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.
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!
I am back in Japan for 2 month of extended business trip. In the middle of this time there is however Golden Week, the longest ever, 10 days off in a row. (Thanks to the tenno abdicating).
I organized these 10 days at end of January, while waiting for a flight to Sapporo, that brought me, among other wintery things, to these very cute penguins in Otaru:
Now this is no excuse for organizing a GW that is counter intuitive. Essentially the plan is:
- Day 0 (= Friday): depart from Osaka to Tokyo
- Day 1 (= Saturday): Tokyo with NPC friends
- Day 2 (= Sunday): Tokyo with more friends
- Day 3 (= Monday): move back (by train) to Kansai and stay in Yamatoyagi, in inner Nara prefecture, where I was already 1.5 years ago and liked it a lot.
- Day 4 & 5 (= Tuesday & Wednesday) in and around Yamatoyagi: Day 4 Miwa, Day 5 Asuka
- Day 6 (= Thursday), ride down towards Wakayama
Until here while illogical to move first from Kansai to Kanto and then back again, the plan isn't too bad. (Note that the Tokyo stint was conditioned by the date the NPC friends meet). Now the following part has me moving (by train) across a lot of land... to get to Matsue and Izumo. Why? Because I have never been even anywhere close to that region, it seems to be very cycling friendly, and I simply wanted to go. So...
Route: Shin-Osaka to Arashiyama and up to Yoshiminedera
Total riding time: 4:47 h
Total ascent: 519m
Weather: cold (4C) and cloudy at the end in Arashiyama a bit of rain
For this long weekend I had originally planned to go to Matsue and Izumo... but the weather forecast did only get worse and worse over there for the long weekend, so I cancelled my bookings, and rebooked for Golden Week and decided instead to just stay in Osaka and head out from here.
Today was the turn of Yoshiminedera. A temple in Kyoto I would swear that I have never been to.
But before leaving Osaka, I passed by a bicycle shop and bought a new helmet. Unfortunately they didn't have a cap for below the helmet, so it was sometimes a bit cold at the head, because it was only about 4C today.
The ride from Osaka to Kyoto is the typical Japanese ride along a river. Nothing spectacular, but a good bicycle highway, wouldn't it be for these really annoying "traps" to avoid motorcyclists (and wheelchair users as a matter of fact) access the off limit path:
Riding into Kyoto before getting to nice areas, I also had to pass an area that was totally dedicated to cars. Not sure how many bridges, tunnels, roads crossed there within a few hundred meters.
Riding on, on the course I had planned on Garmin, by total surprise I came through a big shrine complex in Nagaokakyo.
After visiting the shrine I had lunch in a typical place geared to middle aged women, right at the foot of the shrine. Then I continued my ride towards Yoshiminedera coming through a real bamboo grove. Not a touristic one as in Arashiyama, but a real one, where bamboo are grown in order to be harvested.
Continuing on to the temple, the road got steeper and steeper (not that I was surprised, Garmin and google maps did tell me as much). And well, at a certain point there wasn't anything else but to push the bicycle up. Sometimes even only pushing the bicycle was hard work. But I made it, and was rewarded by a view over the plain of Kyoto:
The temple itself is nicely on the mountains and quite large with many different buildings.
It must be spectacular with the autumn colours, but now, the mountains around were still kind of grayish, as no leaves have yet grow.
The temple also houses the largest pine tree of Japan, or so they claim. At least it must be the broadest. This picture shows the tree from left to right:
Obviously well supported, so that all needles point upwards and no branch it as risk of falling.
After a thorough visit, it was time to head to Arashiyama and my onsen of the day. Last time I went to Arashiyama, I went to a small and tranquil onsen close to Arashiyama station, but this time I had selected an other onsen, Tenzan no yu and it was a good choice. Although the rotenburo area isn't very large (squarmeter wise) it is well used, with 2 different pools, two tubs and water to lye in. All very enjoyable. Also the architecture, specially of the rotenburo area is very nice. It imitates a shrine, with the typical lamps you see at so many shrines and even with this thick cord you see so often between a torii. The onsen seems to be quite popular with foreigners as well, probably because Arashiyama is popular with foreigners. And I can imagine that it could become too crowded. But today was okay.
As I had time I got my Akasuri scrub done. The lady, Korean as always, was very gentle, but still a lot of old skin particles were cleaned away. Then dinner in the onsen. Perfect plan!
After dinner I just had 2 km to Arashiyama station, from where I got a train back to Osaka and then rode to my temporary home from Awaji station. In Kyoto it was raining a bit, not too bad, but not nice. In Osaka luckily it didn't. And the weather forecast for tomorrow looks great: Sunny... but we will see tomorrow.
On the last but one day of this trip through Japan, only little cycling, but a very Japanese highlight, Sumo at the Fukuoka tournament and also my last onsen soak of this ride.
Bicycle: 5.2 km
Riding time: 26 min
Total ascent: 28 m
Route: Hotel to Sumo tournament
Weather: Sunny, 12 C
After 56 days cycling through Japan I finally made it to one last highlight of this trip, the sumo tournament in Fukuoka. I had tried earlier this year to get tickets for the sumo tournament in Tokyo, but although I went to the internet page about 30 min after the pre-sale started, the page did not work, phone did not work either and by the time I was in a conbini (that actually was not to far from where I was at the time), there were no seats anymore on any weekends... and I didn't want to take a day off, "just" for watching sumo. So when the tickets for the Fukuoka tournament started pre-sale in early October, I immediately went ahead and got my ticket for today, a Tuesday.
On this day with perfect weather, I left my dear brompton outside parked below the sumo wrestlers flags and got in Fukuoka International center for a full day of Sumo fighting.
Sumo is organized in different grades but during a tournament day all grades fight. Starting in the morning with the most junior devision and then scaling up little by little to the more senior and up to the maximum division. When I arrived, not terribly early in the day, but still hours prior to the first professional league match, only a few people were already inside the hall, as one can appreciate from the pretty empty ranks.
Between the 6 different sumo divisions there is not really a noticeable change or a break, but little by little more spectators arrived and also the sumo wrestlers got more ceremony. E.g. the typical gesture of throwing salt into the ring, only started at the Juryo division (the second highest). Below that much less ceremony. Not only the sumo wrestlers themselves get more and more colourful (from uniformly greyish mawashi for all, to individually and colourful mawashis in the high divisions. Also the sumo judges get longer and more colourful robes as the day progresses.
Every now and then between the bouts the ring would get newly watered and swiped and after most fights there was at least some cleaning of the ring.
After a few low rank fights I made my way back to the atrium, to get a bento box and was right in time to see the arrival of a few of the highest ranking sumo fighters. A lot of people (maybe even more than inside) where waiting in the atrium, educatedly behind a yellow line on the floor, for their heroes. Who swept through quick paced with their helping junior sumo wrestlers behind them, carrying their belongings.
Sumo wrestler
Junior sumo wrestler with the bags
I had my bento on my seat and after some time the higher divisions started. There was even this colourful entry ceremony of the Juryo and Makuuchi division. Here of the Juryo:
In order that there is only minimal waiting time between the different fights, the next two wrestlers already sit along side the ring waiting for their match. In the highest division only, they get their personal cushion, brought in by one of their junior sumo wrestler-helpers.
Although the time to wait for the next sumo wrestler to enter the ring is small, the wait for the match to actually start gets longer from Juryo, as wrestlers do more and more ceremony. Here an entire match from first entering the ring to the actual match:
Here the fight also was actually quite long. Often it is only a few seconds (see the last few seconds of the video below):
Before the makuuchi division started, the reigning yokozuna performs his "entry dance" (for sure there is a technical, religious term for it):
Not after each fight, but from time to time even publicity comes through the ring, but as it is a sacred space, also the publicity is in ancient packing:
And here the final fight of the day, between Hakuho and Ichinojo, which ultimately was won by Hakuho, allowing him a few days later to win the third tournament this year by 14:1.
After an entire day of sumo, I concluded the day with my last onsen soak on this travel in an super-sento very close to the sumo hall.
Bicycle touring Japan - Ride maps
For details on the bicycle tour today in Fukuoka, checkout the below maps:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
