GW2026 D8 coast line of Kunisaki peninsula

Route: Kunimimachi - Oita airport - Kitsuki
Bicycle: 32 km
Bus: 15 km
Total elevation: 351 m

Average speed: 14,8 km/h
Riding time: 2:10 h
Weather: Sunny, 20C , very windy but tailwind

Today the plan was to cycle on to Kitsuki, about 40-50 km from my lodging of the night for the last two days of this Golden Week trip. I hadn’t fully decided if to cycle along the coast or halfway up on the “orange road”, but the lady from the accommodation recommended the coastal road at least initially, and yes, it was very nice. Probably the one yesterday was also nice, but as I was riding through the rain much less enjoyable. So to the first village and conbini I cycled down along the coast and even found after a few kilometers a cycling path. 

On the side of the bicycle road they were also sun drying the local seaweeds we had for dinner yesterday.

From there I tried the “orange road”, but it was just a normal hillside / countryside road. No oranges and crucially no views of the sea. So after a bit I returned down to the coast. 

There were some nice stone formations on the shore…

… one called “buttocks stone”:

 

After not too long however my gear cable snapped leaving me stuck in the hardest gear. I replanned my route to have as little elevation gain as possible and probably would have been able to make it to Kitsuki under my own “steam”… but I had an accident at the UFO sight. Yes, Oita airport has a real UFO and “red men”… and a sight of departing aircraft.

When I was just about to depart the chain got stuck between the frame and small gear and I fell off. Luckily it was on a very quiet parking lot, so no danger and a biker was at hand who helped me deentangle from the bike. At this point I had lost my confidence in riding with broken gears and had a bleeding knee, so I walked the about 500 m down to the airport where the friendly ladies at the information desk gave me disinfectant and wound tape. 

I packed up my bicycle already in “Shinkansen” position, ie with both wheels removed and took the bus to Kitsuki. By pure luck, the beer is a bus stop right outside of my lodging and they let me in early. So really perfect place to fall from my bike. And perfect timing as I don’t need to move anywhere tomorrow before returning on Wednesday by train to Tokyo. 

 

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) .

GW2025 D2 Ashimori and Takahashi

Route: Okayama - Ashimori -Takahashi

Bicycle: 70 km
Train: 0 m
Car: 51 km
Total ascent: 987 m
Average speed: 15,4 km/h
Riding time: 4:35 h
Weather: sunny and again not too warm, 20 C

Today was a wonderful day with new discoveries and very relaxing. Now I just need to hope that I’ll be able to make it back to Okayama as I am sitting in a train at Bitchu Takahashi station that isn’t moving because somewhere down the line rocks did fall on the track. I am pondering if I should put the bicycle together back again and ride down to the plain of Okayama. However even Soja is 30 km away, it’s already 18:00 and it seems that trains from Soja are also not moving. Probably because the trains from Takahashi don’t arrive. The other passengers are sitting relaxed, and I have still the blog post of yesterday to write, so I am sitting here as well … However, after an announcement saying that the responsible JR person would be at the site of the rock at 19:00 to check it out, instead I decided to take the bike and just when I had it all assembled again a man who was going to take the train as well approached me and offered to take me by car. So here we go. By car to Okayama.  

The car ride itself was also a great experience. Obviously I was a bit conscious of the fact that I am boarding a car of a totally unknown man. But , well, most people in the world are good people. And he was definitely one of them. Surprisingly I had a really good conversation with him. He seemed very well informed about global affairs , the war in Ukraine and just generally an interesting person to talk to about more than just the weather. 

Now back in my hotel , and back to today’s blog post.

Getting out of Okayama wasn’t the best route, but once outside I was on one of cycle paths in the Kibi plain but somewhere took different turns from yesterday and this came to a new place: Ashimori 

I had never heard about this place and even yesterday when I searched for interesting spots around Okayama it did not come up. So I was really lucky to stumble up on it. On my way. A nice small village, largely maintaining its old character of, what I would call, post town. There is an old samurai residence, which I did not visit and a garden that uses the mountains as part of its landscape design. The old lord of the area could sit in his tea house above the small lake and enjoy the breeze and the views.

Before entering into the mountains, I had udon at a local small restaurant, where the owner‘s wife was very eager to speak English and gave me a small cake from the area. From there, it was uphill on a very nice and quiet country road through the lush green vegetation. I’m really surprised how green everything is. Which really I shouldn’t. Japan is a very green country. But somehow this year I didn’t notice the change from winter landscape to the lush green landscape. I’m simply too busy with my house building, that I didn’t have enough time to cycle in the countryside and mountains around Tokyo. So this trip here feels like the first time to really see this abundance of green.

Somewhere in these mountains, there are small hamlets, probably all but destined to disappear in the next 50 years.

And with that I made it to the viewpoint above the castle of Takahashi. 

I didn’t have enough time to visit the castle and the mountain it is on top of looks really steep. I actually visited it eight years ago on my tour through Japan. Back then I took the train from Okayama and then a taxi up to the entrance of the castle. Today instead, I visited a temple, down in the valley, which back then the taxi driver recommended to me, but somehow I hadn’t considered visiting it. The temple itself is probably a pretty normal temple, but the draw of it is it’s Japanese garden.

The Rododendron wasn’t in full bloom yet, but even though this garden was very relaxing and calm.

People always complain or fear how full everything will be in golden week, but it’s so much depends on where you go. Yes the train yesterday was crazy full but today both in Ashimori, and in Takahashi, there were very few people around.It simply isn’t on any major, or even minor routes through Japan, not even for the Japanese.

GW2025 - D1 Kibi plain repeat

Route Okayama - Kibi plain round trip
Bicycle: 61 km
Train: 650 km
Total ascent: 243 m
Average speed: 15,7 km/h
Riding Time: 3:47 h
Weather: very sunny but not THAT warm, 20C

I organized this Golden Week trip maybe about two months ago, right after I found out that this year is again the art triennial in the Setouchi region. And although it is right in the middle of Golden Week, I did have no problems in finding reasonably priced accommodations in the area.

For the first two days, I’m in Okayama, where I have been eight years ago on my big trip through Japan. Today was actually a repeat of a ride that I did back then.

In order to come here, I needed to pass through the craziness of getting on a Shinkansen out of Tokyo on the first official day of Golden Week. The situation at Tokyo station was a well organized chaos. I made it pretty easily to the actual platform, but on the platform there were hoards of people, kept in organized queues by special railway employees.During Golden Week for the Nozomi Shinkansen, all seats are reserved, which means that people who did not get a reservation are all desperate to board a Hikari or Kodama train. So there were long queues on the platform, and the people who were actually there to take their reserved seat in the Nozomi needed to kind of squeeze between everyone else. Even the vending machine was nearly empty, and that at 9 AM in the morning. Luckily, I had bought something for breakfast and lunch at a conbini on the way to Tokyo station, so I didn’t need to get anything from the platform shop. However, once I was in my Nozomi on my reserved seat, I had the space behind the seat for the bicycle and could sit comfortably all the way to Okayama. As there was so much traffic and, probably especially the Hikari and Kodama trains, took more time at the platform to load and unload people, the entire system was in delay. And by the time I reached Okayama, my train already had racked up more than 20 minutes of delay. Even Okayama station was very crowded and we needed to form a line to get out of the turn-still. 

On my way, I had planned the ride for today and tomorrow. Today, a short ride into Kibi plain with its temples, shrines and old tombs. 

The first two stops were too big shrine complexes at the foothill of a small hill. As in the next few days is the children’s day, they were kois flying above in the air. Normally, they should be flying over a river, but here they were flying over the parking lot.

The second shrine per the description had a very special roof, I think if I wouldn’t have read it, I would not consider this roof as anything special, but just a normal shrine roof. But I’m clearly no expert.

As I continued on the cycle path, I continued through the plain with small fields and small hamlets. I had planned a little bit longer ride, but at some point it was getting surprisingly chilly and also a little bit late, that I decided to take a shortcut cut back to Okayama. but while being on my shortcut, I remembered a picture of the main temple of this area with a flower field in front of it. So I checked how far it would be from where I was on my shortcut, and it was within less than 4 km, so I decided to give it a detour. I had been to this temple 8 years ago, but to my surprise I had a new experience today. They were arranging the big drums for a concert in the evening in front of the pagoda in the yard of the temple, and already had some test runs of their performance.

And no, this hill is not a hill, it is actually an ancient tomb. 

NY2025 D5 - small mountain roads in the North of Kyoto

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

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

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

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

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

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

NY 2025 D4 - Hatsu-Tiger-mode

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

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

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

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

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

The temple is a large, sprawling affair. 

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

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

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

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

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

NY2025 D3 Nigatsudo and Kashihara jingu

Route: Kyoto - Nara - Kashihara - Yamatoyagi
Bicycle: 94 km
Train: 60 km
Total Ascent: 483 m
Average Speed: 16.3 km/h
Riding time: 5:46 h
Weather: Cloudy, some very dark clouds, which I managed to run out, cold, 5 C

For the last day of this year, I went to the temple in Nara I like most: Nigatsudo. 

Even nowadays when Nara is so flooded with tourists, around Nigatsudo it is still okay. Yes, there are tourists, but a normal amount, not hordes. And this is so strange. It is so close to Todaiji, just up a bit the hill... but it seems that the majority of tourists only alot half a day to Nara, see Nara park with the deer and Todaiji and then hurry on to Osaka or Kyoto or maybe Uji to see more clogged places, instead of making it up a little bit further the hill to Nigatsudo and its excellent views over the valley. 

I have probably written the same every time I wrote about Nigatsudo, but it is still an obligatory stop for me in Nara. I actually didn't visit any other parts of Nara. Also because a very dark cloud was looming overhead and looked like it might downpour at any moment. 

Originally my plan was to cycle to Nara and back to Kyoto. But I also want to visit a "tiger" temple which is farther away from Kyoto... so instead I decided to continue on, leave the bike in Yamatoyagi and restart from there tomorrow and go to the tiger temple... on the first day of the year of the snake. 

 I already got my commemoration photo of the year of the snake at Kashihara jingu. A day early, but thanks to this before the crowds. The shrine was actively preparing to receive thousands and thousands of worshippers from tomorrow. But today it was still very quiet. 

Overall the ride along the river between Kyoto and Nara is rather boring. Maybe I have done it now one time too many or I am just too much a mountain goat now that I am no longer thrilled by it. Yes, it is easy riding between Kyoto and Kizugawa on a broad cycling road along the river. After Kizugawa the cycling road becomes more complicated, disappears in some places before then returning in smaller edition somewhere after Nara. But Japanese landscape along heavily inhabited rivers simply is boring. The nicest part is the submergible bridge, which however now since a few years is under renovation. 

The rest of the landscape looks something like this. Villages, factories... and always a strong wind. 

At one place however there was a very early (or late... 31st December) blooming cherry tree:

In Kashihara jingu I saw the last sunset of the year... and I will not get up early tomorrow morning to try to see the first sunrise. I did do that I think once back in Barcelona... but it is easier there, as sunrise is much later in winter than in Japan. 

The day ended in an super sento in the Yamato Yagi area. The same I went to in early January this year. The area around the super sento continues to be as ugly as previously (and will never be nice). But today also the super sento was super full. I hadn't expected that so many people thought that it was a great idea to have a last bath on the 31st of December... but apparently I was wrong. Many people, many small children and some of the pools really full. I did relax a bit... but not as much as I would normally do. Also knowing that I needed to cycle in the cold the last ~5 km to the station didn't entice me to stay until late to try to avoid a bit the cold. 

The ride overall was rather boring... and most of the time on the bike I spent thinking about facades and what kind of material I would find acceptable or even nice for the facade of my house. My current conclusion is:

• Natural wood/bamboo would be ideal... but as far as I understand the building regulations in Tokyo this is out of questions due to fire prevention laws
• Mortar (ideally in a warm colour, maybe dark red, or the typical Japanese yellow)
• Maybe corrugated steel if it fits with the house design

But the typical material used for new houses in Japan which is a ceramic cladding that tries to look like stone but doesn't look like stone at all. It just looks like plastic to me (although it is some kind of ceramic)... that material I have yet to see a house that can pull it of. 

At least I know that mortar is possible, albeit more expensive than the ceramic cladding. 

D3 Yamadera

Route: Zao onsen- Yamadera - Kaminoyama onsen
Bicycle: 86 km
Train: 350 km
Total ascent: 500 m
Average speed: 15 km/h (for the part wahoo recorded)
Riding time: unknown (Wahoo only recorded the ride up to Yamadera)
Weather: sunny, a bit windy, 22C

The day started in two different onsen tubs of my hotel. Between 21:00 and 10:00 the onsen are free to be used (privately) by the guests. When I woke up at 6:00 and went down to get a key there was none but around 7:00 I got a key to this tub:

Where I had a relaxing bath. When I came back to hang the key back at the board also an other key was available if one of the tubs with a view that I hadn’t been to yet. So I took the opportunity and had a second bath.

While taking the bath one actually doesn’t really see the landscape. Only if you sit on the wall between the two tubs. But then there was the famous “unkai” = “sea of clouds”. 

Sufficiently clean and relaxed I went back to my room and had my conbini breakfast (which I prefer over a Japanese breakfast) , packed my too big bag (definitely did bring unnecessary items: 2 jackets!) and then started the ride of the last day of this 3 day weekend.

When I planned this weekend back in August I only knew that Zao onsen itself is famous and that the crater above is a nice place. So I hadn’t a specific plan for the third day. And then decided to give Yamadera a second visit. I had been there already on my Tour de Japan back in 2017. Curiously nearly exactly 7 years ago on 11/Oct. Back then I went by train from Yamagata as I had gotten incredibly wet the day before and didn’t want to take an other chance. Turned out weather was totally fine. And I missed a very nice cycling path along a river. 

Today being a National holiday and perfect weather the temple was more busy than back then, but still reasonable.

But strangely the part of the temple I like most is the post box. Last time I even saw the postman coming up all these stairs to deliver/ receive post. 

Back down the many stairs I jumped back on my bike and down it was along the nice bicycle path until I took the turn to Yamagata, which week was on streets that weren’t that nice. I took a rest in the castle park had a snack there…

… and decided that by now it was too late to get to an onsen I had seen in the hills around Kaminoyama and instead cycled to the station directly where I am now in the waiting room with the bike packed up, a bento bought and waiting for my train. It wasn’t possible to change the reservation to an earlier train as it is fully booked. But sitting here isn’t so bad either.