D3 over Tsuchiyu pass into the fog

Route: Urabandai - Tsuchiyu - Fukushima
Bicycle: 80 km
Train: 300 km
Average speed: 15.6 km/h 
Total ascent: 1143 m
Riding time: 5:09 h
Weather: cloudy and very dense fog on the descent, 16C

I had so many options how to return. One easy one would have been to just ride down to Aizu Wakamatsu, spend a few hours in an onsen right besides the station (I was there in a previous visit to the city) and then take the train back to Tokyo. But the weather seemed good enough to instead attempt to go to Fukushima. Even to Fukushima there were different options available. The maximum option would have been to ride over the Asama Bandai skyline, which probably had starting of koyo. But there were intermediate options, and I finally took one of those. 

I didn't start very early, which would have been needed for the full option due to the long climbing. After stocking up on food and drinks at the local conbini (and only conbini in the area), I took a left turn and was out in the mountains with small lakes below. 

These lakes formed after the eruption of Mt. Bandai volcano about a century ago and now in this region there are a few big lakes and a lot of small ones. 

This is what I got as a view of the inner crater of Mt. Bandai... not much: 

This is how it should look like ... but not today. I will need to come back, which I plan to do anyway. The region seemed very nice, and there are a lot of accomodation options in Urabandai. In winter it is a ski region, but fishing seems to be also very well loved activity as well as hiking. Cycling also was relatively popular. Specially on the first day I met a bunch of cyclists (all coming downhill) in the awful rain. 

I continued on my small road, which however did have some traffic, so I never felt totally alone and cam across a small food stall that sold local vegetables and other produce, but also offered some nice warm udon soups. Which took care of the lunch. 

While eating lunch I studied my options. From here I had still the option to go mainly downhill to Koriyama or to go uphill towards Fukushima. After a lot of thinking I decided to take the shorter of the two uphill versions, just riding to the entrance of the Asama Bandai skyline but not riding it itself, as time would not have been sufficient. 

It was a little bit too early for koyo. Probably the following week would have been good. Probably actually up on the Asama skyline it was already good for koyo... but not enough time for me. 

However when I started the descent towards Fukushima on the other side very quickly the fog moved in. 

And what a fog! It was so dense that one had to ride very carefully. It also doesn't help to wear glasses, which just seemed to attract every single water droplet. On the upper slopes I was still mixing with cars, not a lot but some. Farther down, the road separated: A road only for cars (I think it was illegal to cross the tunnels by bike/foot) and the old road, now essentially only for bicycles. Maybe on a day with nice weather some cars and probably a lot of motorcycles would use it as well to do some sightseeing... but not so today. In the fog this road didn't feel very safe. Not because of the road itself, which was good quality, but because there was just absolutely no one. No other cyclist was crazy enough to ride there and the cars and motorbikes were all on the main road. So it felt like if something would happen, it could take a day or two before someone would even find me. 

But nothing happened. No bear, no deer, no other kind of incident. 

Getting further down the fog lifted and I came to Tsuchiyu onsen. A small onsen village that was recommended by the owner of the pension I stayed. I took the very first onsen at the entrance of the village. They had a nice big outdoor pool. Not really with a view, but somehow one could see that all around there were trees. After this refreshing and cleaning bath (I was rather dirty due to the wet roads), it was downhill from there all the way to the station.

I had a ticket reserved for around 19:00, but I was at the station about 2 hours earlier. I packed the bike and there was a Shinkansen just a few minutes after I managed to pack everything which had some unreserved seats. I couldnt change to reserved seats as everything was taken, but there were enough unreserved seats that I even found a place in the last row to store the bike behind. 

D2 Around Lake Hibara

Route: Goshikinuma and Lake Hibara
Bicycle: 34 km
Hiking: 5,5 km
Total ascent: 452 
Average speed: 13.1 km/h
Riding time: 3 h
Weather: cloudy but no rain, 16 C

The day started with more rain, but by the time I was ready to leave around 10 o’clock it had finally stopped raining. Originally, I wanted to ride up to Bandai skyline, but with the threat of rain, a day out with a long descent on wet roads didn’t sound like an intelligent thing to do. Instead I decided to do just a round around the lake here by my pension. Before that, however I went to the local famous spot of several small ponds, that were created by the eruption of Mount Bandai in the Meiji period. These ponds are famous for their color variation.

The hike took about an hour and a half and then I started my ride around the lake with my sight on an onsen at the lakeshore already closed back to where I’m staying. That onsen is in a big hotel complex and on this long weekend, only open publicly until 15:00. But I planned it apparently to perfection and arrived there a bit before 2 in the afternoon so could enjoy a good soak in the hot water while looking into the forest over the lake.

My pension also allows stocks to stay. Which is very rare in Japan. Originally, I thought that was the owner would have probably several dogs, but apparently they don’t have any. Today in the morning I saw One guest was a dog who was very well behaved. The dog. This evening, a family of three adult adults and one dog checked in and this dog is extremely badly behaved and their owners don’t seem to have any idea how to control it. During dinner he was walking around in the dinner area and the pension owner needed to ask them to put the dock on a leash. But even then they put him on a leash, but didn’t attach the leash to anything so still the dog was still running around. Now I’m sitting in my room writing the notes of today and in the neighboring room, they are trying to manage the dog shouting at him that he shall not do this or that, and in all this, the dog already pissed into the common area. I think the pension owners are now trying to negotiate that the dog must sleep in the car. 

The other guests in my pension are two men who came here to fish. Which seems to be a very well loved pass-time in this area. There are a lot of small boats on the lake and really a lot of cars who had brought their boats with them.

D1 - up to Urabandai

Route: Koriyama - Inawashiro - Urabandai
Bicycle: 64 km
Train: 250 km
Total ascent: 862 m
Average speed: 16,4 km/h
Riding time: 3:56 h
Weather: rain all day, cold 11C 

For this weekend originally I had two reservations. One in the Hakuba area and the other one in Fukushima Prefecture. A few days ago, I looked at the weather forecast and it seemed that the weather in Fukushima was going to be reasonable while in Hakuba it seemed to rain. I have no idea what actually happened in Hakuba, but in Fukushima, it was definitely raining.

But now I was committed to this three day weekend in the Urabandai region. In Tokyo, I managed to get to the Shinkansen just before the rain started. When I got off the train in Koriyama, the rain hadn’t started yet here, but it would start soon after setting off towards Inawashiro. 

I had come up the same road a few years ago when I stayed in Aizuwakamatsu on a still relatively hot September weekend. Back then, I had a lovely view of the lake. This time the lake was grey and the imposing mountains around shredded in rain clouds. 

I stopped along the lake for lunch and they even had a small fire going, but my shoes and socks were so soaked that even putting them right in front of the fire, it made no difference for getting them dry. I am actually writing this block post on the following day and the socks are still wet although they have been hanging to dry for over 24 hours. Luckily, I was able to dry my shoes though with a strategic use of newspapers. Actually, a very interesting newspaper. It seems that instead of getting the first female Prime Minister, Japan will be getting the third non-LDP Prime Minister in a few days. But I needed something to dry my shoes.

After lunch while riding uphill I made a quick stop at a fruit stand, selling local apples and peaches.

SW2023 D3 Aizuwakamatsu - Kinugawaonsen

Route: Aizuwakamatsu - Kinugawaonsen
Bicycle: 101 km
Average speed: 17,6 km/h
Total ascent: 1,192 m
Riding time: 5:44 h
Weather: Sun, some clouds and a few drops of rain, still quite hot and humid, 26C (per Wahoo)

After the ride yesterday, cut short by the heat, I was a little bit worried about today’s rather long and mountainous ride. However, I had planned the ride to be along a train line that also connects Aizuwakamatsu to Kinugawa onsen. Those trains aren’t very frequent, so yesterday evening I wrote down on a small piece of paper, the possible connections that could save me from the heat, exhaustion, or other impediments to continue all the way to my goal. But finally, I made it all the way! The ride was partially on a secondary roads, slowly sloping up towards the border between Fukushima and Tochigi Prefecture through a landscape bordered on all sides by mountains as far as your could look. 

I hadn’t really realized before, just how mountainous Japan really is. I know this sounds crazy. I’ve been living here, for more than 4 years. I’ve been traveling a lot, but still it surprises me just how many mountains there are. 

Pouring water over me at regular intervals helped to keep my body temperature in an okay range. Also, instead of thinking of it as of 100 km ride I was more looking at smaller targets: the next convenience store, lunch, the next major town. 

Some of the roads were very small countryside roads while others were more busy, none of them really too busy but if you know how empty the street could be every truck seems to be one too many. There was also a fair number of tunnels both up and down hill, but it was all okay.

On the way down to Kinugawaonsen, I did run into this group of monkeys. It seemed an entire family, maybe 20 or so, even including a mother monkey with a small baby. 

The hotel in Kinugawaonsen (Itoen) however was quite bad. I mean, it was cheap... and had a rotenburo, but clearly nothing had been renovated in that hotel since 20 - 30 years, so essentially since it was build during the bubble years. It is a real pity, there are so many onsens towns that have been utterly destroyed by huge hotels that are now either completely abandoned or are in a severe state of disrepair / not well maintained. And these towns are very ugly. But still enough people go there to enjoy a day away, the onsen and dinner. Although in that hotel dinner was the worse of the worst. But yeah, I survived this as well and I had a very huge (but ugly and slightly unclean) room. 

SW 2023 D2 - Around Aizuwakamatsu

Route: Around Aizuwakamatsu
Bicycle: 41 km

Average speed: 13.3 km/h
Total ascent: 341 m
Riding time: 3:03 h
Weather: Sunny, humid and definitely too hot for me, 31C

In principle I wanted to ride up to Ouchi Juku, an old post town on the way from Aizuwakamatsu to Edo, but it was way too hot for me. I had incorporated two other (minor) sightseeing spots into the  tour today... and at least I managed to visit those. 

The first stop of the day was a shrine I had found on google maps that looked interesting, and was on the way to Ouchi Juku... and more importantly today, in an area with old, tall, shade-providing trees. 

And right today there was a very small temple festival ongoing. With elderly men dancing, singing and playing the flute, and a very young boy (the grandson of the flute player) playing the drum with great enthusiasm, experience and energy. 

The show of sake under the 交通安全 (Road safety) sign was a bit surprising. But I guess also sake needs to be transported safely. I stayed at this shrine and its surrounding small forrest for quite some time, before going for a soba lunch in a very small, very village, restaurant, which crucially had air conditioning. By this time I had decided to give up on Ouchi juku (still too hot and now also too late) and was actually contemplating to return directly to Aizuwakamatsu... but then continued to the second attraction of the day. A temple up on a hill overlooking the fertile plains around Aizu Wakamatsu. 

Plains knowns for their fruit cultivations. On the way to the temple I passed a fruit processing plant that also sold directly to customers (quite typical in Japan) and got a peach. I had left it to the saleslady to select the right peach for me. She choose a rather hard one (hard like an apple), which however was very tasty. While I was standing outside eating it, an other employee (or maybe the owner) came, and gave me an other huge peach that had some small damage (so probably they couldn't sell it) that was softer and more juicy... but I found the harder one more delicous. 

The temple did remind me a bit of Kiyomizudera in Kyoto... only that this one only gets a few visitors a day, has a much nicer view and even a small cave behind the temple. 

Cycling back to Aizu Wakamatsu I could see that it was raining in the distance and it seems that in Wakamatsu itself it had rained very heavily... but I only got the rainbow: 

SW2023 D1 Koriyama - Aizuwakamatsu

Route: Koriyama - Lake Inawashiro - Aizuwakamatsu 
Bicycle: 82 km
Average speed: 15,4 km/h
Total ascent: 873 m
Riding time: 5:20 h
Weather: Sun, some clouds and still very hot and humid (Wahoo says 27C, but definitely was more)

I planned this trip a few weeks ago when I hoped that by mid September the temperature would be a bit cooler. And while it is definitely cooler than at the peak of the heat in August it is still very hot. But finally cyclable. 

My bike also was in repairs over the summer so it’s the first longer ride in a long time. 

I started yesterday after work and went already (by Shinkansen) to Koriyama, so that I could get an “early” start today. Finally it wasn’t that early, but still early enough to do everything I had planned for today. 

Koriyama is one of those very ugly Japanese cities with a lot of new (and not so new anymore) buildings that don’t create one city together but just a bunch of ugly buildings interrupted by a lot of car parks around the station. 

I cycled out of the city and up and up a relatively quiet road. Which at one point looked frighteningly steep, but actually wasn’t that steep and perfectly cyclable. 

Once up the rest was downhill / flat just with a little bit of up and down at some points along the lake. I went straight down to the lake in the expectation to find (a lot) of restaurants, but that wasn’t the case. It was mainly ample camping areas around the lake. Mostly fir people doing “day camping”. (Not sure if that’s a thing outside of Japan, but here it is quite widespread. People go to some nature location, build up a huge tent of just a shade, bring thousands of things with them: foldable chairs, tables, BBQ sets, has cookers, food, cutlery… the list seems endless and the cars full with stuff. Often it seems that even the cars are specific for transporting all this camping equipment. So while I didn’t find a restaurant by just going to the beach, google maps came to my rescue and found a place really close by. 

From there I continued my ride on the west side of the lake sometimes was really nice views over the lake and the mountains behind it. This lake is the fourth largest in Japan, I’ve already done the full circle off the first, second and third largest lake, but not of this one. I did a little bit under half of the lake, because my goal was a Aizuwakamatsu for today.

Along the way, I also saw these small white flowers, which kind of look like a white version of rape. However, I learned on the next day that they are soba, buckwheat. 

After a very nice and gentle descend from the lake, down to Aizuwakamatsu, yes, the lake is above the city. I made a stop at Sazae temple to see its special pagoda, which is constructed as a double helix. You can actually visit inside and go up and down in one sweep. 

I knew that the castle was going to close at 5:00 and last entrance was at 4:00, so I thought I was a little bit late, but actually, it was not very far and generally downhill from the temple to the castle, so I made it in absolutely good time, no hurry and could visit the castle as well today. As so many castles, also, this one was reconstructed only after the second world war. It got original destroyed sometime in the 19th century, but not during any war but apparently rather as a planned demolition of the castle. There were even pictures how it looked like before the demolition, and it didn’t look like it was ready for demolition, but that’s what they did. Only to rebuild it, this time in concrete, about 100 years later. But they did a reasonably nice job, and specially from the outside it is very scenic.

Inside is a museum, all in Japanese, about the history of the region, the samurais, the wars that were fought and lost around Aizu, and the helmets of the samurais, which must have inspired the designer of Darth Vader. 

From the castle it was a short ride to my guest house, where I will be staying for two nights. With all the heat, I was obviously drenched in sweat, but found very a nice onsen / sento close to Wakamatsu station, which had an incredible number of different pools, some of them outside some inside, with different waters and all this at the very cheap price of only ¥450. And I was early enough to finally get an Akasuri (Korean body exfoliation), which I had hoped to do a few months ago back when I was cycling around Fuji lake, but didn’t manage to get an appointment. 

Iwate - possible routes (also includes a bit Akita, Fukushima and Niigata, but by train / car)

Relaxing Onsen  ⇒ 2 days, no riding

• Shinkansen from Hachinohe through Morioka to Tazawako, 1:15 h
• Rental car from Tazawako and into the onsen area → Actually bus turned out to be totally okay. 

Here a link to the actual stay and ride on Tazawako and on to Kakunodate. 

Route Morioka - Tono - Hiraizumi  ⇒ 4 days, 185 km

• Shinkansen from Hachinohe to Morioka (30 min)
• Ride bicycle along the valley from Morioka to Sendai
• See Garmin IWA Morioka - Hiraizumi - Matsushima - Sendai
• Ride along the river valley
• Day 1 - Morioka - Tono ⇒ 85 km (or less)
• See IWA Morioka - Hanamaki - Tono
• Relatively flat until km 60 (from 100 to 200 m), then 2 x 330 m
• Possibility to take train from km 40 (or also later) to Kashiwagidaira, from there a cycle road leads down to Tono 
• Accommodation
• Tono (2 nights)
• Day 2 - Tono ⇒ 42 km 
• See Garmin IWA Tono roundtrip
• Partially there is a cycle road into the valley of Tono
• Relatively flat
• Here a slightly shorter alternative trip through Tono valley: http://cycle-guide.panasonic.jp/special/yamahon/108.do
• Attractions
• Tono Valley
• Nice countryside, bicycle friendly
• Small villages
• 3 different open air village museums
• Onsen in Takamuro Suikoen
• Temples, Shrines...
• Fukusenji
• Kappabuchi Pond
• Day 3 & 4 - Tono - Hiraizumi ⇒ 56 km 
• Train from Tono back to Hanamaki, then riding along the valley to Hiraizumi
• See Garmin IWA Hanamaki - Hiraizumi 
• Gradually descending
• There is a cycle road from Hanamaki to Kitakami
• Attractions
• Hiraizumi UNESCO World Heritage
• Konjiki-do
• Monstu-ji (garden)
• Other temples
• Accommodation
• Hiraizumi (2 nights)

Here the link to the actual ride done.

Onwards to Aizuwakamatsu & Ouchijuku by train ⇒ 2 days, 9 km

• Day 1: Hiraizumi to Aizuwakamatsu ⇒ 9 km 
• Part 1: By bicycle: Hiraizumi - Ichinoseki station
• See Garmin IWA Hiraizumi - Ichinoseki
• Part 2: By train: Ichinoseki station to Aizuwakamatsu, by train, about 3 hours, one change of trains
• Accommodation: Aizuwakamatsu (2 days)
• Day 2: Aizuwakamatsu and Ouchijuku
• By rental car
• Attractions
• Aizuwakamatsu: Castle, Temples, Old houses...
• Ouchijuku Post Town
• There is a bike lane from about Amaya to Kitakata with some interruptions. Not sure it is useful.

Excusion to Tashirojima

• Possible excursion from Hiraizumi to Ishinomaki (either by train or bike) and then on the ferry to Tashirojima (cat island)

Onwards to Niigata and Sado Island by bus and ferry ⇒ 1 day, no riding

• Aizuwakamatsu to Niigata, by bus about 2 h 
• Niigata to Sado Island per ferry or jet foil, about 1  - 2.5 h