Obon D1 towards fresh air

Route: Yokokawa - Usui pass - Karuizawa
Bicycle: 28 km 
Train: 140 km
Total ascent: 999 m
Average speed: 8,7 km/h (not helped by all the walking I did)
Riding time: 3:15 h
Weather: Sunny and kind of warm but tolerable in the mountains and nice in Karuizawa (at 940 m elevation) 33-28 C 

While you’re up this year is baking in the heat with heat wave upon heat wave, in Japan, it is surprisingly fresh this year. I did write to the office until quite late in July and then again this week it became fresh enough to be able to cycle to work without melting away. So I thought that I would give it a try to have a long weekend away. Since several weeks, I’m kind of feeling that I didn’t take enough vacation this year and really need some time off. Next Tuesday is a local holiday anyway (mountain day), so how better to celebrate by doing a long weekend in the mountains.

Thus, on Thursday, I set out with the help of ChatGPT to check where around Tokyo it would be the best temperature. Initially I had thought about going to Nozawa onsen, A village have been already several times in Nagano prefecture. But the problem is getting there because unfortunately, there are no local trains from Tokyo that go towards Nagano city. You need to take the Shinkansen, which obviously was sold out weeks ago. After all, it is Obon, a traditional holiday in Japan, where many people take off maybe visit the mountains or traditionally visit the grave of their family. By pure luck I found one room at an agreeable price in Karuizawa. Karuizawa is the classical high class summer vacation spot of Tokyo elite. It was “discovered” by an Anglican missionary in 1886. From there, it quickly grew into the favorite spot for the rich and cultured elite of Tokyo to spend their summers. His own summer house has been well maintained and is now open to visitors.

As a exemplary missionary, he obviously also built a church:

Karuizawa is a very peculiar village. It doesn’t feel Japanese.I don’t really know what isn’t Japanese about it but the summer houses are scattered through the forest and it kind of feels like an ideal summer retreat from a 19th century novel.

Quite centrally in the village is also this famous pond:

To get here, I came by train first to Takasaki and then Yokokawa which is the furthest that the normal train line that once existed between the Tokyo area and Karuizawa is still running. Although this week, it was surprisingly fresh in Tokyo, it actually got hotter now. So I did decide against cycling up from Takasaki and took the train as far as possible, just to the base of the climb.

At the station, I went through my summer cycling routine, soaking my T-shirt, completely in water and holding my head under cold flowing water before starting the ride.

There are various roads over the pass towards Nagano prefecture from highway to small winding road over Usui pass. This road is famous for the train bridge that supposedly is evoking glasses:

As the train line no longer runs, one can now walk on the line and through the train tunnels. I have to admit a cycled until the bridge, also it was officially prohibited. But there were only very few pedestrians so really no issue. At the bridge, however there were many more pedestrians and crucially a few guards who insisted that I walk. 

The train road now ends at an abandon station. From there, I had to carry the bicycle over some stairs down to the road. That road is extremely curvy. Quite similar to this tree:

A few meters behind the pass, I found a vending machine and got some cold drinks and had one onigiri in the shade. Until here I had only written about 12 km and it would have been only another 2 km down to my hotel at the station. But I saw a tourist map on that pass and it called out a shrine that wasn’t too far and perfectly reachable from where I was.

A very nice road through the vacation house forest did lead me with many more curves to the shrine. When I first had lunch, some soba noodles, before visiting the actual shrine. The shrine itself to me seemed pretty normal. But it must be quite well liked, because it had a huge shrine shop. 

This was actually a shrine where you kind of needed to walk through the shop to get to the small devotional shrines to pray for the health of your dog or car. 

GW2026 D3 scenic coast, no cars

Route: Hagi to Obama beach
Bicycle: 64 km
Total ascent: 1219 m ( but I don’t really believe this)
Average speed: 13,3 km/h
Riding time: 4:47 h
Weather: cloudy and much colder, 16 C

My main goal for today was a shrine with red torii gates on the coast I had seen recommended in some posts and questions on Japan Guide. 

It’s a place that is very much out of the way, but somewhat reachable from Hagi. When I first planned the trip I couldn’t find an accommodation anywhere close so instead I had booked a ryokan somewhere in the mountains. Which probably wouldn’t have allowed me to visit this shrine. However when I finally decided which of my 4 plans to put into practice, I rechecked my hotel options and did find a place on the coast not too far from that shrine. Probably I hadn’t found it initially as I strictly searched for places with free cancellation. 

I started in Hagi and road all day along the coast. On paper (or rather in the color coding of Google Maps) some of the streets I took were orange , prefectural roads, so I expected some traffic, but actually some of those prefecture roads were again much more like a rindo (forest road) than something established by the regional government and with heavy traffic in mind.

Even where this road was a bit bigger there was hardly any traffic all day. 

And this paired with great views of the rugged coastline with outlying islands. 

Occasionally a small village stuck in time and geography. These places are far from literally anywhere. Even from Hagi. 

Somewhere on the outskirts of a small hamlet was a huge metal earth globe. I have absolutely no idea who thought that installing such a thing at that crossroad would make sense. 

The highest point of the day was a small plateau right on the shoreline with views in all directions. It was on such a steep hill that with baggage and all , I had to push the bike for a bit. 

From there it was mainly downhill to a place with famous views of rice paddies along the shore.

 

More downhill (that I needed to climb up again later), to the famous shrine. Actually, the shrine itself isn’t very old, and curiously it is currently closed on weekends and local holidays. One wonders why it is open on weekdays instead. Anyway , even with the shrine closed one can still see the famous torii. 

From there to my accommodation. I had preordered grill dinner and wanted to be here quite soon so I could still get a shower prior to dinner. And to avoid too cold weather while grilling 

GW2026 D2 my mother was right - Hagi 😍

Route: in and around Hagi
Bicycle: 39 km
Total ascent: 352 m
Average speed: 11,8 km/h
Riding time: 2:50 h 
Weather: Sun and clouds, 25 C

My mother has been enchanted by Hagi ever since she visited in 1995. And she was right! Hagi is a wonderful , traditional Japanese town . One of the few not destroyed by development. Actually probably the biggest that still feels quite traditional but is also alive. 

Some other much smaller examples I could think of are: Imaicho (but MUCH smaller), Magome (much smaller and now totally overrun by tourists wanting to “hike” between Magome and Tsumago). But I don’t really know any other town even somewhat similar to Hagi. 

I started the day at Hagi castle. Surprisingly one is allowed to ride inside the castle remains with a bicycle. Not sure if this was a good idea. Anyway, from the castle little remains just the moat…

.. and a shrine built by the townspeople after the castle had been torn down in admiring memory of their local daimyo now powerless, at least officially. 

There was also a rather nice garden around a tea house with Rhododendron in full bloom.

With the castle entrance fee one also gets entrance to a samurai building just outside of the castle, which however, was rather disappointing. Allegedly it’s the biggest remaining samurai building in Hagi, but it is just a row of tatami rooms.

From there, I cycled through the old part of the town, which is characterized by long walls on both sides of the road, old  residences, and a surprising amount of gardens, specially gardens with citrus fruits.Hagi is famous for summer mandarins (夏みかん). My mother even brought one of them back from her trip to Tokyo and she still remembers, I don’t.

In the old part of the town, I visited the most famous residence: The house of the Kikuya clan. Apparently, they started out as samurai, but then lost their master, and with that their status as samurai. From there they evolved into merchants, which was the lowest rank in Japanese society back then. But that didn’t impede them to become extremely wealthy, and well liked by the local daimyo and construct a huge house with an even larger garden.

After pottering a little bit more through the old streets, and passing by the Meirin Gakusha, an enormous, wooden school building from the Meiji era, now tourist information center.

From there I rode to the south and tip of the town, had lunch at a typical Japanese coffee shop run by an elderly lady who has a few home-cooked meal options. Close by it was another typical residence of Hagi along a small channel that even flows through the house and was used for cleaning the dishes , washing vegetables and as water source for the bath tub. 

It also had a nice tea room with the best view of the garden with a pond from the same small river. There was an elderly volunteer guide with whom I had a nice conversation about how my mother loved Hagi when she visited 31 years ago and how probably not a lot has changed since. There are tourists in Hagi, including some tourist groups. But even at the highlights, the Kikuya residence, there was always a lot of space around to visit calmly. It seems the city gets exactly the right amount of tourists for keeping the local tourism industry afloat, but not having any signs of over tourism. And I guess as long as Hagi remains off the Shinkansen network it will remain this way. Already now the majority of tourist don’t venture beyond Hiroshima. So going to Yamaguchi and then taking a bus over the mountains to Hagi would seem to most tourists like beyond even the unbeaten track. I’m definitely going to come back, maybe on a trip along the entire sea of Japan side.

The Yukawa residence, was the last residence of the day, from here on to a shrine, a temple, two UNESCO world heritage sites, a volcano, a forest and an onsen with a wide view! 

But let’s go in order. First the shrine of Shoin a famous teacher, who also gave his name to the biggest shrine close to my house where he is buried. 

The next stop was a temple: Tokoji. With so few visitors that the admission fee is self service, meaning that there is a box and a sign how much you should put in the box. The temple itself is big and has a grandiose approach, …

… but the really interesting part is the mausoleum for the Mōri family, the local daimyos.

But there was more to come. The next two stops were UNESCO world Heritage sites. The sites belonging to the industrialization under the Meiji revolution have become UNESCO world Heritage sites a few years ago to recognizing the achievement of the Meiji era to industrialize Japan without being colonized and with speed. 

The two sites in Hagi I visited are a wharf and an iron furnace. Of the wharf the only remains are a sea wall: 

Of the furnace , which actually never worked, more is remaining: 

From here I went to a small peninsula from where one has a wide view over the bay. 

But one can also go down inside the caldera of a cute small volcano:

I even went a bit further on that peninsula to a camellia grove, which however (not surprisingly) had already lost all its flowers. 

Now the last remaining activity of the day was a good soak in the onsen of yet another hotel with a rotenburo from where to enjoy the view over the bay. (Picture below is NOT from the rotenburo but from the top of the mountain.). The view from the onsen was a bit less spectacular but still nice. Down onto a port and the mountains in the background.

Finally back to town, to a wash saloon where I washed and dried my cycling clothes while having ramen in a nearby shop and on the way back got some breakfast items for tomorrow.  I’ll already be leaving Hagi and ride along the coast to the West.

GW2025 D2 Ashimori and Takahashi

Route: Okayama - Ashimori -Takahashi

Bicycle: 70 km
Train: 0 m
Car: 51 km
Total ascent: 987 m
Average speed: 15,4 km/h
Riding time: 4:35 h
Weather: sunny and again not too warm, 20 C

Today was a wonderful day with new discoveries and very relaxing. Now I just need to hope that I’ll be able to make it back to Okayama as I am sitting in a train at Bitchu Takahashi station that isn’t moving because somewhere down the line rocks did fall on the track. I am pondering if I should put the bicycle together back again and ride down to the plain of Okayama. However even Soja is 30 km away, it’s already 18:00 and it seems that trains from Soja are also not moving. Probably because the trains from Takahashi don’t arrive. The other passengers are sitting relaxed, and I have still the blog post of yesterday to write, so I am sitting here as well … However, after an announcement saying that the responsible JR person would be at the site of the rock at 19:00 to check it out, instead I decided to take the bike and just when I had it all assembled again a man who was going to take the train as well approached me and offered to take me by car. So here we go. By car to Okayama.  

The car ride itself was also a great experience. Obviously I was a bit conscious of the fact that I am boarding a car of a totally unknown man. But , well, most people in the world are good people. And he was definitely one of them. Surprisingly I had a really good conversation with him. He seemed very well informed about global affairs , the war in Ukraine and just generally an interesting person to talk to about more than just the weather. 

Now back in my hotel , and back to today’s blog post.

Getting out of Okayama wasn’t the best route, but once outside I was on one of cycle paths in the Kibi plain but somewhere took different turns from yesterday and this came to a new place: Ashimori 

I had never heard about this place and even yesterday when I searched for interesting spots around Okayama it did not come up. So I was really lucky to stumble up on it. On my way. A nice small village, largely maintaining its old character of, what I would call, post town. There is an old samurai residence, which I did not visit and a garden that uses the mountains as part of its landscape design. The old lord of the area could sit in his tea house above the small lake and enjoy the breeze and the views.

Before entering into the mountains, I had udon at a local small restaurant, where the owner‘s wife was very eager to speak English and gave me a small cake from the area. From there, it was uphill on a very nice and quiet country road through the lush green vegetation. I’m really surprised how green everything is. Which really I shouldn’t. Japan is a very green country. But somehow this year I didn’t notice the change from winter landscape to the lush green landscape. I’m simply too busy with my house building, that I didn’t have enough time to cycle in the countryside and mountains around Tokyo. So this trip here feels like the first time to really see this abundance of green.

Somewhere in these mountains, there are small hamlets, probably all but destined to disappear in the next 50 years.

And with that I made it to the viewpoint above the castle of Takahashi. 

I didn’t have enough time to visit the castle and the mountain it is on top of looks really steep. I actually visited it eight years ago on my tour through Japan. Back then I took the train from Okayama and then a taxi up to the entrance of the castle. Today instead, I visited a temple, down in the valley, which back then the taxi driver recommended to me, but somehow I hadn’t considered visiting it. The temple itself is probably a pretty normal temple, but the draw of it is it’s Japanese garden.

The Rododendron wasn’t in full bloom yet, but even though this garden was very relaxing and calm.

People always complain or fear how full everything will be in golden week, but it’s so much depends on where you go. Yes the train yesterday was crazy full but today both in Ashimori, and in Takahashi, there were very few people around.It simply isn’t on any major, or even minor routes through Japan, not even for the Japanese.

GW2025 - D1 Kibi plain repeat

Route Okayama - Kibi plain round trip
Bicycle: 61 km
Train: 650 km
Total ascent: 243 m
Average speed: 15,7 km/h
Riding Time: 3:47 h
Weather: very sunny but not THAT warm, 20C

I organized this Golden Week trip maybe about two months ago, right after I found out that this year is again the art triennial in the Setouchi region. And although it is right in the middle of Golden Week, I did have no problems in finding reasonably priced accommodations in the area.

For the first two days, I’m in Okayama, where I have been eight years ago on my big trip through Japan. Today was actually a repeat of a ride that I did back then.

In order to come here, I needed to pass through the craziness of getting on a Shinkansen out of Tokyo on the first official day of Golden Week. The situation at Tokyo station was a well organized chaos. I made it pretty easily to the actual platform, but on the platform there were hoards of people, kept in organized queues by special railway employees.During Golden Week for the Nozomi Shinkansen, all seats are reserved, which means that people who did not get a reservation are all desperate to board a Hikari or Kodama train. So there were long queues on the platform, and the people who were actually there to take their reserved seat in the Nozomi needed to kind of squeeze between everyone else. Even the vending machine was nearly empty, and that at 9 AM in the morning. Luckily, I had bought something for breakfast and lunch at a conbini on the way to Tokyo station, so I didn’t need to get anything from the platform shop. However, once I was in my Nozomi on my reserved seat, I had the space behind the seat for the bicycle and could sit comfortably all the way to Okayama. As there was so much traffic and, probably especially the Hikari and Kodama trains, took more time at the platform to load and unload people, the entire system was in delay. And by the time I reached Okayama, my train already had racked up more than 20 minutes of delay. Even Okayama station was very crowded and we needed to form a line to get out of the turn-still. 

On my way, I had planned the ride for today and tomorrow. Today, a short ride into Kibi plain with its temples, shrines and old tombs. 

The first two stops were too big shrine complexes at the foothill of a small hill. As in the next few days is the children’s day, they were kois flying above in the air. Normally, they should be flying over a river, but here they were flying over the parking lot.

The second shrine per the description had a very special roof, I think if I wouldn’t have read it, I would not consider this roof as anything special, but just a normal shrine roof. But I’m clearly no expert.

As I continued on the cycle path, I continued through the plain with small fields and small hamlets. I had planned a little bit longer ride, but at some point it was getting surprisingly chilly and also a little bit late, that I decided to take a shortcut cut back to Okayama. but while being on my shortcut, I remembered a picture of the main temple of this area with a flower field in front of it. So I checked how far it would be from where I was on my shortcut, and it was within less than 4 km, so I decided to give it a detour. I had been to this temple 8 years ago, but to my surprise I had a new experience today. They were arranging the big drums for a concert in the evening in front of the pagoda in the yard of the temple, and already had some test runs of their performance.

And no, this hill is not a hill, it is actually an ancient tomb.