Day 55 - Dazaifu to Fukuoka 大宰府から福岡へ

Bicycle touring Japan - Day 55

Today a relatively leisurely day with a short ride into central Fukuoka after a nice visit to a very nice zen garden and some Sumo in television in preparation for tomorrow. 

Bicycle: 20 km 
Riding time: 1:40 h
Total ascent:  38 m 

Route: Dazaifu to Fukuoka

Weather: Sunny, but very windy again, 8 C


The morning I spent very leisurely in the onsen of my hotel, alternating between the 3 rotenburos. While during the night it must have rained, by the time I was sufficiently washed the sun had come through. I didn't have a lot of touristic plan for today, as I was in Dazaifu early this year and had already seen all the major sights. But I remembered a very nice zen garden in a temple close to the main shrine, so I visited both. 

At the shrine there were again a lot of families with their 3, 5 or 7 year old kids. I think there were actually no 7 year olds, as today was a school day and most kids looked smaller. 

To the shrine leads a pair of very typical bridges:

After a quick visit to the street leading up to the shrine, full of omiyage shops, I continued on to the zen temple. 

One can sit on this "balcony" and gaze into the garden. Very relaxing.

This is how it looked back in May:

And here the same spot 6 months later:

I was also lucky that when I was there not many other tourists were visiting. But exactly when I left an enormous group (well, one bus load) of elderly Japanese entered.

With that I left Dazaifu behind me and road again very leisurely into Fukuoka. Part of my way was on the approach path to Fukuoka airport.

While I was riding on one of the typical Japanese bicycle lanes along a river.

This brought me to my final accommodation on this nearly 2 months trip through Japan, a Toyoko-Inn in central Fukuoka that I had reserved already 2 months ago, when I bought my sumo ticket. Tomorrow I will go to see the real thing, today I just watched it in TV, and saw Hakuho continuing his straight line of 8 wins in a row during this tournament as well as one match that needed to be repeated as the judges could not decide who was pushed outside of the ring first.

Bicycle touring Japan - Ride maps

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

Day 54 - Saga to Dazaifu 佐賀から大宰府へ

Bicycle touring Japan - Day 54

Today an other cold day through the plain between Saga and a little uphill to Dazaifu, where I visited the interesting Kyushu National Museum before soaking in my onsen of the night. 

Bicycle: 55 km 
Riding time: 3:50 h
Total ascent: 294 m 

Route: Saga to Dazaifu

Weather: Cloudy, a few drops of rain and later a bit of sun, strong wind, cold! 6 C


It was cold and windy today! Really cold! Probably it didn't help that I had decided to ride just with a skirt (not stockings), but closed shoes and cardigan. Probably the jeans would have been more comfortable for riding. 

Apart the cold there isn't a lot to say about the ride today. Here two pictures of the landscape, which again was the typical Japanese mix of fields, houses in all states of repair and disrepair, less industry than yesterday, train lines, including the Kyushu shinkansen and streets crossing it. And me on one of them... Partially I found smaller roads, but specially when they were through open fields, the wind was even stronger and colder, so where possible I reverted back to ride through built-up area.

Shortly before Dazaifu I found a curry restaurant, I had driven by a lot of other restaurants, but somehow had decided that I absolutely wanted to warm up with some curry. 

And then on to the one and only sightseeing spot of today, the Kyushu National Museum. An interesting building that I had seen earlier this year, when we were in Kyushu for Golden Week, but then I didn't have time to visit the inside. Originally I had hoped to visit it tomorrow... but tomorrow being Monday, it will be closed, and actually there was enough time today in the afternoon.

There was a very interesting exhibition about the Momoyama period. The time when the first Christian missionaries arrived to Japan and also other influences from overseas were present and Japan traded with other Asian countries. Before at the end of this era Japan was hermetically closed for all foreign contacts for the next 220 years. 

But during these few years when Christian missionaries first arrived to Japan and when Japan was finally closed off to the world, there was an active cultural exchange. In the exhibition was for example a folding screen with European city views, including Sevilla and Lisbon, or a wooden statue of Erasmus that had been conserved in a Buddhist temple. Also a embroidery with the virgin Mary that probably was produced in China was preserved in an other Buddhist temple. And through laboratories in Macao the Japanese folding screen became popular also in Europe. 

Apart from these intercultural objects, there were also a lot of tea ceremony objects that most of the visitors admired profusely. I have to admit that to me many of them look like first attempts at pottery in an evening class, but judge for yourself here. 

I also visited briefly the permanent exhibition of the museum that started with the Yayoi and finished around the Momoyama period. But only quickly as the museum was closing. So I rode over to my hotel on the hill opposite of the museum, here you can see the museum's roof from a distance as it integrates into the hill:

My hotel doubles as a day onsen. Before dinner I had a nice and relaxing bath, and I plan to have an other one tomorrow morning. Actually for tomorrow so far not a lot of plans, as I was in Dazaifu earlier this year and have seen already all major sights. But I guess I will to to the zen temple again and probably also the shrine. In Fukuoka itself there actually does not seem to be so many interesting things, so probably I will spend the morning soaking then off to Dazaifu "downtown" and then a short ride into Fukuoka. 

Tonight will be the last night in a Japanese room during my trip, as the next two nights are in a Toyoko-Inn in Fukuoka. 

Not one of the nicest Japanese rooms, but nice. Generally I have preferred the Japanese rooms over the Western ones, as with the same m2 they seem spacier as the bed does not take up so much space and during day time the futon just gets folded up and packed away.

Bicycle touring Japan - Ride maps

For details on the bicycle tour today in Fukuoka and Saga, checkout the below maps:

Day 53 - Yanagawa to Saga 柳川から佐賀へ

Bicycle touring Japan - Day 53

Today was the first cold day on my cycling trip through Japan, and that in Kyushu! But not too cold to visit the village of Asterix, ups sorry, of the Yayoi culture.

Bicycle: 42 km 
Riding time: 3:00  h
Total ascent: 62 m 

Route: Yanagawa through Yoshinogari to Saga

Weather: Very cloudy, later a little bit of sun and a few drops of rain, windy, 12 C


I started the day in the onsen of my hotel and I ended it in an other onsen close to my new hotel in Saga. I had a hard time yesterday to find an accommodation, but finally the one I did fine, in Saga, close to the station, is very good. A big hotel, quite elegant and not very far from an onsen (well, more like a super-sento). So all is fine.

Between these two soaks, I had a small roundtrip - by bicycle only - through Yanagawa and then a ride up by bicycle to Yoshinogari, where there are remains of the Yayoi culture and a recreated village has been constructed. 

Yanagawa is famous for its nice channels and the boat rides on them. Well, I did not do the boat ride, essentially because doing it alone seemed a bit strange. So I just took some pictures of other people doing it:

As today was the first quite cold day on my trip through Japan, I did use my long trousers and did start my ride with a cardigan on. If you wonder, where the long trousers have come from, I added them to my luggage during my brief stop in Tokyo earlier this week. After a while of riding North against a fierce head wind, I did take of the cardigan though and continued in short sleeves. Still wondering if the jeans were the right garment for riding. They were perfect though for the touristic part of today.

The ride up North was through a typical and not very nice Japanese landscape. Well, not really LANDscape, but more like a VILLAGEscape. There was everything mixed, fields, plants, houses, abandoned houses, old houses, new ones, derelict ones, shopping centers, convenience stores... Everything mixed and in between rice fields. It didn't help that the wind was blowing strongly and not in my direction...

But finally I did arrive to the Yoshinogari Historical park, where important Yayoi excavations have been done, but more importantly from a touristic perspective, an entire village including residences for the ruling class and temples have been reconstructed. 

It reminded me a lot of the village of Asterix. Probably these wild boar at the entrance to the village did help create this impression: 

And well, the wooden wall around the village:

Also the houses really looked very Asterix-like. One could enter into most of them, where small every day scenes of the rich and powerful of the Yayoi culture were depicted.

This was the most important temple/shrine of the village. About 16 m high with two big rooms for ceremonies.

There is also a small museum with the typical clay rests and spear points that one can see in all these kind of museums (obviously a Yayoi culture fan - or any other pre-historic culture fan will say that the tools used by the Yayoi compared to everyone else are very different... but to me they looked like the typical stone tools to cut meat, spears to hunt etc.

Further inside the park there is also a museum with the excavated remains of a burial ground. At least the rich got buried in large vases, closed by an other vase. These burials were quite large, a sitting corpse really only occupied half of it. 

These two here are Majestix (= Vitalstatistix) and Gutemine (= Impedimenta):

Bicycle touring Japan - Ride maps

For details on the bicycle tour today in Fukuoka and Saga, checkout the below maps:

Day 52 - From Kagoshima to Yanagawa 鹿児島から柳川へ

Bicycle touring Japan - Day 52

Today was mainly a day on the move up North from Kagoshima, but I managed to squeeze in one sightseeing spot: Kagoshima Aquarium!

Bicycle: 13.5 km 
Train: 250 km
Riding time: 1 h
Total ascent: 31 m 

Route: In Kagoshima by bicycle, Kagoshima to Chikugo-Funagoya by shinkansen, and then on to Yanagawa by bicycle again

Weather: Very cloudy, a few drops of rain in Kagoshima, cold 9 C


Today rain was forecast, so I decided to use the day to move up North to my final stretch of cycling. Tomorrow and Sunday weather should again be reasonable fine (although right now not so sure about tomorrow...)

As the move up North was not going to take so long (by train), I decided to go to the Kagoshima Aquarium in the morning. It had a dolphin show both inside and outside in a channel that is part of the port.

Plus tanks full of fish and other sea creatures.

I never really liked aquariums, as I don't like fish so much (the looks of them, nor am I really a big fan of fish on my plate either). And I always get a bit sick in aquariums. I think it is not really only the fish, but something to do with water behind glass that breaks the light differently. In some way, looking at fish in aquarium (but also in the sea itself) is not something I enjoy. So well, I still went, as it is one sightseeing spot in Kagoshima and aquariums in Japan are very popular anyway.

When I left the aquarium it had started to rain very slightly, but not too strong, so I decided to ride to Kagoshima shinkansen station. Luckily a part of the way through the city center was roofed (well, only for pedestrians... but we are in Japan and cyclists commonly use the pedestrian walkway as well... so I did).

I took the shinkansen up North and as the weather forecast further North looked like no rain, just clouds, I decided to ride shinkansen up to Chikugo-Funagoya, a small village north of Kumamoto, and then ride the last kilometers to my hotel by bike, as coming here by train would have meant a lot of train changes.

I was lucky that the weather forecast and the actual weather were the same, so I could ride through the countryside on quiet roads, partially along the famous channels, towards Yanagawa.

When I decided yesterday where to go next, I wanted a place with an onsen, and in Jalan that is quite easy to search for. There is even a setting to search for a onsen with rotenburo. I had different options about places where to go, more traditional onsen towns, like Ureshino or Takeo, but specially Ureshino is hard to reach by public transport, so I decided for Yanagawa, which is not a place known for its onsen (we are in Kyushu, so there are onsen here as well), but known for its nice channels. When I reserved my hotel, I had probably not expected to be in this kind of location:

The next building to the hotel is a cement plant... But the area is popular, at least with the local crow population who gathered for an evening meeting on the power lines. They clearly had a preference for the higher lines. Not a single crow on the slightly lower hanging cables.

At the 7/11 at the corner, I got breakfast for tomorrow and my sumo ticket I had reserved in early October for next week.

As I had not originally planned to visit Yanagawa at all, I had a look today at the map what to do from here, and where to go, and decided on Yoshinogari. It turned out to be very challenging to find an accommodation for tomorrow night, on Jalan and Booking.com no hotels available even in the wider area (+/- 20 km from Yoshinogari), or at least not at acceptable prices, because 35,000 Yen for one night is not something I am prepared to pay for a pretty normal hotel. Finally I got lucky on Rakuten, and found a room in central Saga. With that experience I decided to also reserve the night of November 19th, in Dazaifu, which in turn was not complicated at all. Who knows what is going to happen tomorrow. Maybe it is simply because it is Saturday???

With this all my accommodations for the cycle ride through Japan are booked, as the last 2 days in Fukuoka I had already reserved when I got my Sumo ticket weeks ago.

After a curry dinner at a local family restaurant I took a relaxing bath in the hotel onsen, which is well frequented by local people and has two pools inside plus a small outdoor area with a relatively large rotenburo, that is even half covered by a roof, useful in case of  rain.

Bicycle touring Japan - Ride maps

For details on the bicycle tour today in Kagoshima and Fukuoka, checkout the below maps:

Day 51 - Sakurajima roundtrip 桜島巡り

Bicycle touring Japan - Day 51

This post describes the cycle touring on Sakurajima, an island with the most active volcano in Japan. 

Bicycle: 42 km
Ferry: 8 km
Riding time: 3:00 h
Total ascent: 456 m 

Route: One complete round of Sakurajima

Weather: Overcast, later a bit of sun and clouds, 13 C

After seeing Sakurajima yesterday (Day 50) from the coast, today I took the ferry over to the island and circled it completely by bicycle. On the ferry I had a front row seat: 

I had decided to do the South coast first, because there is more up and down, so that I could do the more tiring part in the morning. The first stop was on top of an old island, that was completely covered by a large eruption in 1914 and now has become part of Sakurajima. There biologists observe how the nature slowly but steadily grows and makes the lava fields their home. In only 100 years it has gone from hot lava to these pine trees:

Further along the road, at about 1/3 of today's ride was an other view point of lava, vegetation, volcano and smoke from the ongoing eruptions. With the overcast sky it was however difficult to see and even more difficult to catch on a picture. 

Sakurajima was an island until 29th of January 1914, when the lava connected it to the Osumi peninsula, which is opposite of Kagoshima. But I stayed on Sakurajima turning left and continuing on my round trip. After a while I arrived at the nearly completely submerged torii of a local shrine that was buried more than 2 meters deep in debris from the 1914 eruption and was left like this to remind future generations of the volcano.

Everywhere across the island are also these shelters, where one can hide in the case of an eruption accompanied by volcanic debris flying around. 

Today that wasn't needed, but the volcano is in constant eruption since more than 60 years, some years have seen more than 500 eruptions. This year we were at about 70 so far. And volcanic ashes are being expelled frequently, as I could witness on the Northern half of the island (well, no longer island, but calling Sakurajima peninsula also somehow feels incorrect).

See the red bricks on the side walk?

I washed a small part of this leave, just to see the difference in colour

And no, this is not a volcanic explosion in the middle of the street, but volcanic ashes.

Thus I returned to the port of Sakurajima, but close to it is an onsen, Magma onsen, where I washed away all the ashes and fatigue of the day before returning with a ferry to Kagoshima. 

Tomorrow weather forecast has rain in the prediction, so I am moving by train, further up North to Yanagawa. 

Bicycle touring Japan - Ride maps

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

Day 50 - Tokyo to Kagoshima 東京から鹿児島へ

Bicycle touring Japan - Day 50

Day 50!!! And today from Kagoshima airport to Kagoshima city, the last week of my bicycle tour has started in the very South of Kyushu.

Bicycle: 37  km
Plane: 960 km 
Taxi: 30 km
Riding time: 2:15 h
Total ascent: 100 m 

Route: Tokyo to Kagoshima airport by plane, on by bicycle to Kagoshima city.

Weather: Sunny and a few clouds, 16 C

After less than 24 h in Tokyo I am back on the road on my final week of cycle touring through  Japan. On to the Southern tip of Kyushu, Kagoshima.

When I decided yesterday where and when to restart my cycle tour (after a brief stay in Tokyo to meet a relocation company) I decided to re-start in Kagoshima immediately, as today and tomorrow weather forecast is still good, but forecasting rain for the weekend. When I reserved the flight for Kagoshima I did not realize that the airport isn't really close to the city. But all the better, thus I perfectly knew where to cycle today. And then tomorrow the entire day to explore Sakurajima.

During my 21 h in Tokyo I loaded up on fruits, cereals and very tasty French cheese. So I am ready for more Washoku. While in Tokyo I not only met the relocation company, but even had time to de-register my residence. So ever more ready to move to the Netherlands at the end of this cycle tour. Probably cycle touring is the best introduction possible to the Netherlands...

Here my poor brompton taking its second flight in a few hours. It will need to get used to it, as more flights next week (back from Fukuoka to Tokyo) and the following week (from Tokyo to Amsterdam). So far it is not complaining. 

Here a view of the mountains in Southern Kyushu ...

... and one of many photos I took of Sakurajima:

I arrived around 12:00 and about half an hour later set off on my ride into Kagoshima. Close to the airport there were some very accurate cut tea plantations:

The airport itself is on a high plateau, so the first 9 km were spent rolling down hill and a bit of breaking. But not too bad. At one point a saw a sign for an onsen at a waterfall, and as it was only 1 km, decided to have a look. But it was just a normal onsen building close to a waterfall. A nice waterfall though:

No bathing in the pool of the waterfall.

When I had planned the ride for Garmin today in the morning while waiting for my airplane, there seemed two possibilities how to ride into the city one over some mountains and one down at the coast. I decided for the coast thinking that the view would be nice. It was nice, BUT there was also a lot of traffic on the one and only road. So from about km 19 to 31 the ride was not terribly enjoyable.

I tried to ride on the pedestrian walkway, but often it had too much vegetation to be safe to ride, so back to the street...

When I planned the ride on Garmin connect, it had a total ascent of nearly 400 m (see here KYU99), but there were again, as in some previous rides some mysterious very steep hills, that on the ground did not exist at all. In the ride tomorrow on Sakurajima there is the same problem. Looking at the map with elevation profile, there are no such steep mountains, but in the Garmin elevation profile there are... Very inconvenient.

When that stretch ended, there was a big parking lot and a lot of people walking around. I wanted a stop anyway (actually for lunch), so I decided to stop there. It was a place with surprisingly many people and even tourist buses aplenty. So I had a better look, and discovered that I had just "run" into an UNESCO world heritage site and a famous Japanese garden: Senganen Garden.

So I decided to skip lunch and be a tourist. The garden itself is not among the best in Japan, but one has to admit that the local daimyo found a good way how to incorporate the obligatory "small pond" and "hill" into his garden:

I had taken a full access ticket, that also included a guided tour of the main building and a matcha, which came with a special sweet, that if I understood correctly among others contained shitake (a mushroom) and yuzu (a citric).

In the garden, as in so many others there was an exhibition of flowers. I normally always walk by these flowers just looking at them from far, but here there were detailed descriptions of what was the specific beauty of these flowers:

I think it is hard to guess, but these flowers here are admired for being a set of 6 pots (each pot has 3 flowers), with 6 varieties of chrysanthemum with at least 3 colours, where the front flowers must be shorter and taller flowers to the rear. Also the colour arrangement is decided BEFORE growing the flowers, so while they are growing height control is important (which apparently is achieved by some grow controller). And I always thought that these were simply flowers.

There were different displays. From 1 pot (always with 3 flowers) at maximum 40 cm height to arrangement of 12 different pots, all arranged per height both within the same pot and across the row of pots. And then there was this unruly flower explosion in the form of two daimyos:

The garden is part of UNESCO world heritage as part of the Meiji Industrialization heritage sites, because it belonged to the Shimadzu clan, a very powerful and apparently forward looking Daimyo who controlled the South of Kyushu and Okinawa. Through Okinawa even during the Japanese isolation centuries they were trading with foreign countries and acquired Western weapons and technology. Once Western countries were lurking ever closer to Japan, the daimyo decided that it was time to produce similar weapons and that he needed large industrial plants for that. So a number of plants were built, this building here being the oldest survivor or a industry plant in Japan:

In this building is a nice and partially English explained exhibition about the Shimadzu clan and the Shuseikan project, an industrialization project at the end of Edo and beginning of Meiji period, initially started in order to produce weapons to potentially withstand Western powers. But then also developped glass and porcelain manufacturing among many other technologies, including learning how to built steam machines.

There was also an interesting description of trade in the period of Japan's closure to all external contacts. Per the museum some trade still continued, by pirates, who as you could not BUY something in foreign countries, raided the coasts for goods to sell. Not sure if one could order a specific item from them...

It was getting colder, so I put on my cardigan and the fleece jacket for the final ride into town. During the ride I also passed close to this monument for the arrival of Francisco Javier in Japan: 

And thus I arrived to my hotel, which is in a very lively place of downtown Kagoshima, but my room is probably quiet and I had a good dinner of Satsuma cuisine in a restaurant suggested by the hotel. 

Bicycle touring Japan - Ride maps

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

Part 10 (Day 48 & 49) - Riding the Shimanami Kaido over the Seto Inland Sea しまなみ海道 - Summary

Bicycle touring Japan - Riding the Shimanami Kaido - Part 10

In this post I review my experience in riding the Shimanami Kaido, one of the best cycling courses in Japan, over 6 bridges connecting Honshu with Shikoku over the Seto Inland Sea, using small islands as bridge bases. 

Bicycle: 109  km

Other transport: 136 km

Region: Shimanami Kaido from Onomichi all the way to Imabari

Total riding time: 7:15 h

Total ascent: 786 m 

Finally the famous Shimanami Kaido ride! This is definitely a unique cycling road in Japan. Probably in other countries (e.g. central Europe) similarly well indicated cycling roads do exist, but in Japan this is quite unique. And not only that it is well indicated and riding through a nice landscape, the Seto Inland Sea, but the planners of this ride have considered cyclists when building the express way bridges linking Honshu to Shikoku. Each of the 6 bridges (i.e. exluding the first 7th brigde) have a special cycle lane, which is even separated from an other special small motorcycle lane. Also the access to these bridges were built with the cyclist in mind. Perfect ramps up (and down), with an ascent of about 3% but also always in between short stretches of less ascent to catch your breath. Specially the entry to the last bridge was spectacular, with a looping ramp high over the sea. 

Here an approximate map of the ride as Google shows it, the actual rides are, as always in the day-to-day descriptions:

The actual routes I took are in the Strava or Garmin feed of each day:

Day 48 - Onomichi to Omijima

Day 49 - Omijima to Imabari

And here an overview of the costs. 

I would say that this ride was very similar to what I had originally planned. However to ride this, actually no planning of the route is required. There are good signs everywhere and a blue line on the asphalt leads you through the course. I started on a Sunday with good weather and it was definitely a very popular ride with hundreds of cyclists. And all kind of cyclists enjoying this ride. Families, sport cyclists, middle aged ladies on mamacharis, foreigners, young Japanese couples, bigger groups and solo travelers, including a few other cycle tourists. But on Sunday mostly day trippers. On Monday this changed, much less cyclists, still more than in any other place in Japan on a normal week day. 

The main attraction of the Shimanami Kaido is the ride itself with its bridges and the view over the sea and the many small islands. The islands themselves are surprisingly hilly, but not so much the cycle road, as it is mainly on the coast where relatively flat streets have been built. But if you are into cycling up hill, there are definitely opportunities on these islands as well. In Ehime prefecture I had the impression that the cycle road became even better with special cycle roads even on the islands, not only on & towards the bridges. Specially the first half of Omijima had a nice cycle lane. 

Now at mid November it was time for the clementine harvest and it was very nice to see all these trees with the bright orange fruits. Somewhat these islands reminded me of the Mediterranean sea. And islands are simply the ideal place to relax. Apart from the islands themselves, the only somewhat touristically interesting spot is the Kosanji temple. It is not a classical temple, but more like a "best-off" interpretation of Buddhist temples. It could also be in Japan theme park somewhere in the US. It even had a Japanese castle. And the strange marble garden on top of the hill mainly convened the idea of money to spend. But after having seen a lot of normal, i.e. traditional, Japanese temples something different is also an attraction. 

Obviously to the overall enjoyment of the ride contributed the perfect weather. Sunny plus a few clouds. During the day it was still okay to ride in T-shirt, skirt and sandals. In the evening on Omijima however it got very cold! But the onsen was closeby and heated me up reliably. Timing for this ride was also perfect, as on the next day after finalizing the trip in Matsuyama it started to rain. 

Regarding gear, although it is already mid November, my relatively light dresses are still okay. 

What was annoying that with Garmin it is not possible to plan the entire Shimanami Kaido as one route. Garmin always thinks that bicycles are not allowed on the express way, which is true, and thus does not offer the possibility to use the bridges. It is very disappointing that such a well made and well known cycle lane is completely unknown to the Garmin planning algorithm.