GW2026 D1 Yamaguchi , Akiyoshidai and Hagi

Route: Yamaguchi - Akiyoshidai - Hagi
Bicycle: 72 km
Average speed: 14,5 km/h
Total elevation: 834 m

Riding time: 4:22 h
Weather: Sunny, 23C

I had made four different plans for this year’s Golden Week:

1. Yamaguchi and Northern Kyushu
2. Toogatta onsen, Urbandai and Nikko
3. Kusatsu onsen, Shiga kogen and Nozawa onsen
4. Eastern Shikoku and Awaijima

The original plan was the Yamaguchi plan, but I also plant the other ones in case the weather wasn’t good. And I really liked the idea about the Nagano prefecture right because it would have allowed me to only take local trains from Tokyo to Takasaki instead of taking a Shinkansen. But that’s ride would have been a lot more challenging due to much more elevation than in Yamaguchi.

When I checked the weather forecast a few days ago, on the last day, I could still cancel all the hotels for free, the Yamaguchi area seemed to be quite good from a weather perspective plus there’s a lot less elevation going on here, which is a good thing with the added weight from the baggage and my lingering cold which I contracted in early April. 

My mother had come to Hagi back in 1995 when she visited me as a student and then troubled for a week through Japan with a JR pass. To this day she is raving about Hagi, what a nice, traditional City it is.

But in order to get to Hagi One has to cross from the pacific site to the sea of Japan site of Japan. Yesterday I took the Shinkansen around noon from Tokyo to Shin Yamaguchi. There was much less crowds at Tokyo Station compared to last year’s Golden Week, but I started a few days later.

While sitting in the train, I looked at tourist guide sites to see if there was something to do between Yamaguchi and Hagi. And there was: Akiyoshidai! 

A landscape with a unique feature with those big limestones, no rivers , because the water just seeps through the ground directly into the ground water.

All this water flowing into the earth created some huge caves. One can visit one of them for a few kilometers.:

While I was in the cave there were several bus tours with foreigners as well. But not too much. One could definitely enjoy the cave with this number of visits. Afterwards, I had a very light lunch in the old style shopping street that leads to the entrance of the cave. Then it was uphill, very steep to an observation point over the undulating terrain with the limestones.

The way from Yamaguchi to the cave had  a dedicated bicycle lane. 

In my planning, I normally always exclude state roads assuming that they will be the most busy roads in the area. Today, thanks to sign to a pond with Japanese lilies, which did not bloom, I found that this tight road is hardly any traffic at all.

I was down in Hagi probably around 4 o’clock and  as I had time before the onsen of today would open, I went to the remains of the castle and had some onigiri in that I had brought along.

My guest house in Hagi is above a motorcycle repair shop, quite basic, but also quite new. I had seen on google map and on pictures in tourism brochures about the city, an onsen with quite nice gews a very nice rotten bottle