GW2026 D8 coast line of Kunisaki peninsula

Route: Kunimimachi - Oita airport - Kitsuki
Bicycle: 32 km
Bus: 15 km
Total elevation: 351 m

Average speed: 14,8 km/h
Riding time: 2:10 h
Weather: Sunny, 20C , very windy but tailwind

Today the plan was to cycle on to Kitsuki, about 40-50 km from my lodging of the night for the last two days of this Golden Week trip. I hadn’t fully decided if to cycle along the coast or halfway up on the “orange road”, but the lady from the accommodation recommended the coastal road at least initially, and yes, it was very nice. Probably the one yesterday was also nice, but as I was riding through the rain much less enjoyable. So to the first village and conbini I cycled down along the coast and even found after a few kilometers a cycling path. 

On the side of the bicycle road they were also sun drying the local seaweeds we had for dinner yesterday.

From there I tried the “orange road”, but it was just a normal hillside / countryside road. No oranges and crucially no views of the sea. So after a bit I returned down to the coast. 

There were some nice stone formations on the shore…

… one called “buttocks stone”:

 

After not too long however my gear cable snapped leaving me stuck in the hardest gear. I replanned my route to have as little elevation gain as possible and probably would have been able to make it to Kitsuki under my own “steam”… but I had an accident at the UFO sight. Yes, Oita airport has a real UFO and “red men”… and a sight of departing aircraft.

When I was just about to depart the chain got stuck between the frame and small gear and I fell off. Luckily it was on a very quiet parking lot, so no danger and a biker was at hand who helped me deentangle from the bike. At this point I had lost my confidence in riding with broken gears and had a bleeding knee, so I walked the about 500 m down to the airport where the friendly ladies at the information desk gave me disinfectant and wound tape. 

I packed up my bicycle already in “Shinkansen” position, ie with both wheels removed and took the bus to Kitsuki. By pure luck, the beer is a bus stop right outside of my lodging and they let me in early. So really perfect place to fall from my bike. And perfect timing as I don’t need to move anywhere tomorrow before returning on Wednesday by train to Tokyo. 

 

GW2025 D7 Rain on Shodoshima

Route: Ikeda to Tonosho and back
Walking: 3,5 km
Bus: 15 km
Total ascent: 84 m
Walking time: 1 h
Weather: rainy and very windy, but warmer thab expected , 29C

After the brilliant day yesterday, today was a rainy and windy day. I had reserved a ticket for the museum on Teshima a few days ago, but I actually canceled it today out of fear that the ferry might stop running. The weather forecast and reality, had winds of up to strength 8. Now I don’t really know what the unit of this wind measurement is, but I do remember that strength 10 I experienced a few months ago on Boso Peninsula was scary strong. So taking a boat to another island and needing to return back to Sadoshima didn’t seem like the safest choice. Instead, I walked down to the small village around the port of Ikeda and took a bus from there to Tonosho, the next village over. Around the port there are a few exhibits from the art triennial. Nothing really to write home about. 

At the tourist information center I got a recommendation for a local speciality restaurant: Soumen. Very thin noodles. Frankly, I don’t know what is so special about these. They tasted OK but also nothing that I would consider extremely special. But it is the recognizing local speciality.

When I had finished lunch, it had started to rain a little bit harder and the wind was getting stronger so I decided to take the next possible bus back to my home village. And was in big luck that the next bus was leaving just within a few minutes from me arriving at the bus terminal. The bus only left me down in the village because the other route that goes up here, where my hotel is outside the village overlooking the bay, only runs every now and then. But luckily, the rain was kind of OK and the wind wasn’t too much of a problem either.

I spent the afternoon first in the lobby, trying to read a local manga that seems to be famous on this island. I just read the first chapter, and it was quite simply about some school friends. Not really sure how you can write many volumes about them. 

Later on, I moved to the communal bath, relax there a little bit then to my room watch some Netflix and now I have just come back from dinner, which luckily I managed to reserve yesterday.

Tomorrow will be my last day on the island and the weather will be fine again. I’m planning on a bit more art and a ride along the coast to a port from where I can take a ship back to Honshu.

SW D6 More art, more rain, no bike

Route: ryokan to MonET museum and back
Bicycle: 0 km
Taxi: 3,5 km

Bus: 3,5 km
Weather: rain and more rain, 25 C

Today’s forecast was rain and more rain. So much rain that parts of Niigata prefecture are under alert for landslides and inundation. So cycling wasn’t in the plan today. But today the museums opened again, so I took a taxi from my ryokan to the MonET museum in Tokamachi. 

Frankly I am a bit disappointed by it. I had expected that as the main venue of the festival the art work would be new, but really only the art work on the openly accessible ground level was new, and I had seen that already on Sunday. 

While the art inside the museum was mostly (or maybe even completely) the same as 2 years ago. This doesn’t mean it’s not good /interesting art, but I had expected to be mostly new exhibits. 

Anyway I was able to see again this “waterfall”. It’s not water but silicone oil falling down and creating a very nice and gentle movement. 

As I had no other plans for today , I took it slowly , then had lunch at the neighboring “michi-no-eki” and am now sitting in the onsen of the museum, writing todays and yesterdays blog posts. 

The onsen doesn’t have a rotenburo, which normally isn’t what I like, but with the rain rotenburo can often not be enjoyed anyway. 

Once I finish this post I’ll go and get my bath and then either watch the sumo tournament here or go back by taxi (or bus?) to my ryokan for a last night. Tomorrow weather is supposedly again sunny (and hot - very hot apparently all in Japan with 36 C in Tokyo and not much less here) and I’ll ride from here to Nozawa onsen, to the same pension I already went last year. Probably on Saturday I will return to Tokyo as the weather in the region isn’t going to be good for riding. So probably I can participate in the NPC ride in Tokyo on Saturday evening. 

GW2024 D4 onsen in the rain and train

Route: Asoshirakawa - Tochinoki - Choyo - Asoshirakawa
Bicycle: 0 km
Walking: 5 km
Bus: 11 km
Train: 9 km
Weather: rain and more rain all day, 20 C

Today will hopefully be the only really rainy day for this week. It started raining during the night and hasn’t stopped yet. Luckily today isn’t a day where I need to get moving to my next accommodation, so I could do rain weather activities here in Minami Aso. There aren’t many but surprisingly I managed to do two:

Relax in a very nice onsen with views and take a theme train. 

I had asked the owner of my Minshuku yesterday what he would recommend for a rainy day and after excluding to go strawberry picking and a garden in a tunnel (it seems there were plans to build a railway to Takachiho and they started digging for a tunnel when they found too much water and gave up. Somehow that tunnel is now a garden!?) I settled on an onsen that was reachable by public transport, aka the neighborhood bus. This onsen got damaged by the earthquake but has since been restored and has a very nice rotenburo with a real view of the narrow valley. You don’t find too many of those. Before going to the onsen I had some fried chicken at this very retro place. Retro without wanting it to be retro. Still original including the two elderly who are running it and the television series they were watching in an old style “tailed” TV. 

It turned out that I didn’t have that much time in the onsen, if I wanted to catch the bus back. I hadn’t checked but there was actually a train, which I ended up taking, because I arrived 30 min too early to the bus stop. (Walking times were kind of hard to calculate and with only 4 busses a day you can’t miss the one you are aiming for. At the train station was a small coffee shop where I got 2 cupcakes for the price of one plus a free cup of tea while waiting for the train. Which turned out to be a special train. In front a torokko train (a kind of sightseeing train where you can’t close the windows) and in the back a OnePiece manga themed carriage, which I took. The train went very slowly explaining where you could see some OnePiece characters and even a green house with famous local “red” cows, which the train conductor introduced as very tasty. 

Now just remains to hope that the weather forecast for tomorrow is correct to state that it will not rain. 

D4 Rainy monkeys

Route: Hakuba - Nagano - Yudanaka onsen - Shibu onsen
Bicycle & walking: 8 km
Bus: 42 km
Train: 30 km
Average speed: 7,7 km/h
Total ascent: 316 
Riding time: 1:04 h
Weather: rainy and cold for most of the day, 10 C

The original plan for today was to cycle from Hakuba to Shibuonsen. Something that in the map (to me) looked very far , but actually doesn’t seem to be so unreasonable also because at least one of the roads out of Hakuba to Nagano is mostly downhill. I wouldn’t have taken that one though, because I feared too much traffic. In the end I did take that road, but with my bicycle as safely as possible stored away in the trunk of a highway bus. The owner of my hotel in Hakuba kindly drive me in his  van to the bus station so I only got a few drops of rain just the way from the door to the car. But still even that was wet. 

While in the summer I might not mind some rain (see second day around Fuji a few months ago), with temperatures below 10 C and needing to ride through the mountains, taking my bike wasn’t an option. Luckily there are a few busses every day between Hakuba and Nagano. 

This is a landscape as seen from the bus, and so similar to Classical Japanese paintings. 

I had briefly considered cycling from Nagano, but it was still raining and just seemed miserable to ride through that wetness for hours. So instead I took a train. My bike was allowed to sit in the reserved car (the only place where I found a reasonable spot to store it), but I had to go to the unreserved car as I didn’t pay the 300 Yen extra fee. 

In Yudanaka onsen station I reassembled the bike, repacked my luggage and changed into cycling clothes and then slowly set out through the train to my accommodation of the night. A Minshuku with onsen. 

I arrived here around 12:00 and in a first was already allowed into my room. Otherwise there are strong rules in Japan that you cannot enter your room before 15:00. However, I only dropped my luggage and got on my way to have lunch in the restaurant pretty close to the Minshuku. 

I was actually surprised to see on Google maps so many restaurants close to this Minshuku which isn’t in the central part of the small village a Shibuonsen. Hi recycling to the chosen restaurant, I realized that it was on the path to the snow monkey park. Anyway, I had lunch first as it was still raining and frankly time for lunch. Luckily afterwards the rain had stopped so I cycled a little bit further up the road until reaching the entrance to the path leading to the snow monkey park. 

Observing these monkeys, chill in the air, hot onsen water is really intriguing. Officially they are wild animals, and they are. But they are also not so wild because essentially, they are being fed by the park administration to make sure that they come and have their hot bath every day. 

But still, who doesn’t love some monkeys, chilling in the hot water and grooming each other.

I had been here a few years ago, may be in 2017, in the winter when there was still some snow. But those monkeys are equally funny without the snow.

After seeing my share of monkeys taking a hot bath, it was time for me to walk back to my bicycle, which is about the 2 km walk through a nice forest, and enjoy my own onsen in my Minshuku. The onsen can be visited also as a day spa and only has one big outside pool. No inside pool at all. Which is fine by me. Again no view though. Although it was only one outside pool, it actually kind of areas of different temperature. Very,  very hot close to where the hot onsen water is flowing into the pool and a little bit cooler in the farthest away corner of the pool.I relaxed a bit, relaxed more in my room, and then had dinner downstairs. 

For tomorrow it seems that the rain will stop, but it will still be a very cloudy day. I haven’t fully decided what to do tomorrow, but I will cycle to Nagano station, which isn’t actually that far at all, and then take a Shinkansen back to Tokyo to end this five day long weekend in Nagano Prefecture. 

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! 

Day 57 - Fukuoka and back to Tokyo 福岡から東京へ帰る

Bicycle touring Japan - Day 57

The very last day of this trip by bicycle, train, bus, ferry, plane, taxi and on foot through Japan, did not see a single kilometer on the bicycle... but many in a plane

Bicycle: 0 km 
Bus: 14 km
Taxi: 29 km
Plane: 1000 km

Route: Fukuoka hotel to city museum and airport and back to home in Tokyo

Weather: Rainy and quite cold


Although this travel through Japan was about bicycle travelling, at least mainly, today on my very last day, no bicycle riding involved at all, as it was raining outside quite intensely and cold:

After considering my options, I excluded to make a last minute splash to Toto toilet museum in Northern Kyushu, for being simply too far from Fukuoka. Looking at my other museum options closer to Fukuoka I found the Fukuoka city museum and took a bus there.

It was actually a quite good, modern museum. Somewhat similar to the Edo museum in Tokyo, with lively exhibits explaining the history of Kyushu since prehistoric times until today. There was also a good English audio guide and also many of the descriptions in the museum were in English. So I think it was a good option what to do on this rainy, cold day.

I made it back to the hotel in time, to catch a cab to the closeby airport and then off my brompton and we back to Tokyo.

Day 47 - Inujima art project 犬島「家プロジェクト」

Bicycle touring Japan - Day 47

In this blog post I describe my visit to Inujima art project, a very small island in the Seto Inland sea.

Bicycle: 20 m
Train: 90 km
Bus: 50 km
Ferry: 5 km

Route: Okayama to Inujima and back and then on to Onomichi. All by public transportation.

Weather: Sunny, some clouds and quite windy, 15 C


Today an other day without riding, but a lot of sightseeing. On weekends there is special direct bus from Okayama to Hoden port from where there is a very small ferry to sail to Inujima. Inujima is a very small island, only 4 km circumference and about 50 very elderly inhabitants, but it is part of the Seto Inland Islands art project, together with the slightly bigger islands of Naoshima and Teshima. I had been to Naoshima and Teshima in the past and enjoyed them thoroughly, so today I made my way to Inujima. Originally I had planned to go by bicycle and stay a night. It's about 25 km riding from Okayama, so the idea was to ride out there e.g. in the afternoon, take a ferry over, sleep on the island, visit it the next day and then come back and ride back to Okayama. However there are only 3 accommodation possibilities on the small island. One was already fully booked, one not operating and one never answered to the phone. So I decided to make it instead a day trip, but then by bus, as 50 km riding PLUS a day on the island visiting the art projects seemed a bit too hard. 

Islands, specially small ones, are for me immediately relaxing. And the ones in the Seto inland sea somehow remind me of small islands in the Mediterranean Sea. 

Inujima in addition to being a small, enjoyable island, also has a museum and a number of art houses with installations. The art museum is in an old abandoned copper refinery, which only was operative for 10 years. The bricks it is constructed off are made of copper slag. Also many other islands in the inland sea where quite industrial some 100 years ago.

Out of the abandoned refiner, an architect carved a new museum, specific to only one work of art.

I have to admit that I enjoyed only one work of art in here, and I am not even sure if that was "art" or "architecture". The entrance to this museum is below ground, i.e. the above picture is from the roof of the museum. One comes in to a very dark, straight passage way that sounds of wind. At the end of the passage way is a mirror and one needs to turn left. The mirror however is at 45 degrees and one sees all the time a very distant lighted exit. But one needs to turn. If you look back, in the same mirror, you will see an image of the sun. And then again, an other mirror at 45 degrees, and you need to turn. Again the same, distant light in front, the sun behind. Until the very end of this labyrinthic experience. Then finally you are in front of yet an other mirror, but this time facing up and showing the sky above the museum, but if you look into it, it still looks like in front of you. Very intriguing. And all this with the wind sounding.

Then the passage ends in a room with some art, dedicated to Yukio Mishima. I did neither like that art nor do I like this person... So that was quite a low point after this great entry into the museum space.

Outside of the museum the view over the inland sea somehow reminded me of ancient Greek ruins:

Or maybe medieval castle ruins?

Across the island there are a number of "art houses". Small buildings with some contemporary art. I liked this one with the different lenses, as part of a street, through which you can see the house behind it, but upside down, in thousand variations:

Right next to it, yet an other transparent building, made by the same artist with destructured, artificial flowers. It is an entirely round structure, where you can stand in the center and see through the art (flowers) the village.

Walking further on there was also this curious project. It is not part of the "official" art of Inujima, but it is still curious. On opening days (but not today) one can even go inside the dog (犬　"inu" in Japanese) and look through his eye.

Walking on an other official art piece, this time symbolizing the sun rays. (although seeing it from far, I thought initially that it would be hammock... but touching was prohibited...

It was still nice to see it swing in the quite strong wind. Today I had brought only a cardigan and not my warmer jacket, as sun was forecast. And the sun did shine... but it was also quite windy, so it became sometimes rather cold. Thus I was happy to find the one and apparently only restaurant right next to yet an other art house project and had spaghetti with spinach pesto, as surprisingly on this small island, this place was specialized in 2 pasta dishes.

Then back to the ferry, back to Okayama, back to my bicycle and luggage which I had left in my hotel and on with the next train to Onomichi.

In Onomichi the ride over the Shimanami Kaido starts, a famous cycling experience in Japan. And this is immediately noticeable. When I arrived at the station, I was not alone in dragging a bicycle out of the train (but the quickest in getting it back to roll). My hotel does surprisingly not have a bicycle parking lot, but instead invites its guests to sleep with the bicycle:

So here we are... enjoying a nice night view over the harbor that is already on the first island of tomorrow.

Day 32 - Hirayu onsen to Shizuoka 平湯温泉から静岡へ

Bicycle touring Japan - Day 32

This blog post is about today not going to plan, but still arriving in my pre-determined destination: Shizuoka, ready for departure tomorrow on the Pacific Coast bicycle path. 

Bicycle: 0 km
Bus: 192 km
Train: 180 km

Route: Hirayu onsen to Nagoya by bus, onwards to Shizuoka by shinkansen

Weather: rain, then light rain and finally sun in Shizuoka, cold in Hirayu onsen, Takayama and Nagoya and surprisingly warm in Shizuoka


Contrary to what I had hoped for today again was a day without any bicycle ride. Nor actually anything else. My plan was to get down to Takayama by bus, then take a scenic Hida train down to Nagoya which supposedly is an extremely nice train ride I had been looking forward to. Then use the good weather forecast for Nagoya and the time I would have at Nagoya to ride to the railway museum and then take an evening train to Shizuoka, where I had booked my hotel for tonight, in preparation of tomorrows departure on the Pacific Coast bicycle path towards Mie prefecture.

Well, only the very first leg of this journey went to plan. In the morning (after an early morning soak at 7:00 in light rain in 3 of the rotenburo) I took the bus down to Takayama. Hirayu onsen was probably right now at the peak of autumn leave viewing, but with the rain, I could not really enjoy it. So here as a bye-bye to my hotel a picture from their parking lot out to the surrounding mountains:

I had a nice seat right behind the driver and through the rain I could see a bit more of the landscape:

As yesterday the typhoon 20 came running through Japan it had been raining in huge amounts and incessantly for hours and hours, which has brought the rivers to their maximum capacity and what was when I drove up 2 days ago a normal, small mountain stream had transformed into a big, vigorous river:

In Takayama I got off in the center of the city and recovered my bicycle from the local repair shop, where I had it over the weekend for cleaning. It is a bit cleaner now... but not spick and span. But still...

When I arrived at Takayama station, in comfortable time to catch the 11:30ish Hida train down to Nagoya, I discovered that the entire train service in and out of Takayama had been closed down since the previous day and reopening was only planned (at the earliest) around 15:00 in the afternoon. As I had seen when I went up to Hirayu onsen, that there are also buses to Nagoya, I went to the bus terminal right next to the station, and was still lucky to get a ticket for a bus, departing at 13:00.

This left me with about 1.5 h to fill, which I filled with a very tasty Hida-ramen soup at a small local restaurant close to the station run by two elderly ladies in a very old building. In order to get to the toilet one needed to cross their entire kitchen and get into a backyard.

Then on with the highway bus, which actually also drove through a very scenic route. It seems that around Takayama there is really only mountains and trees. LOTS of trees. Trees starting to turn now colourful:

At the time I arrived in Nagoya (15:30) it was too late to still get to the railway museum, so I went directly to Shizuoka with the next available shinkansen (which anyway was only within an hour). The shinkansen on this track had suffered quite heavily from the typhoon yesterday, with a train getting stuck the entire night because of flooding in one of the tunnels. Today everything was back to nearly normal, but trains were still running at a delay. Slight delay, about 3 minutes at most. But that is obviously quite a delay for a Japanese train.

My shinkansen did bring me reliable to Shizuoka and my business-cum-wedding ceremony hotel close to the station.

Per KANcycling there is a bicycle path some parts of the way from Shizuoka to the ferry going to Ise. Apparently this bicycle path has been started to be build at least 15 years ago, but might still be patchy. Well, tomorrow I will discover more. Finally back on the bike. Also finally back to nice autumn weather in Japan. The first time since many days (maybe since I left Aomori), that the weather forecast for most parts of Japan for the next 10 days is sunny or sunny&cloudy. But not a lot of rain forecast. Yipee! 

Day 30 - Takayama sightseeing and onwards to Hirayu onsen 高山の観光のち平湯温泉へ

Bicycle touring Japan - Day 30

An other day without bicycle touring, but today some sightseeing in the centre of Takayama, specially Takayama Jinya, and then on to the heaven of onsening: Hirayu no mori, with 9 different rotenburos in the female section alone!

Bicycle: only a few meters

Bus: 35 km

Route: Takayama to Hirayu onsen

Weather: Cloudy and some light rain, 17 C


For today, tomorrow and Monday essentially only rain is forecast. But there is light at the end of the rainy tunnel. It seems that from Tuesday onwards finally the sun will shine, and the typical sunny and dry autumn weather will return to Japan. So when I studied yesterday my possibilities for today, I decided on waiting out the rain in more water, onsen water! Initially I thought of going to Gero onsen, just a station or two by express train from Takayama in direction of Nagoya, but then I saw pictures of Gero onsen, and was negatively impressed by the ugly town. Luckily however an other onsen resort close to Takayama was suggested, Hirayu onsen. I have to admit that I have not yet really explored the village, but I have explored the rotenburo at my hotel. 9 (!) different rotenburos!!! What a feast for me!

As I didn't want to spend a lot of time searching for the ideal accommodation, I just called the first onsen accommodation mentioned in the above web page, Hirayu no mori. And I got lucky as there was still a room, without toilet, but at a very reasonable price, available for 2 nights.

However before coming up to this bliss of rotenburo-ing, I had a morning at Takayama visiting the town. As seen already yesterday, Takayama gets its share of tourists. Essentially Takayama is famous for 3 sights (plus the Takayama matsuri):

• Takayama Jinya
• Old town
• Morning markets

After leaving my baggage and bicycle at the bus station of Takayama I walked into the town. Not without buying my third (!) umbrella. This time I opted for a lightweight, small, lightblue one, in the hope that I will not forget it somewhere and can actually add it to my standard luggage. In the end I used it only for a relatively brief time, as finally it did not rain that much and long as predicted. 

My first touristic stop of the day was the Takayama Jinya, an enormous administrative building from the Edo era. Initially from outside it does not seem too big:

But once inside, the rooms seem to continue endlessly. Here a room for the scribe, a room for waiting monks, a room for town administrators, a room for receptions, a courtroom, private rooms for the regions administrator, private rooms for the wife of the regions administrator..., endless.

What in the above picture looks like some spring flowers, is actually sticky rice decorated on thin branches:

Right in front of the Jinya one of the two morning markets was held. Well, I was not very impressed by it. Just a small market where local farmers (I guess) sell their apples, vegetables and pickles. Nothing impressive. Any normal market in France, Italy or Germany is much nicer. It also seems to be only visited by tourists. 

So I continued my way into the old town of Takayama. In Takayama a good number of old houses have remained. However the street that is best maintained is also the street with most tourists and only touristic shops. Not really a place I enjoy to visit.

Reaching one major cross road I already wanted to give up on Takayama as I thought (erroneously) that the old city part would finish after that cross road. However after some Google maps confirmation I continued on, and saw a part of Takayama that I found more enjoyable. Still touristic, but the farther away (and the closer to the Takayama float museum) the more normal it got. Some houses even seemed to be just normal houses were people actually still lived... or sold tractors!

I had an Italian lunch and then returned to the station to gather my bicycle. In the meantime I had decided to NOT bring the bicycle up into the mountains, but to try to use the two days I would be soaking (and getting really, really clean) to also get my poor brompton clean. After a first failed attempt, I found a bicycle shop (very basic, Japanese style village bicycle shop) in the center of Takayama where I convinced the owner to clean up the bicycle. He thought (rightfully?) that this should be something I should be capable of doing... but after asserting that I am completely incapable of even cleaning a bicycle, he accepted. And I will pick up my bike on Monday morning when coming back to Takayama. Obviously no receipt, no names or phone numbers exchanged... but we are in Japan.

Then I made it again back to the station, recovered my bag from the locker and on to the next bus up into the mountains around Hirayu onsen which left only a few minutes later.

The bus did wind through the mountains and unfortunately the windows got damp very quickly, so not much of a view, but the little I did see: finally KOYO!

My hotel-cum-onsen (well, really more onsen-cum-hotel) is right besides the bus station. A large complex, but not like some of those ugly high rise onsen hotels, but kind of labyrinthine large, with a lot of cottage like houses linked by long, tatami-clad corridors.

It takes about 5 min from my room to the front desk "hiking" through the hotel.

However in the middle of this labyrinth, there is the onsen. With 9 (!) different rotenburo in the women section (plus a few inside pools as well) and views into the surrounding autumn forests, which I enjoyed during a long (1.5 h?) soak.

It's not like lying in the middle of nature, like on Day 27, but I won't ever protest at 9 different (and large) rotenburos. Some of them boiling hot and at least one very mildly tempered. So something available for everyone.

Also my room, albeit very simple (no toilet), has a very nice autumn view and also dinner was quite tasty.

Before dinner I even had time to wash nearly all my cloths, so now I am ready to wait out the latest typhoon ever to hit Japan.

Maybe another soak prior to getting to bed?