Day 41 - Nara to Yamatoyagi 奈良から大和八木へ

Bicycle touring Japan - Day 41

Today's cycle tour was dedicated to pagodas and temples, many of them UNESCO world heritage sites. 

Bicycle: 34 km
Riding time: 2:30 h 
Total ascent: 130 m

Route: Nara to Yamatoyagi

Weather: Sunny and some clouds, temperature around 16 C

First of all, here the four pagodas of today... a lot of pagodas, and even more temples.

And this albeit I did NOT visit the obvious touristic spots in Nara, as I had been in Nara an entire weekend earlier this year as a stay over from a business trip to Osaka. Instead I headed out West towards Yakushiji area and then down South to the Horyuji area.

The hostel I stayed tonight was really nice so before departure I had a picture of myself taken in front of it.

It is an old town house restructured recently into a hostel. Although I don't really know why they don't call it Ryokan. It was very similar to a ryokan, i.e. no toilets and baths in the rooms, tatami rooms... I guess that "hostel" sounds more international and modern than "ryokan". But it was actually much nicer than many ryokans in which I have stayed. The walls seemed to very thin, but everyone was very respectful and did avoid noises, apart the one person snoring in the middle of the night... 

After the picture, off into the sunny day to my first destination. Actually when I left in the morning, I had decided to see only Yakushiji temple in Nara in order to have sufficient time for Horyuji and Horinji, but the first temple I came upon was Toshodaiji. And well, as I "stumbled" upon it, I entered, with the decision to then skip Yakushiji... 

At Toshodaiji, one of the most important Buddhist temples in Japan (but I read the same later on at an other 2 temples today...) there was the only (?) remaining building of the Heijo palace (the rebuilt site I visited yesterday). It is this long, dark building on the right on the picture below.

In the times of Nara capital it was a administration building part of the palace, but at some point the government no longer needed the building, so they gave / sold (?) it to this temple. Who took good care of it (and was lucky that it did not get destroyed by some fire), so it survived until now. 

I actually liked these temple grounds a lot, very much in the nature, although they are not very far from Nara center, but even the surroundings are very rural already with many nice, old farm houses still remaining. 

At one point a monk started explaining to a small child the different statues that are worshiped in the main temple, saying that the Buddha sitting in the middle is so important, that he is actually TOO important to ask some favours from him, as it just takes too long for him to get to your petition. So one should better ask any favours to his two "assistants" standing on the right and left. The one on the right (well, left from Buddha's place) is a kind of medical doctor, so one can ask medical help from him. For all other petitions, the other bodhisattva is responsible. This is also the reason why he has 1000 hands. In each hand this statue is holding a different device and depending on what you want, you should ask it to the appropriate arm. (Unfortunately no pictures of these arms were allowed)

I didn't have anything to ask to this thousand armed being, so I went on to my second temple of today, Yakushiji... I know, I said above that I had decided not to visit it... but how could I pass by one of the oldest temples in Japan? And here was pagoda number 1 of the day. (Actually also pagoda #2 was here, but this currently is under renovation and hidden behind scaffolding, so does not count.)

I have to admit that apart from the pagoda I did not specially like this temple. It was curious though how much the Buddhas of this temple seemed to like egg. The first Buddha I met had parcels upon parcels of raw egg standing in front of him. The next Buddha seemed to be a bit more picky in his tastes, and got the eggs already transformed into tasty cakes. But also in Buddha-typical quantities. This maybe also explains why Japanese Buddhas are fat (see below for distinction from Indian influenced Buddhas). However seeing the fact that this temples is called 薬師寺 (literally: pharmacist temple), it would seem that eggs per Japanese believes are good for health. 

Then I got onto my brompton and off towards my main goal of the day, Horyuji. As always I had planned my route using as little of the major roads as possible, which today lead me through fairly small roads which would have been impossible to find otherwise, through the country side. 

At some point I crossed these fields  filled with water, and no, these are not rice paddies, but instead goldfish breeders:

In and around Nara, there are so many things to see, that I have passed by this castle without stopping any longer than it took to take this shot straight through the train line:

Shortly before reaching Horyuji, however my determination of passing by possible sightseeing spots got challanged again, by pagoda #2 of the day:

Hokki-ji

Mostly for koyo it is still too early, but on this picture I managed to get at least a bit of autumn flavour added. 

Shortly before this temple also a bicycle lane had appeared out of the blue. The next "stop" on this bicycle path was Horinnji 法輪寺. Now, how could I not visit a temple with the kanji for "cycle" in it. Compare the 2nd kanji of  駐輪場 (bicycle parking lot) to 法輪寺 (Horin-ji temple)!

And here it was, pagoda #3 of the day. Here a picture from a bit further away, so you can also see the kaki fruits in the foreground. 

This temple was actually pretty small, but with the "rin" 輪 in its name and the pagoda, I visited it.

The next and final touristic destination today was now finally Horyuji, UNESCO world heritage site and an enormous temple complex. Before entering I had lunch, Curry-rice, in a cafe between the two parts of the temple. This cafe could also have been in Daikanyama... but it was here in Horyuji. This potato grinned at me from the top of the curry:

With new energy I commenced the visit of the vast areal of  Horyuji. It more feels like an entire village than a single temple and it is packed with national treasures, and obviously sports yet an other pagoda... the last of today:

However one of the main attractions, the oldest wooden building in the world, was currently undergoing reform. But there were more than enough other buildings to see. Including some of them (eg the pagoda above and the main temple right behind it, still from the Asuka period (538 to 710).

In one building there is also one of the oldest Buddhas in Japan, which is still a slender Buddha, very different from any other Buddhas we see now in Japan, which are all quite round. This one here was really thin and supposedly more like an Indian Buddha. 

I finished the visit around 15:00 and then continued my journey of today onwards to Yamatoyagi. This time Garmin had found a bicycle lane, which was following a river. At times it was great at times it was just okay, essentially because the asphalt or sometimes gravel was a bit hard to ride in some places. But overall it seems that in and around Nara there are quite a lot of bicycle lanes and they are even indicated relatively well:

And then I was already at my hostel for tonight. Again in a refurbished old town house. I have got an enormous room, and after some considerations what to do tomorrow/the day after tomorrow I have decided to stay two nights here. 

Today in the evening I also went to a local sento I was recommended here by the lovely owners. 

This sento was also very traditional and probably nothing, including the owners and other guests, changed in the last 50 years. I specially found the hair dryer interesting:

Well, this excursion in another century, concluded my historical day.

I also just made a very useful discovery: Garmin actually IS capable of downloading new courses automatically without plugging in the device into the computer. Strangely I had never noticed this before and had quite a number of "fights" with the Garmin device to connect it properly to the computer to download a new course. But tomorrows course, which will be around Yamatoyagi only, has been miraculously self-transferred. Useful!

One other thing of Garmin that I have not yet understood, is how to see if there are bicycle lanes or not. Sometimes when I ride I see on the map (downloaded from openfiets map) a red line on a road, which seem to indicate a bicycle lane. But when planning the tour, I don't see it in the planning tool (probably because that one uses Google maps instead, who does not know about any bicycle lanes in Japan). 

Bicycle touring Japan - Ride maps

For details on the bicycle tour today in Nara, checkout the below maps:

Day 40 - Uji to Nara 宇治から奈良へ

Bicycle touring Japan - Day 40

This blog post is about sightseeing in Uji and then bicycling on to Nara using the bicycle road alongside the Kizugawa.

Bicycle: 40 km
Riding time: 2:50 h 
Total ascent: 205 m

Route: Uji to Nara

Weather: Sunny, cloudy, very windy and a few drops of rain, temperature descending from 20 C to 13 C


The morning today was completely dedicated to sightseeing in Uji. I had only once before been in Uji, over 20 years ago, and remembered that I did not like the Phoenix hall (Byodoin). In my memory it was a very somber, dark, black hall with a lot of gravel around.Well, I am happy to have come back today. I have no idea why I remember it black. Have a look:

The gravel part is true, but then that is true in a lot of temples and shrines. So I should not have been so impressed by it. Maybe I went on a specially hot day and the only thing I saw was the heat coming up from the gravel?

I started extra early. Initially with the idea to be there at the time of the opening... well, I didn't make that, but still achieved to be at the ticket gate about 15 minutes later. At that moment already a good number of visitors were on the grounds, and when it was my turn to buy a ticket to see the inside of the temple, I "only" got a ticket for the 9:50 guided tour. I.e. the second tour of the day. Which turned out to be perfect timing. This way I had enough time to walk through the grounds, take as many pictures as I wanted still without any tourists inside the temple (as the first tour was only starting at 9:30) and with not groups yet "littering" the grounds. I even made it to the museum, where some really amazing statues from inside the temple are exhibited. Even there, no tourist groups yet! "Normal" tourists yes, and not too few, but no groups to circumnavigate. When I left the museum at about 9:20 the groups started pouring in. They all seemed on a very tight schedule, just enough time to take a few pictures of the outside of the temple, then off to the museum and hop back on the bus. Probably Nara or Kyoto was on the program for those guys as well.

Inside the museum it was no-photos policy, so I can't share anything. But I was specially impressed by the small "Worshipping Bodhisattvas on Clouds". They are small wooden statues originally fixed to the upper inner walls of the temple, of bodhisattvas that worship Buddha, e.g. by playing a musical instrument, by holding their hands in a specific position or otherwise adoring him. Specially the ones playing a musical instrument were very nice. One could nearly hear the music.

Once finished with Byodoin, I had breakfast at a very elegant Starbucks right outside of the temple. And then set off to see the other side of the Uji river, where the Uji shrines are located. The river was carrying very high and fast flowing water. So fast, that the small sightseeing boats remained moored.

Now in November it is time for the 7-5-3 festival and a lot of families with their small kids dressed up for the occasion were visiting the two shrines. Additionally there was also a stamp rally in course, it was Saturday and the weather was nice, so Uji was really full of people. But I think most came only for Byodoin, already at the shrines there were no groups anymore. 

After a stroll back over the bridges to "my" side of the river, I started today's cycling. 

When I had planned the ride many months ago (in the revers direction), I had wanted to incorporate the famous bicycle lane between Nara and Kyoto, but as it does not go through Uji, I needed to make some detour. As always, I tried to search for small streets rather than the bigger ones that Garmin takes by default. In doing so, I saw that there were a lot of small streets in the plain around Uji to the river. I choose some of those and just hoped that they would be asphalted country lanes. I was wrong! Not about the asphalt, they were all asphalted, but about the country. Actually all the parts between Uji and the river are built up with small houses and small plants.
By the way, who ever said that a chemical plant could not be entitled to a nice Japanese tree?

And finally at km 9.4 of the ride, there it was, the entry to the mythical bicycle road along Kizugawa:

The strange thing was that over the entry to this cycle road, it was written that it did cost some usage fee... and well, it did. When coming to the end of the bridge (that was running alongside the express way), there it was the box to collect the fee also from cyclists. 10 Yen! Which I obligingly paid. 

The cycle road along this river is similar to cycles roads on Tamagawa (in Kanagawa), on the top of a dyke, for cyclists and pedestrians, well asphalted, and no interference with cars. It is also used by the same type of cyclists: racers and local people on their mamacharis. 

The bicycle path is well indicated and with the river there is really no chance to loose your way... Actually at a certain point I got over enthusiastic and continued on even after the point where I would have needed to turn to get into Nara, so had to back track a bit.

As mentioned above, today it was sunny, later cloudy and VERY WINDY! I was lucky though that mostly it was tailwind! For me... but not for the poor cyclists coming the other way who quite often had faces of pure fight against the elements. 

At some point close to Uji I had considered to take off the T-shirt and ride in short sleeves, but at a later point, already closer to Nara, I took out instead my cardigan and put it on. As the TV presenter said yesterday evening, the wind was strong and cold! 

See the bambu succumbing to the wind (and the tea plantation not being bothered)

Feeling a bit cold I arrived to the Heijo palace. 

It is all reconstructed (i.e. both buildings). An enormous area, on one side the big ceremony hall and very far (many soccer fields away), the entrance gate. Per the archaeological findings, all this space was only used for mass events. View from the ceremony hall over the courtyard to the entrance gate. Yes, there is an entrance gate, way back in this picture!

Also today it was used for a mass event, sounding some totally normal music and having a lot of stands where to eat... and I ate Yakisoba.

At a certain point I was feeling really cold with the wind and the temperature dropping so I decided to call it a day (and not venture further to the Yakushiji temple) but to come to my accommodation for the night. Luckily as soon as I was on the bike, the sun decided to come through the clouds again, heating up the air immediately.

My hotel (actually it calls itself hostel) is in the old part of Nara (Naramachi) in a very nice old house:

Before dinner I went to a traditional sento recommended here closeby... It seems that the owner likes the Alps:

Walking tonight through Naramachi, I was thinking that Nara is really a nice city, where I could perfectly imagine to live for some time. Nice old houses, but still in normal use, a lot of sentos, and well, then all the deer you could go and see (and feed) every day.

But not me this time, as tomorrow I will get out of the city to the West to see the temples I did skip because of the cold wind today. 


On a side note, how do you know that you are in Uji and how do you know you are in Nara? Easy, just look at the road work:

Uji = rabbit

Nara = deer

Bicycle touring Japan - Ride maps

For details on the bicycle tour today in Kyoto and Nara, checkout the below maps:

Day 39 - Omi Hachiman to Uji 近江八幡から宇治へ

Bicycle touring Japan - Day 39

An other perfect day on the bike, touring Japan. The highlight of today was probably the bicycle road along Lake Biwa.

Bicycle: 66.5 km
Riding time: 4:30 h 
Total ascent: 274 m

Route: Omi Hachiman to Uji

Weather: Sunny, 20 C

Today started where yesterday ended, at Chomeiji. Only that yesterday it was the place to soak, today it was a place for a temple visit. And well, in a certain sense, soak first, because in order to even get to the temple I needed to ascent 808 steps!

The temple on top however was rewarding, even with a three stories pagoda. It did not remain to be the only pagoda of the day though...

Also the temple grounds where really nice and one had a view over Lake Biwa. This temple is one of 31 (?) temples of some Kannon pilgrimage. The traditional ascent is obviously through the stairs which I did coming up. But close to the top there is now also a parking lot, so many, but not all, people come driving up. I did take advantage of this road on my way back and instead of making it down the irregular stairs, I walked down the road. Much better, specially because I really don't like stairs, specially descending stairs.

After this exercise in the morning it was already around 11:00 when I came down and really started the ride of the day.

Today was marked by a good bicycle lane on the shores of Lake Biwa and a lot of cyclists actually using it. Today was without any doubt the day I have met most cyclists ever. With one I did even ride together a few kilometers into Kyoto, but more on that later.

Lake Biwa seems to be well known by the local cyclist community for a day trip, and not few cyclists do the entire lake in a day. But then obviously without any sightseeing, which would be a pity, missing out on Hikone and the two temples I visited today.

For the entire day today, there was a bicycle lane following the lake, which was used both by recreational cyclists as well as by more ambitious ones. Only a few preferred to use the street. The bicycle lane was generally not overgrown nor invaded by vegetation, pedestrians or other obstacles. Only occasionally there was some debris left. I still kind of suspect that the typhoons recently had something to do with that.

The only minus point of this bicycle lane is that it is running not only along the lake, but also alone the street, which is rather busy with traffic. So it is not really a very romantic ride.

The ride along the shore was, with the exception of the amount of cyclists, again mainly in the contrary direction, eventless. When preparing - many months ago - for this ride, I had read somewhere that the "rainbow bridge" would make a nice view. Well, judge for yourselves:

I was not too impressed and continued on along the shore. Today, being a local holiday, the lake shores where full of cyclists (on the bicycle lane), families picnicking in small parks and men fishing. I say "men fishing", because so far in Japan, I think I have never seen a single women fishing. And definitely none today. Fishing is incredibly popular in Japan, at least among men, and not only elderly men, but young men, boys, fathers with their sons... Also among the cyclists it was mainly men, probably around 80 %. I started to wonder where all the Japanese women are on a nice day. Shopping? Cooking? Hiking? Definitely not fishing. The only women I saw involved in a fishing-related activity was a mother taking pictures of her small son who had just caught a small fish.

In the lake there are fish, but on the lake at a certain point there were really a lot of ducks (?):

All these black-white spots on the lake in the pictures above are birds:

Closer to Otsu, I came by the "Mu Utopia Project". A very nice building (of which I didn't take a good picture), for one of those strange new Japanese religions. It seemed that its followers did believe in donating money, at least that's the only explanation I have why they could afford such an enormous, good looking building. On the parking lot there were buses and buses.

I somehow had decided that I wanted to have lunch only at Otsu. But Otsu is actually quite far away from Omi Hachiman (  km)... so when I finally came into Otsu I was quite hungry and also quite tired, so I took the first chance for something to eat, which was a 7/11 and a park on the lake shore. Only after I had already bought my lunch, I spotted this "Würzburg Haus":

Note the claim on the dedicatory note of "Würzburg im Freistaat Bayern der Bundesrepublik Deutschland"! (Würzburg in the freestate of Bavaria of the Federal Republic of Germany):

After a rest on the lake, I continued to my touristic goal #2 of the day, Miidera. When I arrived there it was shortly before 15:00, I was tired - not withstanding the rest - and still had to go 17 km to Uji. But I still decided to have a quick visit of the temple. And here it was, pagoda #2 of the day:

I made it a short visit (30 min only) and then headed off in direction Kyoto over the mountains. I had somehow feared that the road from Shiga to Kyoto would be quite busy with traffic, but as a matter of fact it was a very, very quiet mountain road. There is obviously an other road running not too far from this one, which instead must be very busy.

I mainly pushed my bicycle up hill. But the ascent isn't too long, so it was not too long of a push. And if you look at Strava, I was still within the first 628 people to finish this ascent ;-)

Kyoto then greeted me with sun and some autumn colours. But frankly even now it is still too early where I am for real autumn colours.

At the end of this hill I met a much more professional cyclist, from Romania, he waited for me and we then did ride together into Kyoto. He lives in Kyoto and did a total of 2000 m (!!!) ascent today riding into some mountains around Lake Biwa. While I did just complete Day 39 ;-) of my bicycle tour through Japan. We road together a good part into Kyoto and must have made a very strange couple: the semi-professional looking cyclist on his racing bike, with the slightly overweight bicycle tourist on a brompton and with a big luggage bag behind. At some point he needed to turn to get home in the direction of Kyoto station and I continued my path into Uji. This involved a ride along one of the typical Japanese river bicycle lanes.

I arrived to Uji right for the sunset over a bridge in Uji:

Well, okay not "THE" bridge of Uji, but still a bridge in Uji.

My ryokan of tonight is located in the centre-most part of the centre of Uji, right at the entry to one of the traditional bridges over the river and at a few meters from Byodoin temple.

But more exploration in Uji tomorrow.

Today ended in a good Japanese restaurant/izakaya in an otherwise very dead nightly Uji.

Bicycle touring Japan - Ride maps

For details on the bicycle tour today in Shiga and Kyoto, checkout the below maps:

Day 38 - Tokyo to Maibara and on to Omi Hachiman 東京から米原経由で近江八幡へ

Bicycle touring Japan - Day 38

Back on the road again for my final 3 weeks touring Japan by bicycle. This time alone the shore of Lake Biwa to Hikone visiting the castle there. 

Bicycle: 52 km
Train: 420 km
Riding time:3:40 h 
Total ascent: 108 m

Route: Tokyo to Maibara by train, Maibara to Omi Hachiman by bicycle

Weather: Sunny, 16 C


Back on the bike after a few days in Tokyo, for the third and final leg of this bicycle tour through Japan!

The day started early. Very early, in order to catch a 7:40 shinkansen from Shinagawa station to Maibara. I must have come through Maibara already a lot of times, going by shinkansen to Osaka, but never got off the train anywhere close. A short ride from the station, there it is, Lake Biwa! The biggest lake in Japan and today with a little bit of mist over it under the blue sky also a very nice lake.

Along the shore is a bicycle path, which however in some (but not all parts) was covered in debris. Not sure if this is due to one of the two recent typhoons. 

Maybe yes, as further down the road there was an entire row of sakura (cherry) trees uprooted.

I have been mainly riding on the bicycle path (where it was technically possible), as the road on the lake is quite busy. And on the bike path one is the closest to the lake. 

After a few kilometers, I came to Hikone castle, the highlight of today. 

With 11 others, it is one of the 12 surviving original castles in Japan. However before visiting the castle, I actually went to the garden, as that was the part I encountered first on my ride. With a view of the castle in the distance. 

Both ticket sellers (at garden and castle), seeing me arrive with my bicycle stressed that I should take the luggage with me and not leave it on the bicycle. Well... I only brought the valuables with me. But when I came back to the bike, there had been thieves! Completely in black. I still saw them, but their escape was too quick. I even managed to take a picture, but figured that going to the local policy station would not be very helpful. Who'd ever believe that someone black could be a thief? They even left traces of the robbery behind: the wrap of at least 3 Okinawa cookies I had brought with me from Tokyo!
Here the picture of the suspects:

Actually I took this picture much later, in a different location. So these two here are probably completely innocent. Their only fault is to be black and look similar to the cookie thieves, at least for someone who is not a crow expert.

Unperturbed by this theft, I continued on my visit to the castle, which sits very scenically on top of a hill in the flat lands around Lake Biwa. 

Seeing all these small roofs, one starts to understand why Japanese houses nearly always have a total overkill of roofs:

Today must also have been a day prone for school excursions. The entire inner grounds of the castle were occupied by school children between 6 and 16 having their picnic. 

I also went inside the castle up the very steep chairs to the very top. But no pictures from inside...

After this relaxed visit I went to the nearby center of Hikone and had lunch. The one street leading away from the castle has been (re)constructed as an old street.

And then back to the shores of the lake and on with my ride. As it seemed that I would have very comfortably time, I took a long break on this quiet bench.

Soon after I turned inland through the fields with view on the distant mountains on the opposite shore.

Very shortly before arriving to this huge water wheel (decorative purpose only) ...

... at km 27 I encountered a nice bicycling path which I took until km 34. It did continue (but I don't know in which direction). It was a very nicely built up bicycle path, separated from the street and mostly clean. (read: there were only a few stretches with too much vegetation - alive or otherwise - on the path).

The odd thing with this bicycle path however was that - at least the part I took - is completely useless. It just runs in parallel to a normal street which is a totally quiet street with hardly any traffic. Why would I need a bicycle lane on such a road?

After a very quick visit to the ruins of Azuchi castle (I only looked at them from close to the parking lot), I continued to town - Omi Hachiman. Surprisingly one can really call it "town". So far all the villages I had passed today, even Maibara seemed relatively small villages, but riding into Omi Hachiman I was greeted by the typical ugly outskirts full of big shops, gasoline stations, pachinko parlors... and close to the station my simple hotel for tonight. 

I had looked during the day, if there is an onsen closeby, but couldn't find anything on google maps or ゆーゆ my onsen app, but I saw close to the hotel a bus going to an onsen... so I checked again, and well, there is was, down at the lake a newly constructed onsen. What was strange about it, although it is on the shores of Lake Biwa it has no view of the lake. What a pity. But well, I got warmed up and relaxed. Even spent a bit of time in a radon onsen. 

Bicycle touring Japan - Ride maps

Here the Garmin and Strava maps of the touring done today in Shiga prefecture.