After the visit to the Samurai neighbourhood I made a small detour to the Giant bicycle shop in Matsue and got my bicycle pumped up. Afterwards I took a short break at the public hot footbath.

So now back to the official main highlight of Matsue, the castle:

It is one of the 12 surviving original castles in Japan, so I visited it first thing in the morning. Although I saw somewhere (when already leaving) a possible indication how long it could take to get up to the last floor of the castle, actually there was no waiting time getting up, On each of the 5 floors there are some small exhibits about the construction of the castle, which are also very well described in English, and then one more flight of steep stairs up, more exhibits... until the very top:

Now actually the view from the top isn't that nice actually, with the new city below. For getting down there was some queue but mainly due to the stairs being so steep that one needed to descend them slowly and carefully.

GW 2019 - Day 7 Wakayama to Matsue 和歌山から松江へ

Bicycle: 35 km

Train: 385 km

Route: Wakayama to Yasugi by train, Yasugi to Matsue on the bicycle

Total riding time: 2:06 h

Total ascent: 67 m 

Average speed: 16.6 km/h

Weather: Sunny and warm, but also very windy mainly tail wind though, 24 C

The time in Kansai was over and today was the day on the move, from Wakayama to Matsue. From a geographical point it made no sense to change from Kansai to San'in, but San'in is always going to be far away, and there were several spots here that I wanted to visit, so when I organized the trip at end of January I made some hotel reservations here for GW. 

The day started relatively early, so I could catch the 8:43 express train from Wakayama to Shin-Osaka. In Shin-Osaka I had 15 min to change to a Shinkansen to Okayama, which I managed without needing to hurry. Shin-Osaka station was very busy, but if you know where you are going it wasn't too bad. The last change of train was then in Okayama, where I even managed to buy a bento box on the platform before boarding the train. Although this was Friday of GW, the only train that was visible full was the Shinkansen. The other express trains were not specially busy. 

The train ride from Okayama to Yasugi accross the wild and mountainous centre of Japan was very interesting. Although travelling by train, so in a valley that presumably has more population than a valley without any train connection, the villages were small and far between, while the forests were enormous. It must be very nice during the koyo season, but even now in spring the mountains shimmer in different types of green. 

I took the train until Yasugi, from where I continued on my bicycle first to the Adachi Museum and then to Matsue. Although I had planned out a route, somehow Garmin had it in the wrong direction, but on the ground it was actually quite easy to understand where to go, and where nice small country back roads could be. The museum is a bit inwards but along a river, so nearly no elevation. The museum building was a surprising anti-climax. I somehow had assumed that the museum would be a nice building, plus nice art plus a very nice garden. Well, in summary, I would say that only the garden was very nice. 

The museum building itself is rather ugly and it doesn't help that around it so many souvenir shops, a theatre and other buildings have sprung up, that it reminds one more of a shopping mall than a fine art museum.  The art exhibits also were not really for me. Some where simply ugly (e.g. some drawings made for children) and others, simply didn't interest me. Now, it didn't help that the museum was very full and the air inside no longer fresh. 

However the main attraction of this museum is its large Japanese traditional garden: 

However even the garden has a negative point, one cannot actually go outside into the garden and even the points where to admire it from outside, rather than from behind closed windows are only a few. So yes, the garden is very nice and integrates extremely well with the scenery around, but admiring a garden from behind closed windows just takes so much away from the real enjoyment of a garden. I do get it that Japanese gardens traditionally were made to be looked at, rather than to be used for walking, but looking at them from a closed room is not the same as looking at them from a tatami room or from a balcony. 

So ultimately I did not stay that long in the museum. 

Continuing on to Matsue I was able to find in nearly all places a small parallel road to the main road with little or no traffic. Matsue is in a very unique position, surrounded by water and mountains. There is one big lake right in Matsue, which is connected with an other lake by Yonago. The Japan Sea isn't too far away either, but there is a row of mountains blocking the access (at least for me). 

GW 2019 - Day 6 Yamatoyagi down to Wakayama 大和八木から和歌山へ

Bicycle: 91 km

Route: Yamatoyagi - Wakayama

Total riding time: 5:38 h

Total ascent: 410 m 

Average speed: 17.2 km/h

Weather: Sunny and warm, but not too warm, 23 C

After the rainy weather yesterday, today, as promised, it was sunny and nicely warm. The right weather for a new record ride from Yamatoyagi to Wakayama, a total of  91 km. 

Luckily the ride is mainly downhill, once a small pass is overcome behind Yamatoyagi, but the way up to that pass is quite gentle, so not a problem. Also the road I took up, was very bicycle friendly, small country side roads, very little traffic, often through villages in idyllic landscape. And always along a train line that makes the same trip (much faster than me on two wheels). 

Close to this Sake factory, there is Gojo station, a small station, with a very formal station master who took about 15 min to sell me the tickets for tomorrows trip from Wakayama through Shin-Osaka, Okayama to Yasugi. Everything needed to be controlled and checked again and again (he was alone, so couldn't ask a QC by a separate person). He obviously also has other duties, so is not specialized on selling tickets. At a ticket counter e.g. in Osaka that same transaction would have probably taken 3 min... But time was no problem and it is all an experience to see these hyper correct employees at their work.

Not too far from there I had my lunch (which I bought at the one and only shop at this station) along a river, which was decorated with rows and rows of fish kites for the boys day:

At about km 30, following the route I had planned on Garmin, I crossed the river, and then a cycling lane appeared. First it was only a blue line on each side of the street without any description. (But I knew that there could be a cycling lane and I knew from Kibi-Plain and Shimanami-Kaido that blue is a likely colour for a cycling route.)

The lane was partially simply on a normal, but not too busy road, but there were also parts on proper cycling lanes along the river. This here was probably the nicest part of all:

On the river part, there were also some obstacles, but nothing like in Osaka, where you need acrobatic skills to ride through them (or just need to get off at each one). 

However, as so often in Japan at some point the cycling lane just disappeared. It first disappeared for me shortly after the Jison-in temple (see below). I found it again, after a while when I decided to cross the river. It must have crossed the river somewhere much closer to the temple. However the joy of finding the cycle lane did not last for very long, it disappeared from the street without any warning. What might have happened to that blue line? Riding on national route 24 was not an option, as there is way too much traffic, but there were always small streets running just parallel through the villages, so no problem at all. After a while there didn't seem to be a good continuation and I started to really wonder where this cycle lane had gone, so I decided to head down to the river in the assumption that the cycle lane would be somewhere down there. And well, it was, I saw traces of it just after crossing the bridge at km 65. But soon after I lost it again. Maybe it crossed the river again? Anyway, I continued on the side of the river where I was and found again small side streets all the way to central Wakayama and my hotel of the night.

As there were so many km to cover, I hadn't planned for any sightseeing, however when passing Jison-in (I actually passed it and then turned back), there were big signs for "Unesco world heritage"... and I could see the temple really close from the street, so I did not give it a miss.

The temple (cum shrine) is a typical temple, nothing special about it, except that it is the starting point of the pilgrimage trail up to Koyasan. It has however a toilet that even for Japanese needs translation and furigana:

I looked up the kanji for "kawaya" 厠 and the only other use of this kanji came up as 厠の神 (Kawaya no kami) the god of the toilet. I guess that in a temple with shrine at the start of a pilgrimage route, there must be gods for everything, including for the toilet.

While I was at the temple, there were a few other visitors, the most notable one a middle aged Japanese who jumped out of a taxi, sprinted up the steep stairs to the shrine, took pictures of everything, and then sprinted dow the stairs again, back into his taxi. Express tourism!

Garmin unfortunately died after about 74 km (well, its battery did). I somehow suspect that either there is a setting that makes it use more battery, or that maybe the battery isn't anymore what it once was, but it is becoming harder and harder to make a full day trip on one battery load. Unfortunately I also forgot my portal battery charger at home... and was too lazy to get a new one while in Japan. But my phone still had enough battery to record the rest of the ride.

While riding into Wakayama I checked if there were onsen somewhere with a rotenburo, but I wasn't able to find anything convincing, so I continue on to the hotel, where I asked and was recommended Hanayama onsen (花山温泉), which I had seen during my search, but discarded. After further searching on the internet I saw that it seemed to be an interesting onsen, and made a quick night ride to it.

And yes, it was interesting. It only has one small rotenburo pool, but inside there were 6 different pools, 3 of them with the signature waters of this onsen, which are extremely high in mineral content, and 3 with normal tab water. Out of the onsen pools, they had 3 different temperatures, 41 C, 37 C and 26 C! 26 C is a very unique temperature for an onsen. Too cold to be a "real" onsen, but too warm to be a cool downer after sauna. And actually also too cool for me to immerse myself completely. 

Part 1 from Yamatoyagi down to close to Wakayama where Garmin's battery died:

Part 2, the final kilometers into Wakayama, recorded directly on the iPhone Strava app: 

Evening ride to Hanayama onsen:

GW 2019 - Day 5 - Rain in Asuka 飛鳥で雨

Bicycle: 18 km

Route: Yamatoyagi - Asuka - Yamatoyagi

Total riding time: 1:21 h

Total ascent: 97 m 
Average speed: 13.1  km/h

Weather: RAINY!!!   16 C

It was rainy all day, except for the first maybe 20 min when I had left the house... However, I was prepared for rain, and after taking this picture at the remains of a Fujiwara castle, ...

I thought refuge in a roofed parking lot and got my rain gear on.

It wasn't a very strong rain, but a persisting one. The rain cape is more or less helping in staying dry, and I wasn't drenched in water... but if riding even just slightly uphill I was feeling that moisture started to accumulate. The other inconvenience is that the Garmin on the handle bar is then BELOW the rain cape, which I am sure it appreciates... but it just makes it impossible to follow it. Luckily however in Nara province there is a network of cycling roads and while I haven't yet been able to find a printed version of the map, I found the digital one and today somewhere along the ride, I found a sign for one route, which was going to Asuka... my destination of the day. So I stopped looking at Garmin and just followed those road signs, which led me through the country side on small ways through the fields.

At one point, I got bored of the rain, and was just passing by a temple, so decided to visit it.

I got some rest at the temple, and then continued on to Ishibutai tomb. A large burial structure, with a burial chamber that one can visit.

After this visit, it was time to get something warm to eat. It wasn't actually cold, just rainy... so some Japanese soul food was needed: カレー

Having warmed up inside and out, I continued to my last sightseeing spot of the day, the Asuka Historical Museum. It is only very partially explained in English, but still, one can see some nice remains of the Asuka period. And well, today was a museum day after all.

So although it is the second time for me here in inner Nara prefecture, I have still found new things to do for 3 days... and my list of sightseeing spots is increasing... rather than decreasing.

Tomorrow on to Wakayama, a long ride... but what a change in weather:

Left 1/May/2019 , Right 2/May/2019