GW2025 D3 Setouchi Art Triennial around the Seto-Ohashi bridge

Route: Okayama - Seto Ohashi - Takamatsu
Bicycle: 66 km
Train: 53 km
Total ascent: 565 m
Average speed: 13,4 km/h
Riding time: 4:54 h
Weather: sunny a few clouds but not THAT warm, 18C

Today was another perfect day, that didn’t go to plan. I got up relatively early and took a train from Okayama over to Shikoku. It passes over a long bridge going through the Setonaikai dotted with islands. I got off at the first stop on Shikoku, assembled the bicycle, and then set out to the art exhibits around the bridge.

The first piece of art I saw was this small hill, which wasn’t a tomb, like the slightly bigger hill I saw a few days ago in Kibi plain.

From there, I followed the signs for some other pieces of art around it, none of which really impressed me.

In the small village of Seicho, they were three abandoned schools. The kindergarten, elementary school and junior high school.well now closed and used as temporary exhibition sites for this art festival. However, the artists didn’t seem to have a lot of ideas, so most of the exhibits in all three schools were kind of just stuff that was already in those school buildings abandoned, put together and reclaimed as art.

There was really only one piece of art that I thought was interesting. It was a still life photographed over several weeks in a style similar to Caravaggio. It started with a very abundant display of fruit and vegetables, very colorful and apparently full of life in front of a dark background. Initially, you didn’t notice anything, but looking at it for some time, one could appreciate the change from this fresh, full of vitality, display of fruits and vegetables, to the decay.on the wall behind, there was still a clock from the school, which every minute was the change of the hand gave a loud noise. So you could hear the passing of time, while seeing it reflected in the unstoppable decay of rotting fruits, and vegetables.

With all this art time flew by. At one of the schools, there was even a service for some lunchboxes, and freshly fried fish, so I had lunch there, and it was clearly too late to ride to Kotohira shrine and make it up there.It’s already the second time I’m here in this area of Shikoku and do not manage to get to this famous shrine. So a good reason to come back sometime in the future.

Instead, I saw that there was one piece of art that still belongs to this area, which was between the area around the bridge and Takamatsu. So I replant the ride to get to also this piece of art. Which essentially was a small village park with a bench and a place to light a bonfire.

It was however, early enough to make it to Takamatsu and still have more than sufficient time to see again the superb Ritsurin garden.this is definitely the best Japanese garden that I have seen. Although it didn’t make it on the official list of the three best gardens. What I really like about it how it incorporates the nature around it into the garden. It offers so many different view points that you could easily spend an entire day in this garden discovering new views.

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. 

D3 Daibutsu and schools

Route: Heguri - Nokogiriyama - Kimitsu

Bicycle: 50 km
Walking: 3 km
Train: 90 km
Total ascent: 750 m+
Average speed: 15,5 km
Riding time: around 5 h
Weather: sunny and warm, but very windy. Mainly tailwind though, 20 C

For my last day in Boso peninsula I went to the other (other than the flowers) famous place: Nokogiriyama and it’s Nihonji temple with an enormous Daibutsu carved out of the rock:

And as a Daibutsu wasn’t enough they threw in a gigantic Kannon as well:

The small buddhas had suffered though under the Meiji restoration when Buddhist figures in some temples were destroyed.

The other theme of the day was schools. I had started my day in a school, …

… but also for lunch I ended up in a school now transformed into a very popular road side station with many small restaurants. I lined up at the most popular which was in an old class room and served nostalgic school lunches. The Japanese families around me all remembered their school days. 

Overall I am not sure how much I like Boso peninsula. It’s relatively hard to reach from my place (2h+ by train), it was very windy and on the road along the shore there is traffic. Nothing really crazy, but not my solitary mountain roads. However truth be told, the mountain roads in the interior were very quiet. 

D2 Boso flower line

Route: Heguri- Tateyama - Boso Flower line - Chikura - Heguri 
Bicycle: 92 km
Total ascent: 439 m
Average speed: 18.1 km/h
Riding time: 5:06 h
Weather: sunny and VERY windy. Colder than I though  13C

For my second day on Boso Peninsula, I went down to the south coast riding along the famous Boso flower line. I had read about this place full of flowers years ago and always wanted to come, and theoretically now should be a relatively good time to see all these flowers blooming. But frankly enough, there were only two places with some small flower fields. Nothing that you could compare to the tulip fields in the Netherlands.

Luckily, before starting the ride, I had checked the weather, including the wind. And saw that there would be a very strong wind from the south. So I inverted the direction of the ride to have tail wind. And the wind in some places, especially around the lighthouse of Nojimazaki, was ferocious.

While the wind generally was tail wind, in places it was side wind, and that was feeling outright dangerous. So I proceeded with an abundance of caution. And as a result of that, probably didn’t enjoy the ride as much as it deserved to be enjoyed.

But maybe I’m also more of a mountain than a seaside person. I was rather happy to ride back to my accommodation in the hills of the Peninsula.

D1 through the hilly interior of Boso peninsula

Route: Sodegaura - interior of Boso peninsula - Heguri
Bicycle: 74 km
Train: 85 km
Total ascent: 900 m
Average speed: 16,9 km/h
Riding time: 4:24 h
Weather: sunny, some clouds and around 12C

It feels like a long time without some proper rides. Lately, most of my weekend time is taken up by visiting kitchen exhibitions, bathroom showrooms, toilet manufacturers, and obviously meeting with the house builder. But this long weekend I did reserve to do some touristic riding in an area, actually not very far from Tokyo, but where I have never been before: Boso peninsula. 

And I’m really lucky with the weather.  Yesterday it was snowing big flakes in Tokyo during most of the morning and then cold rain in the afternoon. But for this long weekend, today, Thursday, is a local holiday, I think for the start of spring, the weather forecast is excellent. Sun, a few clouds and getting warmer by the day arriving to about 20°C on Saturday. On Sunday I need to be back in Tokyo for more visits to the house builder. Hopefully finally being able to decide on the layout of the rooms, so that the plan can be fixed and we can enter into the next planning phase.

The ride didn’t feel so hilly, because there wasn’t one big climb, but it must’ve been more up-and-down and more gradual ascents than I thought, because somehow I climbed 900 m although I never really got very high up.

I didn’t have enough time to actually plan the rides so I just planned something quick in the Komoot app while sitting in the train. And I have to say so far what I saw today was not spectacular. Not bad either but nothing to write home about, or to actually write in this blog.

The one sightseeing spot, recognizing by Japanese local tourists, was this minor waterfall through an arch.

As far as I know, Boso Peninsula is famous for its flowers. but for sakura, it is still way too early, and while they were some isolated, flowering plum and peach trees, in the mountainous interior of the peninsula, it was clearly still too cold for the flowers.

The day finished in a small village in their abandoned  elementary school, now transformed into a basic guest house,co-working space, and restaurant. But the restaurant is open only for lunch on some days and there are no coworkers around. Luckily, the owner was able to organize a freshly cooked bento, which I ate in one of the old classrooms. And no, this is not my bicycle in the background. Those are some bicycles that can be rented here.

NY 2025 D6 Seven Lucky Gods Pilgrimage

Route: 7 Lucky gods Kyoto pilgrimage
Bicycle: 50 km
Total ascent: 357 m
Average Speed: 14.2 km/h
Riding time: 3:30 h
Weather: Sun and clouds, cold, 6 C

A few days ago while reading Japan Times, I saw an article on a New Years pilgrimage to the 7 Lucky gods (Shichi-Fuku-jin), which seems to be a tradition to do in the first week of the new year. The one in Kyoto is specially spread out, so well suited to be done by bicycle. 

These seven gods come from 3 different religions (shintoism, buddhism and taoism) and all seem to be quite fun loving and good natured. One of them, is even a female god. (And yes, I know the collage above only has 6 of them... read the whole blog post to find out why).

I started with the most outlying temple: Manpukuji in Uji. 

Manpukuji is a famous temple in itself, regardless of the Seven Lucky Gods. Famous for it's Chinese style architecture. I had come here in Golden Week a few years ago. But today, I only had eyes for Hotei-son, characterized by his round belly and full sack of presents he received for doing good deeds. 

For such a famous temple, there were few visitors there today. It isn't a real Hatsumode temple, so the locals didn't come and the tourists just all go to the same places. 

The next stop was back in Kyoto right in the middle of the tourist nightmare of Higashiyama: Rokuharamitsuji. This temple actually isn't on the normal tourist route, but today there was not only the pilgrimage to the Seven Lucky Gods ongoing, but also normal Hatsumode and this in an area that is already full of tourists. Most visitors though were Japanese who were buying new lucky charms for this year. There was even a rather long queue to pray before the goddess Benzaiten. So I didn't get a good look of her. 

The funniest of them all, as always, was good old Ebisu, the only originally Japanese of the 7 gods. Always ready for a joke. 

His shrine was close by and while there were also a good number of visitors, things where more relaxed and fun driven. With people trying to through a coin into a basket on the torii. 

BTW, the lanterns and the sentence below to the foreign observer might seem to be nice festive decorations, but actually it is publicity It says "For shopping, go to Takashimaya". 

From there I went over the river to an other mid sized temple, Gyoganji, which is hosting Jurojin a taoist god of old age. 

And on I went to Northern Kyoto to Matsugasaki Daikokuten, where Daikokuten an Indian buddhist god is venerated (and well bathed with cold water). 

The next temple was Sekizan Zenin with what seems to be the wisest of all the gods. At least judging from his enormous brain capacity. 

Here they were also selling small versions of him to be then exposed probably with your wish at the temple. Similar to the cats at Gokokuji in Tokyo (which will be pretty close to my new house). 

The most disappointing of them all was Bishamonten at Toji temple. Simply because he wasn't there. His statue is in the adjacent museum but only on display on some days of the year. Not today apparently. 

Toji temple itself is a very spread out affair and has it's charms... but that wasn't my objective for today so I just snapped a picture of the pagoda from afar and went back to my hotel making an early return and checking on some work emails before now writing this blog post. 

What was interesting in this pilgrimage is that these 7 gods are at 7 very different locations. From major temples such as Toji and Manpukuji to a small neighborhood shrine of Ebisu. Temples right in the center of Kyoto, such as Rokuharamitsu-ji to temples in the forest like Sekizan Zen-in. 

But all places were joined by flags announcing them as one of the Seven pilgrimage locations. 

NY2025 D5 - small mountain roads in the North of Kyoto

Route: Kyoto - Arashiyama - Mizuo - Sugisaka - Kyoto
Bicycle: 76 km
Total ascent: 977 m
Average Speed: 16.4 km/h
Riding time: 4:37 h
Weather: Sun and clouds, cold, 5C

After the somewhat dissatisfying ride yesterday, the tiger temple was great... but the ride afterwards to Ikoma and onwards was just riding through built up area, today I went to the North of Kyoto into what feels like very remote mountains. They aren't actually that remote, but all roads are really small, a few small villages and a lot of up and down. 

But to get there I first needed to traverse the touristic craziness of Arashiyama. Luckily all the tourists just concentrate in a few blocks around the famous bridge (what is actually so special about that bridge?) and the temples between there and the bamboo forest. But move away only a few blocks... and I stumbled upon a great temple complex: Seiryouji, with only a few visitors. 

After the last temple in Arashiyama a small mountain road starts. It starts relatively easy, but the last few hundred meter are like a wall. But that's where pushing the bike comes in handy. On the equally steep downhill one has this nice view of the Sagano valley. That valley is famous among tourists for a small sightseeing train. 

Only after that downhill the actual uphill starts. Which goes on and on, but at a nice gradient. Mid-way through is the small village of Mizuo apparently famous for it's Yuzu fruits. I have been here nearly 2 years ago... and looking back to that blog post I realize that I took today exactly the same pictures. 

The roads I was riding on, were mainly small or very small roads. Like this one. And just a joy to ride. It must be a great area also to ride when it is hot (or hotter) as it is all pretty much in the shadow of the trees and mountains. Although I wouldn't probably want to ride here when it is really hot, as there isn't an easy "escape" route back to a train station. Also with the villages being so small there is not a single conbini and around New Year all restaurants are closed. I say "all"... as if there were many. In Mizuo it seems there might be one or two and then much later in Hosono there is a ramen shop that does a very tasty boar ramen and deer dumplings. I tried the ramen in an other ride and it was excellent. But today also this shop was closed. 

NY 2025 D4 - Hatsu-Tiger-mode

Route: Yamatoyagi - Chogosonshiji - Mt. Shigi - Ikoma - Yodogawa - Kyoto
Bicycle: 82 km
Train: 60 km
Total Ascent: 811 m
Average Speed: 16.5 km/h
Riding time: 4:59 h
Weather: Very sunny and cold, 5C

As my first visit to a temple of the year, aka Hatsumode, I went to Chogosonshi-ji, the temple of the (paper mache) tiger. A bucket list item. 

This temple is on a crazy steep hill (in some parts it was even hard work to push the bike uphill, other parts are ridable). I had left my bicycle yesterday in the bike parking lot of Yamato-Yagi station. When I returned there the old men who run the bicycle parking lot knew exactly which was my bicycle. Probably not hard to guess when you see someone coming in with full cycling cloths into a parking lot that has only mamacharis. So much so, that they didn't check if I had the receipt. But hey, that's Japan. 

The first part of the ride was on bicycle paths along rivers. There are a lot of small rivers or channels in that area and many have bicycle paths. The surface in some of them is rather rugged... but still totally ridable. And then it went up the hill first through some satellite town and then further up. It was actually kind of the steepest in the town. 

When I made it up it was maybe around 12:30 and there were still free parking lots for cars. Apparently cyclists are not foreseen to make it up the hill... so there wasn't any specially designated bicycle parking lot, so I was allowed to park under a tree in the big parking lot together with a motorbike. 

The temple is a large, sprawling affair. 

Today with many happy visitors with family doing their Hatsumode (first visit of the year to a shrine/temple), buying good luck charms and bringing the ones from last year back to be burned at the shrine. There were some queues for people to pray, but nothing outrageous. 

Behind the temple a path with a lot of stairs and toriis started up to Mt. Shigi. And without thinking too much I walked up there... a LOT of stairs. ... to the view at the top and one more temple. 

Most gods had the same offerings, an orange, a mandarin, a small piece of cake, some sake and a rice cake. Only this one here, got some more healthy offerings as well. 

From there it was through the mountain range mostly downhill... although with some kickers until the mountain road came down the hill and ended up in build up area. From there... well, not such a nice ride. Just riding through build up area. I was able to find relatively small roads... but still not the same as riding through the mountains on small roads. Surprisingly though the national road that I took down towards Yodogawa didn't have that much  traffic. I had feared for the worst and actually made some alternative plans, but ultimately it was just a rather normal road. 

And then down to the bicycle path along Yodogawa that I road so many  times when staying in Osaka for work and cycling on the weekend to Kyoto or Nara. Uneventful.