GW2026 D6 TOTO toilet museum

Route: Shimonoseki - Kokura - Buzen

Bicycle: 82 km

Total ascent: 818 m

Average speed: 15,1 km/h

Riding time: 5:26 h

Weather: Sunny but overcast, 26C

 

Today only had one highlight and a lot of lowlights. 

Highlight: TOTO toilet museum

Lowlights: 

• all the traffic between Shimonoseki until way beyond Kokura. It took 50 km+ to get into a region without big streets and lots of cars, and only because I managed to veer off the coast to a road halfway up to mountain. 
• The chemical smell dominating well beyond Kokura and being extremely strong in Kokura city. Not really sure how people would want to live there. 

Starting from my hotel I road a few more km in Yamaguchi, taking in the view of the bridge connecting Honshu with Kyushu…

… while I took the pedestrian tunnel. 

On the other side of the tunnel is Mojiko, a port city that seems to have some Western history. At least around the port and station area there are multiple Western style old houses. 

From there it was a struggle through traffic to get to the toilet museum. I had known about this museum since I first cycled in Kyushu during my Tour of Japan in 2017, but back then I was nowhere close to it. A few years ago when I was cycling around Mt Aso and Oita I had considered going, but again it was out of the way. So finally! 

The museum is in the middle of the TOTO plant, a modern building.

The museum explains the story of Toto and its associated companies producing everything with ceramics, from plates to construction material and parts of electronics, but also toilets and full baths. 

This is the first sitting toilet produced in Japan:

And this the first washlet, now omnipresent in Japanese houses. 

What is always surprising how much ceramics shrink firing:

There was however also a Sumo wrestler and a children option:

When I built my house last year I had so many choices to make, but for the toilet I had decided ahead of time to go with TOTO, as TOTO is for me the definition of Japanese toilets. I am sure that the LIXIL toilet would have been just as good. While with my TOTO bathroom I am really happy, as it has a slightly soft floor. 

After the toilet museum it was back to the traffic and the air pollution. Frankly the roads or route got a bit better, but still not really enjoyable for a cycling trip. I had even considered taking a train to my final destination, but weather was good so I did work up the courage to continue cycling. Only the last 20 km or so were in small vials and the countryside but only because I managed to swear off the main roads onto a tertiary road through the foothills of some mountain. 

GW2026 D5 onto Shimonoseki in the rain

Route: Ichinomata onsen to Shimonoseki
Bicycle: 57 km
Total ascent: 596 m
Average speed:15,4 km/h
Riding time: 3:42 h
Weather: mostly rain, 15 C 

Today more rain. It didn’t rain all the time , but enough to not allow for any real sightseeing. I think the biggest “discovery“ of the day was , how much traffic there is around Shimokoseki. After the last few days where even some national roads were small tracks, this came as a bad surprise. Cycling out of Yamaguchi was much better, not a lot of traffic and quickly outside of town. While Shimonoseki is a very long town, that O needed to cross completely. 

I started the day with a quick visit to the onsen before ryokan breakfast. By the time I was ready to depart the rain had stopped since a few minutes  but it wouldn’t stay so. 

My first goal was a wisteria tree I found on Google Maps, but not in reality and on the rain I wasn't motivated to search for it, shortly after I had my first conbini stop. While getting something hot to drink the rain had stopped. Shortly after the conbini stop was the highlight of the day: 

According to an app on my phone it’s a tung oil tree and apparently poisonous. But those flowers were magnificent. I don’t remember ever seeing this tree before  , at least not with flowers. 

Shortly after was a stop in a gorge. It was however too slippery with the rain and fallen leaves to walk alongside the stream. I got “on the road” (aka “very small path theoretically passable for a car”) and walked a bit up until I came to a small waterfall. 

It’s probably nice in autumn with some colors on the trees.

After lunch it started raining again just to cease once much closer to Shimonoseki. The town seems to be famous for this tower and for fugu!

Fugu simply everywhere. As a lamp in the onsen of the hotel, on the manholes, on an other lamp in the onsen and there is the statue to the fugu in front of the main station. 

GW2026 D4 from the cold rain into a hot onsen

Route: Obama Beach to Ichinomata

Bicycle: 35 km

Total ascent: 346 m

Average speed: 17,8 km/h

Riding time: 1:59 h

Weather: cold, damp and then rain, 14C

Today was a short day on the saddle and a long day in the onsen. (And more onsen to come after dinner)

I took a relatively direct way from my lodging on the beach… (yes, ACTUAL beach, not something I am used to see a lot in Japan, where often the sea is treated as dangerous and something to be contained rather than enjoyed, maybe for good reasons)…

… to my next accommodation in the small onsen place of Ichinomata. I think there are only 2 hotels and no houses here, and the two hotels are probably under the same ownership, at least when I checked out the onsen of the other hotel online, they claimed that staying guests could use the onsen of the hotel where I am as well. Meaning probably that “my” onsen is nicer. It’s is a nice onsen, with two outdoor pools and a relatively nice view into the landscape. Not a direct view , but as the valley is quite tight, one can see the trees in all the hills around. The water is also special with a pH of 10! I am not sure if I ever bathed in water so alkaline. I have definitely taken baths in pH 1 “water”… (essentially hot acid) in Tohoku (Osorezan and Tamagawa onsen).

I didn’t actually take the shortest route of them all, as that seemed to go over a mauntain pass (not very high for my Tokyo standards) on a road where there are probably no cars all day, but instead more in the valley. Yet even so I managed to cycle on a road that sees 1-2 cars a day. And even when I came to “the big road”, which Komoot tried to avoid at all costs, there were hardly any cars. Well there are hardly any villages and inhabitants. 

With a forced smile I took a selfie when I put on my rain gear. As long as I am cycling , preferably uphill or in the flat, rain and cold is kind of okay  well, tolerable. But no rain and soaking instead in a hot onsen is always better. 

I hardly took any other pictures. One of a coastline …

… and one of a river I was cycling along. What surprised me these days is how much water the local rivers have. It shouldn’t surprise me, after all it’s spring and if there was any snow it melted, but in Tokyo there seems to be a draught, at least the water level in Miyagase Dam is incredibly low. Not so in Yamaguchi! 

PS: after dinner I can add that the fugu was especially tasty. I had had fugu before and wasn’t specially impressed, but this one was great. It seems that Shimonoseki is famous for its fugu.

GW2026 D3 scenic coast, no cars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

GW2026 D2 my mother was right - Hagi 😍

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GW2026 D1 Yamaguchi , Akiyoshidai and Hagi

Route: Yamaguchi - Akiyoshidai - Hagi
Bicycle: 72 km
Average speed: 14,5 km/h
Total elevation: 834 m

Riding time: 4:22 h
Weather: Sunny, 23C

I had made four different plans for this year’s Golden Week:

1. Yamaguchi and Northern Kyushu
2. Toogatta onsen, Urabandai and Nikko
3. Kusatsu onsen, Shiga kogen and Nozawa onsen
4. Eastern Shikoku and Awaijima

The original plan was the Yamaguchi plan, but I also planed the other ones in case the weather wasn’t good. I really liked the idea about the Nagano prefecture ride because it would have allowed me to only take local trains from Tokyo to Takasaki instead of taking a Shinkansen. But that ride would have been a lot more challenging due to much more elevation than in Yamaguchi/Kyushu.

When I checked the weather forecast a few days ago, on the last day, I could still cancel all the hotels for free, the Yamaguchi area seemed to be quite good from a weather perspective plus there’s a lot less elevation going on here, which is a good thing with the added weight from the baggage and my lingering cold which I contracted in early April. 

My mother had come to Hagi back in 1995 when she visited me as a student and then travelled for a week through Japan with a JR pass. To this day she is raving about Hagi, what a nice, traditional city it is. I had wanted to come to Hagi ever since, but it is pretty out of the way. In order to get to Hagi one has to cross from the pacific site to the sea of Japan site. Yesterday I took the Shinkansen around noon from Tokyo to Shin Yamaguchi. There were much less crowds at Tokyo Station compared to last year’s Golden Week when I started a few days later.

While sitting in the train, I looked at tourist guide sites to see if there was something to do between Yamaguchi and Hagi. And there was: Akiyoshidai! 

A landscape with a unique feature with those big limestones and no rivers , because the water just seeps through the ground directly into the ground water.

All this water flowing into the earth created some huge caves. One can visit one of them for a few kilometers.:

While I was in the cave there were several bus tours with foreigners as well. But not too many. One could definitely enjoy the cave with this number of visitors. Afterwards, I had a very light lunch in the old style shopping street that leads to the entrance of the cave. Then it was uphill, very steep, to an observation point over the undulating terrain with the limestones.

The way from Yamaguchi to the cave had  a dedicated bicycle lane which was a very pleasant surprise. It was mainly along the road either on a side walk or and old street. 

After Akiyoshidai I was pleasantly surprised by an other road: State road #490. In my planning, I normally always exclude state roads assuming that they will be the most busy roads in the area. Today, thanks to a sign to a pond with Japanese lilies, which did not bloom, I found that this state road has hardly any traffic at all. In fact it has some advisory boards telling drivers to turn back and take the prefectural road instead. So for the next 10 km or so I had this entire road to myself. Just a few workers that were expanding the road but only for a few hundred meters before it turned back into its small rindo (forestry road) style. 

I was down in Hagi probably around 4 o’clock and  as I had time before the onsen of today would open, I went to the remains of the castle and had some onigiri that I had brought along all the way from the Pacific side. 

My guest house in Hagi is above a motorcycle repair shop, quite basic, but also quite new. I had seen on google map and on pictures in tourism brochures about the city, an onsen with quite nice views into nature and quite close to my guest house. So there I went for a restorative and cleaning bath. Obviously no pictures inside the onsen were allowed so this is a picture of the approach. 

The onsen itself had 4 rotenburos all with relaxing views and one large inner pool. The rotenburos seemed to be all at the same temperature except one that was much colder (for cooling down after the sauna) .