This blog is about travelling through Japan on a bicycle. Initially on a foldable bicycle (Brompton) and more recently mostly by road bike (Spezialized)... but also by train, ferry, plane, bus or any other transport, if sea, weather, mountains or the like come between me and my desire to ride.
I have tried to summarise information that could be potentially helpful also for other bicycle travellers through Japan, such as list of bicycle roads, helpful web pages etc.
To celebrate the end of the work week and seeing that many (albeit not all) onsen in Osaka are still open, I decided to try out a new one, over in Amagasaki, Hyogo prefecture. Well, new for me... not the super-sento itself, which was actually a little bit old style or so it seemed. It didn't help that due to Covid-19 the restaurant was closed and that they don't offer free shampoo and soap, which however I bought at the reception. The bath is fine, with 3 different outdoor pools. Nothing terribly special. For the purists, probably the TV that one could see (and hear) from all pools could be quite an annoyance.
The ride itself was slightly creepy, along the river on a nice cycling path, but in the dark and it is simply a very industrial area of Osaka. Also there are not many exits from the cycling path, but luckily there was one just shortly after the bridge I needed to cross.
Still even for the ride back, I preferred the river, as the street that runs parallel is quite narrow and does have its traffic. Not a lot, but if you can choose between no traffic on a cycling path or some traffic on a narrow road, I go for the slightly creepy ride along the river as long as we are talking Japan.
Tonight while walking back from work and crossing Shin-Osaka station I came by this poster made by JR explaining how to bring your bicycle on a train, and clearly the brompton fold did sit model for it:
Weather: Sunny, warm but not too hot, up to Kyoto very nice tailwind, 12 C
After the touristy highlights yesterday in Kyoto for today I decided to ride all the way up to Nara. Not over the mountains, which is much shorter though, but along Yodogawa and Kizugawa.
Today's highlight, I would say was the view from Nigatsudo, the temple in Nara I like most... and there is no shortage of temples.
The initial part along Yodogawa was the normal ride along that river. Not very scenic. It's just a useful river. For BBQ, baseball, rugby, football, picnics, cycling, jogging, bird watching... and fishing! (Not actually in the river but in some artificial ponds)
Today the wind had changed and was blowing from the side/front all the way up the river until I changed my direction by turning on the Kizugawa, when it turned into a very nice tailwind.
Along Kizugawa I passed again the place with the Nagarebashi (submersible bridge) where I turned back last Sunday). I had no expectations that it would be open today, but actually it was.
So I took the opportunity to cross it - by foot - and continued on the other side of the river.
There were many nice Hanami spots along the Kizugawa and also generally the landscape and the cycling lane is much better. Landscape, because there are simply less buildings around. Cycling lame, although it is much more narrow, it doesn't come with the continuous obstacles as along Yodogawa.
The bicycle lane, which on the other side connects also Arashiyama in Kyoto finishes a bit abruptly in a region where there is no really obvious connection into Nara, and I had left my komoot planned route to follow it a little bit longer, which maybe wasn't the most clever thing to do... but still I did not get lost (difficult in times of google maps and GPS) and even stumbled across some nice flowers that were NOT sakura:
I approached Nara from "behind" and first came to the park behind Todaiji, which seems to be used by the deer for rest from the tourists. At least that was my impression a few years back. However now with tourist numbers dwindling apparently the deer have decided to go and investigate what happened to all their senbei feeders and were roaming the streets of downtown Nara. Not that I can attest to that. The deer I saw seemed to be the typical deer of Nara. Half of them on-duty in front of Todaiji hunting down tourists to make them buy senbei and the other half waiting for their turn in the park and woods. And all of them rather photogenic.
After taking a few shots at the deer behind Todaiji, I cycled up the hill to Nigatsudo, a temple overlooking all Nara, and even during normal, touristy times, rather calm. Today even calmer, but it was also already 17:00 when I arrived there.
These ema will need to be redone for next year. No Olympics in the year of the rat:
I cycled down again with the idea to take a picture or two around Todaiji and then in the park and then to ride to my onsen of the day. But when I arrived at Todaiji, it seemed to be still open. So I asked, and yes, it was open just for another 10 min. In normal times I would not have rushed inside, I have visited Todaiji already at least twice, but with the sakura in full bloom in the inner courtyard, I did not let this opportunity pass, so rushed in and had the Todaiji nearly to myself (only one Japanese couple rushed inside with me).
Obviously I was here very late in the day, so probably even on a normal day there would not have been that many tourists around any more, but getting such a clean shot of the entrance of Todaiji (only with a small brompton in front of the gate), is unique. I remember from a few years back, when I came to Nara for a weekend, I went to Todaiji first thing in the morning and had a good time visiting it. Some tourists, but just a normal amount of tourist, no bus groups yet. Then I went up to Nigatsudo, which even then - it must have been 2016 or 2017, did not have too many tourists. When I came back to Todaiji around noon time (to pick up my mamachari that I had parked there), the place was teeming with bus loads of camera-armed tourists. Good for the deer (probably), not so good for me, the solitary tourist. But I had seen Todaiji by then already... So today again a very solitary visit.
By now it was getting colder (the sunset was approaching and in total it was colder today than yesterday), so I rushed to the park and then to a sprawling shrine complex, where I caught the last sun rays.
From there onwards, I didn't have any other expectations than getting my well deserved hot bath in the onsen... but the path I had chosen, along a small river proved me wrong. It was one of the main hanami spots in Nara.
After the onsen, I cycled to the closest train station and took a train back to Osaka, to a place about 7 km from where my apartment is, in a very convenient small station. No long trekking with the folded bike through stations (like it would have been for sure had I got of at Namba), but just out of the turnstiles, unfold and ride. The train was very empty, again thanks to Covid-19, so social distancing was very easy. I had the entire carriage for me (and my brompton, but I am pretty sure bicycles cannot catch the virus).
Weather: Sunny, warm but not too hot, up to Kyoto very nice tailwind, 18 C
Very hard to pick the picture of today. Was it Kiyomizudera, just reopened a few weeks ago after extensive restoration in time for the 2020 Olympics? Or was it the torii tunnel at Fushimi Inari Shrine void of tourist masses one of the places that left a most lasting impression on me when I first visited 25 years ago? Or was it my second ever 100 km ride?
Today's ride was courtesy of Covid-19, which cancelled a 2 day ride I had signed up earlier this week on Naoshima with a local Osaka group of cyclists and which made that two of the most popular sightseeing spots in Kyoto, Kiyomizudera and Fushimi Inari were very pleasant without too many tourists. Japan is in a special situation, it banned Chinese tourists very early on, then tourists from other countries were afraid of catching Covid-19 in Japan and started to cancel their trips probably from around mid Feb, early March and at end of March Japan imposed a travel ban on practically all Europeans, Americans, Chinese, Korean... So essentially there are no foreign tourists in Japan. Plus many Japanese, but by far not all, have obeyed and stayed away from too crowded areas, which means, that normally crowded areas aren't crowded at all, and I would say social distancing (about 2 m apart) is doable practically everywhere most of the time.
So I used all this to ride up to Kyoto. The first part of the ride was a rather uneventful ride up the Yodogawa river, today on the left side of the river with a nice and strong tailwind resulting in a maximum speed of 39.2 km at some point.
For lunch I stopped at the hanami spot where I passed already last weekend (and last year), and although the weather was much better today than last Sunday, there were still very few visitors, and picnic was officially not allowed. But a few people did very small picnics.
I unpacked my rice roll and had my lunch under the cherry trees that start shedding their petals. Very romantic.
After lunch I continued on a new river, which I am pretty sure I have never ridden before and came through an other very nice hanami spot while riding into Kyoto. The only thing about this bicycle lane is that the tarmac isn't very smooth.
I turned away from the river and up a small hill to Kiyomizudera, which was splendid today. Sakura in full bloom, perfect weather and few tourists. Couldn't have been better.
This picture has it all: Hanami, heron, pagoda, pond
Before leaving Kiyomizudera I had a small snack of these very fresh sweet gel-like "noodles", which I like quite a lot.
And then on over a romantic bridge ...
... and through a neighborhood full of temples to Fushimi Inari.
Fushimi Inari is definitely my preferred shrine in Japan. When I first visited it 25 years ago the torii tunnel left a deep impression on me. Japan had much less tourists then, and I know that I took some pictures very similar as today, with the tunnel of torii without anyone. Something that in normal times nowadays seems to be completely impossible, as this shrine has got so popular that it is incredibly crowded every day... except now with no tourists around. I went again a few years back (I think 2015) right after New Year and the shrine was incredibly busy with business men making their annual offering. This was also a very nice and unique experience. But I am very happy to have seen it again very empty.
The one thing I did not know 25 years ago, is that those torii are not purely for decoration. They are offered by companies to the shrine for their success. And actually somewhere in all this forest of torii there is a price list for torii's.
While the front of each torii only says 納奉, which probably means something like paid offer...
... the backside of each torii says precisely which company (or individual) paid for the torii ...
... and when it was erected.
Down at the shrine itself, there were products of the main patrons of the shrine exhibited. Mostly sake, but it is not limited to this. There was also milk, snacks, chocolate, beer ...
When we were here at New Years a few years back the shrine looked much more like a supermarket than a shrine with all possible offerings, including kleenex tissues...
At around 17:00 I left the shrine. Actually quite late, knowing that the way back was still over 40 km and that the wind was against me. But I had a back-up plan. I could hop on a train somewhere along the Yodogawa and get back to Osaka, if I got too tired or it got too late.
But after struggling a bit against the wind before the Sakura spot on the river confluence, from there onwards down the Yodogawa it was much less windy. Looking at the strava map it seems I went in a quite perfect straight line, so wind should have been strong on Yodogawa as well, but maybe it turned or was channelled by the parallel mountains along the river in some other way.
I reached the sakura spot shortly before sunset.
Which inevitably means that it got dark along the way down to Osaka as it is still about 30 km from there back to Osaka. But weather was nice and I was making good progress along the river, and I did not need to search for my way (which at night even with garmin isn't that easy as the screen continues to go dark) so I made it back all the way to Osaka and to "my" onsen in Naniwa where I relaxed my tired legs in the hot water and had dinner afterwards.
At that point I was at 95 km... So now I had the ambition to make it to 100 km today... but it was only about 3 km from there back to my apartment... so after the bath and dinner I took a small detour to see some night sakura along the river.
Right on the bridge over the Yodogawa I then completed my second ever 100 km ride. (the other was last year September in the Netherlands. )
On Sunday on the last part of my ride downwards Yodogawa, something started to sound really bad in my bicycle. Like a small stone being inside the front wheel. I tried to see if I could understand where it is and how to remove it... but to no avail. As I want to ride this weekend again, I decided to bring it directly to a brompton repair shop to see if they could fix the problem. Only that about 3 km into the ride whatever it was that caused the sound, had popped out and the problem fixed itself. I anyway rode all the way to the shop, just in case they could understand what the problem might have been. Which well, they couldn't... fair enough, there was no longer a problem when I arrived at the shop.
The only interesting thing to report about this ride, is that I came by a big shrine (which I didn't visit) in Tenma... which I will visit some day in the future.
Weather: Sunny, cloudy and a chilly strong wind, 11 C
After the rain yesterday, today it was mostly sunny, a few clouds, but also quite windy. Headwind in the first half of the day, but tailwind cruising back down the river to Osaka.
I had decided to make a ride from a leaflet I had picked up in an onsen (the same where today's ride finished) last time I was in Osaka. The ride in pink at the bottom right going to Uji... only that I added kilometers at the beginning to even get to the starting point, cut kilometers from the ride by not actually riding into Uji and then adding again kilometers by riding all the way back to Osaka. So well, I did a quite different ride, but I did see the place that had caught my attention on the leaflet, Japan's longest wooden bridge:
Only that currently it is off-limits, not due to Covid-19, but due to restauration works! So I have a reason to ride there again. Actually riding up Yodogawa and then transferring to Kizugawa means one can ride all the way to Nara from Osaka along a river... but it would be quite a long ride.
Riding along the Yodogawa isn't specially scenic...
... at least not until one reaches the confluence with Uji River and Kizugawa, at which point there is a hanami hot spot. In order that it does not become a Coronavirus hotspot, there were only minimal hanami activities today, much to the contrast of last year. But it is also fair to say, that it was very windy and quite cold there, so it wouldn't really have been a good day for a proper picnic anyway.
Top: 2019 (warmer weather and no virus)
Bottom: 2020 (quite cold and Covid-19)
What I always find surprising is the cherry trees in really ugly locations. As a European one would think that it only makes sense to make an effort to plant cherry trees in a location that is at least somewhat nice, but not so in Japan.
In my very personal analysis, this is a very important difference between Japan and Europe. In Japan the details are admired, but there is no (or at least not a lot) of importance given to the overall picture. It is like Japanese are born with a build in zoom lense, admiring each small detail of the item to admire, but not having any spheral vision to see the surroundings. This is manifested over and over again, when one visits outstandingly nice Japanese places, often it is very hard to take a picture, as there is something really ugly somewhere around. E.g. electricity cables, old buildings, old signs...
Last year I had asked some cyclists at the confluence of the 3 rivers, if one could ride down also on the opposite side, i.e. on the side of Oyamazaki, and they told me know... so I rode down again on the same side I had come. However also last year, I just tried riding UP on the Oyamazaki side of the river, and came really far, so I knew that at least from a certain point onwards there was a cycling lane. And today I can report that there is actually a cycling lane pretty much the entire way from the confluence to Osaka on both sides of the river. However the one Hirakata side is definitely more popular, but I don't really know why. The ride on the other side was very similar. Only getting over the river to the starting point, well, isn't the nicest place of Kyoto:
So I saw a nice bridge and an ugly bridge today.
It had rained a lot on Friday and yesterday, so some parts of the cycling lane was very much inundated. and somewhere there, already quite close to Osaka, something strange must have happened. At least now my bicycle gives a very strange noise, as if a small stone found its way inside the bicycle. I'll need to go to the local brompton shop and get a look at it.
Riding into Osaka I got this nice night view, before retreating for the next hours in Naniwa no yu, a super sento I have already visited several times.
Weather: a few drops or rain, more rain and real rain, 9 C
In the morning some shopping in a nearby supermarket, where I bought enough should the government in Kansai region decide to put a lockdown, to survive for about 3-4 days. And more crucially I got toilet paper. A rarity right now due to Covid-19. (Apparently in Europe it is impossible to get right now and also in Tokyo it was not a common sight... but in Osaka there is no immediate shortage. A bit less than usual, but no shortage. The only shortage here seem to be face masks... but still all Japanese seem to have a stock somewhere hidden as most of the people on the streets are walking around with masks.
This isn't all toilet paper. I only bought 8 rolls. I swear!
With the coronavirus pandemic I decided to do only local rides, starting and finishing from my doorsteps. For today I had decided to try this route https://www.strava.com/routes/11610963, however I started quite late in the afternoon (maybe around 15:00) so it was clearly impossible to do the entire route. But I still wanted to go out cycling a bit and the river part looked nice, so that's what I did. Cycling up the Ina river without a specific goal in mind, except a soak in an onsen at the end.
Ina River is one of the typical Japanese rivers. Highly damed and totally unnatural. This one, for most of the part I cycled, flowing through a industrial neighbourhood.
So this was probably the "nicest" it gets:
There were some sakura along the way, but still not in full bloom. And actually where I shot this picture there was a very strange, sweetish, chemical odour. This combined with the rain, cold weather made that not even Japanese were coming out to do hanami picnics.
When I came up to Itami airport (which is still operating, although for sure at a much reduced intensity than normally), it started to rain more, so I threw the red cape over me and started my descend through the rain back to Osaka and my onsen. In which I happily soaked for the next hour or so, had dinner and was happy again.
Weather: Dark, no rain, and surprisingly warm in Osaka, 17 C in Tokyo and 18 C in Osaka
Today was my last day in the Tokyo office and it seems I "fled" from Tokyo just in time before the partial lock-down (well, not really lock-down, just friendly request from the government to stay at home on the weekend). Here in Osaka so far the government is not planning any lock down measures.
So I said goodbye to my nice hotel in Tokyo where I am now greated and treated as a regular customer (stayed there so far 3 times and always in the exact same room, which I happen to like a lot), jumped on my bike (in my office outfit), cycled down to Shinagawa station, got myself a ticket for the next shinkansen and jumped on a very empty train. Normally trains between Osaka and Tokyo are quite full, but now with Covid-19 in each row there were maximum 2 people (instead of 5). I tried wearing a mask, but I really cannot breathe with these things. So I affronted the danger of virus contamination barefaced.
In Osaka I unfolded my bike, and rode down the street to my monthly apartment, which happens to be also again the exact same apartment as last time. Slightly far from the office, but actually a quite nice apartment and with a bicycle parking lot.
From now on, more cycling in Kansai region!
BTW, if you are wondering if I can put all my luggage of 10 weeks of business trip to Japan on my folding bike... well, no. But that's where Yamato Kuroneko is playing its part.
As I am writing this, I am actually on the modern version of the Tokaido... on the Tokaido Shinkansen, somewhere between Nagoya and Kyoto. But this post is about the old Tokaido, the traditional road network for travelling from Kyoto to Edo (Tokyo)
Always on the hunt for new suggestions of nice cycling adventures these days I stumbled over these maps for riding along the old Tokaido from Kyoto to Tokyo. It seems that the cycling is mainly (or at least quite often) on small streets rather than the big ones.
On this blog page (in Japanese) there are also some pictures and further descriptions. But it's a bit of a tedious blog page with a lot of clicking: https://www.strada.jp/events/kyukaidou_201908/
If you have Strava Summit you can download the maps directly from Strava. If not, like me... the following short cut seems to work:
Open the route
Click on the "。。。" symbol
Click on "create route"
This opens the route in the planner
Save
And wow... there it is in my planned routes in Strava. And for those I can actually download the GPX file and then import on Garmin (or potentially just open it with the Strava app on the garmin)
Excited of having discovered this feature I went ahead and downloaded me the entire route.
Seeing how it is numbered, it would seem that the idea is to make it in 3 days! But not for me. I guess a nice week would be perfect.
Very much looking forward to do this ride once upon a time!
Also on the last day of this 3 day weekend, the weather in Tokyo was perfect plus it was hanami season. The government had asked due to Covid-19 to not hold hanami parties, and well, my personal hanami party was definitely one of social isolation...
... but yes, other people (as you can see in the background) were having group hanami parties, but most groups stuck to themselves, and it was definitely not a packed park as it probably normally would be. Although I read somewhere that Koishikawa Botanical Garden doesn't get that packed, as it has an entrance fee, doesn't allow alcoholic drinks (well, some people did have a beer, but hiding it well) and closes in the late afternoon. I have no way to compare it to normal years, as this was my first time ever in this garden. I had tried once before, but back then it was a typhoon the day before that had closed the botanical garden temporarily.
Before coming to the garden, I first visited a famous hanami spot at the Tokyo palace ...
... and right across the road the official cherry blossom measurement tree of Tokyo city at the Yasukuni shrine. I wasn't the only one interested in taking a picture of it.
Towards Koishikawa botanical garden I came across the school for Shiatsu which had this very curious monument to the thump at their entrance... but I guess that's the most important body part for Shiatsu, so why not.
At a convenience store before the garden, I bought some lunch items and then headed to the park, took out my one person mini vinyl sheet and sat down to have lunch. After lunch I relaxed a bit in the nice sun and had a stroll through the garden.
Where surprisingly (after the experience yesterday in Kamakura) all sakura where in full bloom.
When the park closed, I left and headed to my last stop of the day, Sakura (sic!) onsen which just had reopened its doors a few days earlier, after some coronavirus related closure. Now they were equipped with a infrared thermometer and measured temperature of all guests upon arrival.
But before I did my arrival, I had to take care of a little bit more of hunger, and had a overpriced crepe along the way in a posh cafe and had a ride through the graveyard at sunset which is right behind the onsen and also doubles as a hanami spot. Rightfully so!
Even the onsen had some hanami, as one should expect for an onsen called Somei Sakura.
