Micha's Blog

Kameyama to Tokyo

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• Weather: Mostly sunny
• Ride: 583km; highway past Nagoya, then windy roads all day (some closed), followed by highway through Tokyo
• Stay: home

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Woke up fairly early, but I had heard Ben leave even earlier. Despite not having a shared room for the last night there was no mistaking his bike! I got ready and was on the road in glorious sunshine shortly after 6am to try to avoid the traffic around Nagoya.

Skipping breakfast it was, after a couple of wrong turns in Kameyama, straight onto the highway for a pretty smooth ride past Nagoya. While there was some traffic about, it wasn’t too heavy and I made good time. By 7:30 I was off the highway and stopped at a combini before heading up into the mountains and smaller roads – time for the customary coffee and sandwich brekky!

My plan for today was to mostly to just keep off the highway back to Tokyo, so I strung together a bunch of smaller roads which roughly ran parallel to the highway a bit north of it, winding their way through the moutains.

The first stops were Habu dam and the shores of lake Mikawako, which is quite a large reservoir and seems popular with camping and watersports. Next was Narusawa Falls just off Route 420, which is below the road bridge, but to get to it it’s actually inside a camping area. When I got there they had just started a party with some thumping good music and a dance area overlooking the falls. I chatted to a couple of guys briefly, seems they were mostly regulars to the event. Reminded me a bit of our motorbike rallies, except with cars.

My next stop, and one which ended up taking a LOT longer than I had planned for, were the Yotsuya Rice Terraces. There’s viewpoints both from below as well as from above, and there seemed to be quite a bit of activity today with farmers working the terraces and several tourists wandering about. I chatted to a couple of guys who turned up on bikes, one on a nice old R100 BMW.

A couple of ladies were running a stall selling yakimochi (grilled rice cakes), but they were just starting up when I got there. So it took a good 20 minutes or so before the first batch was ready, during which time I mostly just chilled and enjoyed the ambience. The yakimochi ended up being delicious!

My next stop was the Sakuma Dam and the electric power museum, but it turns out the road leading past the reservoir was closed. There had been a landslide and they were still working on clearing and repairing the road. The road was already mostly cleared and, being Sunday, there was nobody around, so I snuck past the barriers and a bulldozer and went through the closed-off section rather than taking a very large detour. Naughty-naughty! But it was very nice having the dam road all to myself, with some impressive views out over the dam itself.

Sakuma dam was pretty impressive and the electric power museum is built on a hillside overlooking the dam. The museum is free, but unfortunately it’s all in japanese. It’s still worth a quick little look, if only for the lookout over the dam from which you can hear a pretty impressive triple echo if you shout or clap into the valley.

My onward journey was dogged by several more closed roads. I tried sneaking through one again on Route 362, but it was also closed because of a landslide which looked much more serious than the one earlier today, and had had no attempts to clear it yet so I had no option but to find a detour. Luckily it wasn’t too much of one in this case.

The entire area has green tea plantations, which I had not really seen before in Japan. I confirmed it by asking a couple of farmers who had just stopped their little K-truck and gotten out as I was taking a picture. Apparently it’s harvest season for the green tea.

I was pretty much on the final stretch back to the highway, it having gotten much later than planned by now, when I saw a pretty big pedestrian suspension bridge, so I decided to have one final stop. There was a little tea-house nearby and the kind owner made me a tea despite being in the middle of closing up shop. He tried to explain a little about the local teas and showed me the proper way to brew it. As well as enjoying a tea and a piece of baumkuchen I also bought some of the local tea.

I was pretty much on the final stretch back to the highway, it having gotten much later than planned by now, when I saw a pretty big pedestrian suspension bridge, so I decided to have one final stop. There was a little tea-house nearby and the kind owner made me a tea despite being in the middle of closing up shop. He tried to explain a little about the local teas and showed me the proper way to brew it. As well as enjoying a tea and a piece of baumkuchen I also bought some of the local tea.

The suspension bridge, it turned out, was the longest over the Oi river and heavily used by the locals before the road bridges were built to get between the town on one side of the river and the train station on the other. A family with several young kids were crossing it when I was there, the older ones running back and forth with the younger ones being a bit more cautious and clinging to their parents. I gave the young boy a high-5 and told him how brave he was being.

From there it wasn’t too much longer back down to the highway – just as well as it was getting dark. Highway is boring, but in the dark it’s much better than bumming around little mountain roads! I stopped at one of the highway rest stops for dinner before getting into Tokyo and doing the usual loop of inner-city highways to my end of town.

Home at last! What an epic trip, nearly 3500km’s, a couple of rainy days but overall good weather, and some amazing sights and experiences. Loved it and hoping to do more trips like this one.

Dorogawa to Kameyama

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• Weather: Wet, then rainy, clearing by late afternoon
• Ride: 331km; nice windy roads down to Nachi, then an incredibly boring highway to Kameyama
• Stay: Tabist Kameyama Daiichi Hotel; just a business hotel with no undercover parking for bikes.

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Woke up relatively early and moved back into my allotted room. Our original bedroom was very bright due to a hallway light, and Ben had already relocated into our sitting room, so I had snuck myself and my futon into the unused room next door, where I had a great night’s sleep. I did a bit of blogging and then a quick onsen before breakfast. We had decided to leave a bit later today to allow the rains to clear.

We set off around 8:30 and enjoyed some nice, albeit wet, roads. About an hour away from Nachi we parted ways as I decided I wanted to explore a more windy road while Ben preferred to stay on the main roads in the wet. Again, his decision was the correct one as the road I chose, while initially fantastic, soon turned into quite a challenge, being very narrow with lots of debris on it. It wasn’t quite one of the abandoned roads I’ve explored previously, but it was well on its way to becoming one. Still, there were some amazing views, amongst them a nice waterfall in a river bend with some rice fields in the foreground, an abandoned village with rice terraces now overgrown by trees, and some awesome views into the surrounding valleys.

In the middle the road suddenly became better and I encountered a group of work trucks and some people repairing a power line. I have no idea how the trucks got there because the road soon turned pretty bad again, and I’m sure all approaches were not suitable for truck traffic. I guess they must have managed somehow.. Nearly at Nachi I crested one last rise and unexpectedly found a lookout, shrouded in mist, where a couple of British tourists had hiked their way to. Poor buggers – they found the same conditions that they had left behind, cold and rain..

I ended up arriving nearly an hour after Ben at Nachi due to the much worse than expected roads and we quickly went up to see the waterfall. It is the highest free-falling waterfall in Japan, at 133m drop. It is also considered to enshrine the local deity. All up very impressive. We spent some time just admiring the sheer spectacle.

After a quick lunch we jumped back on our bikes for the stretch up to Kameyama, which we did mostly via expressways and highways. For what it’s worth, the E42 is dreadful – don’t get me wrong, it’s a good quality road, but about 80% is tunnels and dual-way with little to no overtaking opportunities, so rather unsuited for motorbike touring. Still, it’s a way to get from A to B relatively quickly by Japan standards.

Notwithstanding a minor routing mishap, we arrived at our accommodation in good time, checked in, and then had a conveyor-sushi dinner.

Time for bed.. Ben and I will split ways tomorrow as he wants to get up very early and highway it home as quickly as possible, whereas I will take the more scenic option at least until Mt Fuji.

From Awaji to Dorogawa

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• Weather: Started overcast, then rainy, but warm-ish
• Ride: an hour or so of highway to get past Kobe, then nice windy forest roads.
• Stay: Hot Spring Hotel Marubun; very nice! Owner let us park bikes in a shed next door.

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Set the alarm for 5am, but didn’t really get going till nearly 6:30. Quickly went across the road from the accommodation to check out the local shrine while sipping a coffee. It wasn’t too far down the road until we got onto the highway, which was mostly clear except for a small section through Kobe which had heavy traffic. Some interesting views of industrial facilities, harbours, and a couple of big bridges.

Once off the highway we stopped at a conbini for breakfast and a second coffee and then fueled up ready for the twisties. The roads were still dry so we could enjoy the first stretches of roads with our first stop being a shrine and waterfall. The complex was a lot larger and varied than expected and we spent a bit of time wandering about. The top waterfall had a couple of chains dangling in it, presumably for monks to climb up into the waterfall for mediation.

The next stop was a lookout tower, but prior to reaching it there was another one which we quickly stopped off at for a picture, but then turned into a coffee-stop was well. I had thought the top was just a lookout, but it was a tiny restaurant and the people in it were very friendly and chatty, offered to let me take some pictures and gave me some local wild cherries. So I ordered a coffee and sat down for a few minutes. One of the ladies in the restaurant rides a 125cc super-cub and showed me a picture of her on a local rindo.

We missed the next lookout tower – I was trying to be sneaky and went past the stairs leading up to it hoping that there would be another path to it further up the road. But the next path off the road just lead to another shrine. This one to a rain god, so I asked him not to bless us too much today!

Then it was just more stunning roads through beautiful scenery, but unfortunately the rain slowly started to come in, as Ben had predicted. We reached a town called Koya by lunchtime, where Ben had picked out a restaurant, and it turned out to be the seat of a particular sect of buddism, so there were tons of shrines and temples and impressive gate houses all over town. After lunch (katsu-don for me) we walked around a bit checking out the various sights.

By the time we finished it was a lot later than we thought and the rain had really started to settled in, no very heavy yet, but enough to make us abandon our plans for an extended loop of roads, so we headed straight to the accommodation in a place called Dorogawa.

The accommodation, the Hot Spring Hotel Marubun, is a really nice onsen hotel and the proprietor let us park our bikes undercover in a nearby shed/garage. After checking in we had a cup of tea in our rooms and now I’m heading off to sight-see a local cave.

As the weather was a bit meh I took an umbrella and headed out in my trusty Birkenstock’s to where Google Maps said the cave was. Ben reckoned it was a 10 minute walk or so. I took my time, checking out some local shrines, and then I got to the cave. Or rather, the bottom of the mountain! As Google had already predicted, the little monorail leading up to the cave was already closed for the day, so up up up I went, climbing the many stairs up the side of the mountain.

I finally reached the top, slightly out of breath, not really believing the cave would still be open, but it was. There were no more guided tours for the day, but, despite looking a bit askance at my choice of footwear, they let me buy a ticket and go into the cave.

It was a fairly standard japanese limestone cave. On the small side, with some stalactites and stalacmites, all lit up with differently coloured lights. Due to the constant lighting and damp conditions it’s quite overgrown with mosses, which is a shame. As I got out I chatted to a girl who had also been in the cave. We ended up going into the cafeteria to get out of the storm and tried the local cider, which was very nice. She was waiting for a couple of her friends who were, presumably, making their way up the mountain in what was rapidly becoming a full-on storm.

I eventually excused myself and headed back down the mountain, declining the very nice offer of the cave staff to give me a ride down in the monorail. I made it back down quite a bit quicker than up, did a bit more sight-seeing around town, and headed back to our accommodation for a well-deserved onsen and dinner. After dinner we took another short stroll around town to check it out lit up with traditional lanterns.

From Shikoku to Awaji Island

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The day dawned cloudy, but it turned out to just be a layer of fog at the top of the mountains. We set off in the cool morning light and by the time we reached an overlook the sun was already starting to break through the fog layer and shortly afterwards we enjoyed bright sunshine for the rest of the day.

As we were in the middle of nowhere there was no opportunity for our customary combini breakfast. Ben had grabbed a drink from the hotel vending machine, and I managed to bum a hot coffee from the breakfast room staff, which was enough to get me going.

The plan for today was mostly just mountain roads and scenery, the various stops were primarily to set the route. Nevertheless some of the stops were interesting and/or nice, such as our first stop which was the status of the peeing boy on route 32. Ben said there was a very famous peeing boy statue in Belgium as well. The first waterfall stop also had a vine bridge, which I crossed (for 550yen) and as it had just gone 9 a nearby cafe opened. So we enjoyed a french toast for breakfast sweetened with local honey. The cafe also attracted some local finches (or something) and tourists can feed them with some sunflower seeds, which I did.

After breakfast it was just epic road after epic road. We barely got any traffic all day and mostly followed the 439/492. One interesting place we stopped off at was the “scarecrow village” – a village with many scarecrows. A local lady started off making one in the likeness of her dad and then made more and more to make the village look more lived-in again. Later the village gained renown after a traveller posted an article about it and it went viral. Sadly many regional areas of Japan are suffering from depopulation as younger people move into the cities, leaving the older people behind.

The last spot I had picked out on the 439 was just a “scenic spot” but turned out to be a small shrine to a mountain pass god. As we were still pretty remote and it was getting on towards lunchtime I found a place on our route and, fingers crossed, it would be open unlike yesterday.. it also had some pretty good menu items listed, I was pretty keen on the grilled local fish.

When we got to the restaurant it was actually open, hurray! But it turned out that most of the listed menu items were from quite a few years ago. These days there was some takeaway sushi and soba or udon bowls with wild mountain vegetables, which is what we ended up having. Nevertheless it was pretty good and the lady running the place is lovely. All the other diners seemed to be locals and helped clear a table for us and offered us water.

Shortly after lunch we parted ways – I wanted to ride the 16, and Ben wanted to head to our accommodation on more main roads. I’m glad I chose the 16 – just for a change it was an epic road with no closures or dirt. Right at the start there were some nice waterfalls right next to the road and great views over the surrounding valleys. It eventually came out in Katsuura where I stopped at a little roadside station for an icecream. From here on the road was larger and smoother and I could go at a good pace, eventually getting onto the expressway to get through the urban conglomeration at the east end of the island and to get over the bridge to the next island. From the bridge I could see the whirlpools in the waters underneath, which are a local attraction. There must be some pretty strong currents between the islands.

I took the first exit from the highway and then hugged the coast to Sumoto, which was another absolutely amazing road. I had practically no traffic and made great time to the Sumoto castle ruins, where I stopped for a quick look-see. It must have been a pretty big castle in its day but these days only the massive foundations are left, although there is a replica castle tower built on the highest point. There are some great views from the top over Sumoto and the surrounding seas.

From Sumoto it was just a run to the accommodation, but still pretty nice crossing the island through some suburbs and farmlands. People were burning off brush or grass and there was a haze of smoke everywhere. On the other side of the island the sun was just setting as I reached the accommodation. Ben arrived only a few minutes later, we checked in, then went to the beach for a burger dinner out in the open.

What an amazing day!!

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Drive: X km

Stay: Sakia Stay, basically an overpriced hostel, but with clean and modern individual rooms. No undercover parking for the bikes, just a big gravel parking lot.

Yunogo Onsen to Hiroshima

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As Ben had predicted, the day dawned with heavy rain, which petered off a bit by 6am. But as we had pre-booked all of our accommodation, there was no changing of plans. So we got dressed in our wet weather gear and set off into the grey dawn..

We headed off to our first waypoint, a natural-hewn rock tunnel. Part-way there we split up as my GPS showed me a nice windy way and Ben wanted to stay on main roads in the rainy conditions. I should have stuck with Ben – the road I took got _very_ rural and the forks it wanted me to take led to several closed roads. In the end I ended up back on the main road where I tried to make good time to catch up with Ben. I never saw him and eventually ended up at the rock tunnel shortly after 9am, our agreed-upon meeting time.

I spent half an hour or so there, chatting to some rock climbers and another biker who turned up, but eventually decided to head off as Ben still hadn’t turned up and I had no signal. Our arrangement was that the we’d wait for a bit at the tunnel, then head off to the next combini to wait somewhere dry. Turns out Ben had stopped to warm up a bit and then decided to wait at his stop for a message from me before continuing on. So… back to the rock tunnel I went to try to meet him there again, and this time he turned up a few minutes after I got there.

As I had already seen the tunnel and surrounding area I explored a cave for a bit – it went in surprisingly far and after the initial crouch opened into a rather large passage with several bats roosting on the ceiling. Pretty nifty, although no stalactites – either the cave is too new, or no water can seep down. By now the weather had finally cleared a bit and the heavy rain petered out to a drizzle and then turned dry.

We set off again, this time following Ben’s GPS to avoid the tiny road which mine insisted to follow and soon were on the main roads. Not long after it guided us onto a tiny road though, so I took over, guided us past a very large dam and reservoir, and eventually we came out near a highway. We had a great ramen lunch, then jumped on the highway to Hiroshima. Boring but effective.

Once in Hiroshima we did a quick photoshoot of the Bomb Dome with the bikes before checking in to the hotel – just as it started pouring down rain again. Oh well, with a couple of umbrellas borrowed from the hotel we wandered off through town for some sight-seeing, but as I had already done the museum several years ago, I decided to head back to the hotel and warm up and meet with Ben again later for dinner.

We met up for dinner in an okonomiyaki restaurant, which was full of foreigners. Guess we found all the tourists! Dinner was quite nice, after which Ben headed back to the hotel and I wandered around Hiroshima for a bit checking out the lit up streets. On the way back to the hotel I saw a cheap Thai massage place and decided to spoil myself.

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Ride: X km

Stay: Oriental Hotel Hiroshima, no bike parking (but paid parking across the road); basically an upmarket business hotel.

Kaemoka (Kyoto) to Yunogo Onsen

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Up fairly early to a bright sunny morning. After packing our bikes we set off towards our first waypoint, a shrine in a nearby town.

Just before the shrine we stopped at a combini for breakfast and a coffee – our standard start of the day as there’s very little else open at this time of the morning in Japan. Caffeinated up we reached the shrine, took a couple of pics, and wandered about. A rather enthusiastic monk in torn gloves welcomed us despite the early hour and gave us various bits of information. In the end we bought a couple of blessed artifacts – Ben for general good luck, and myself one for good weather and and fair sailing. The complex also had a shrine to a goddess of beauty where I stopped off at. Too late for me, but maybe it will help someone else..

After the shrine we drove past the local castle which had, unfortunately, had some major modern rework done to it. It was also surrounded on most sides by modern buildings, so wasn’t very picturesque. Anyway, onwards! We headed off on the 479 (?) which turned into a single-track forest road with a fair bit of gravel and debris after we left town, but opened up on a rather nice stretch of windy road after the pass. I guess different prefectures, different levels of maintenance?

Our next stop was a silver mine just past a rather nice dam. It was interesting touring the public part of the mine and seeing the evolution of mining techniques from hammer and chisel and narrow crawl holes to pneumatic drills to blasting and finally open-cut mining. After the tour we had a nice lunch at the mine complex as there was nothing else nearby and it was surprisingly good food despite the cafeteria-like setting.

We set off again on some nice roads and our next weypoints were a small cast-iron bridge, which we skipped, and the abandoned workings of an ore processing plant. I originally thought it was a hydroelectric power station when I planned the route, then thought it might have been a sewage works based on a (in japanese-only) information tablet on-site, but then found out the real purpose from a nearby street sign. It was quite impressive and gave me vibes of Horizon Zero Dawn.

We then had a long ride to our final destination and a lot of it was rather uninspiring. Still, the road was in great condition with very little traffic so no complaints.

Once we reached Yunogo Onsen our first stop was at a little toy museum Ben had found out about online, which had a rather esoteric collection of toys of all ages and a pretty big model train layout in N-scale. As we left the museum there was a family checking out my bike so I offered to let the kids sit on it. Cute.

Our accommodation was only a few minutes away and after a quick onsen we were off to see the animated clock which Ben had read up about. On the way we saw a matsuri ostensibly being held for the local girls soccer club.

After watching the animated clock we wandered back to the matsuri, but then decided to eat dinner in a nearby izakaya instead as we wanted to sit down. Old men are funny like that.. We had a rather standard izakaya dinner, now it’s back to the hotel for onsen and bed, Tomorrow we’re off to the tour destination – Hiroshima!

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Drive: X km

Facilities: Yunogo Onsen hotel “Katsuragi”. We stayed in the annex, very modern and clean, but basic and a surprisingly long walk from the main hotel entrance. Could use facilities in main hotel, which has a nice onsen. Staff was very friendly. There was no undercover parking for the motorcycles, but they let us park in front of entrance on paving instead of the gravel parking lot.

Gujo Hachiman to Kameoka (Kyoto)

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Up not quite as early as recent days. Had a somewhat poor sleep despite the sound of the river – the futon was a bit hard, and Ben snored a fair bit.

The day dawned a bit grey, so we skipped walking through town as originally planned. Instead we stopped at a Family Mart for a quick brekky and then hit the road. Oh, and what a road! The first hour or two was just amazing, fantastic road, nice scenery, luvverly!

This set the tone for the day – mostly just amazing roads and views along the 477, which we followed for most of the day, skipping only some sections. We visited a waterfall which involved a bit of a scramble up a steep forest path followed by a stroll to the main waterfall, which had a tori-gate set up in front of it as well as a small shrine. It was rather nice.

We took the expressway for 100km or so to skip the urban conglomeration of Nagoya and got some great views of the harbour bridges. But overall boring as heck and a little bit strenuous as we had very strong winds.

Once off the expressway we had another awesome section of road. Our next stop was a shrine which was just off the main road. In fact, we had to follow a very tiny side-road to get there, but it was well worth it. There were several people about setting up for some sort of event, with plate-jugglers and everything. But apart from them there were no other tourists around so we could explore the grounds in peace.

We wanted to have lunch at a local beef place as the area is renowned for it, but the queue was quite long. After waiting 20 minutes or so we gave up and had lunch at Mos Burger instead. A bit boring, but it got us going again. Many more great roads followed along with a visit to a small forest shrine.

We finally reached the hotel and opted for a second room after having had shared accommodation for the last few nights. Then it was off to dinner at an indian restaurant not too far away.

Time for bed..

Suwa to Gujo Hachiman

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Up bright and early for a blast around the Venus Line before starting the day proper. It had cleared up overnight and while many roads were still damp, it was mostly dry now. There was still quite a bit of cloud cover about, but we climbed up and out of it into glorious sunshine and fantastic views of snow-tipped mountains poking out of the clouds in the distance.

Our first stop was Narai Juku, an Edo-period town that formed an important waypoint between Kyoto and ???. These days the government helps to pay for the upkeep of the traditional houses. Apart from one or two more modern houses, the main street looks fantastic and having gotten there quite early it was not so crowded. The town was also preparing for a local oiwei (festival) for tomorrow and people were busy putting up bunting and lanterns. We tried some traditional fried dumplings while walking around. After climbing up into the forest above the town to view the ruins of some family house (all that was left were some earthworks and a plaque..) it was almost lunchtime – so we had a curry-rice cooked after a 100-year-old recipe.

As we were concerned about the level of traffic on the main roads we reworked our onwards route onto more minor and windy roads. It turned out that we had not quite synced up as we ended up on a road which was blocked – something which Ben’s Google Maps shows, but my navi doesn’t.. so a bit more recalculations later and we were headed down another not-so-major road past a massive dam to reach our final destination – Gujo Hachiman. Due to all the route rejigging we ended up skipping the remaining waypoints which were originally planned for today. We also got to Gujo Hachiman much later than I had originally planned for – so no visiting the castle.

After checking in to our minshuku – which was way better than I had expected – we headed out to look around town. But first off to book a table for dinner at a restaurant which got recommended to us – and Ben had already shortlisted anyway. Unfortunately the restaurant couldn’t make a booking for us as they were full up for tonight.. but they did have space right now if we wanted it. So sacrificing some of the remaining daylight we had an early dinner of 2 different kinds of cooked chicken – a specialty of town. The one I chose was the one recommended by the proprietor and had some crispy garlic in the sauce, very delicious.

Following on from dinner we headed to Ben’s primary objective – a small waterway filled with koi. Overall the town has a lot of water flowing through it, there’s 2 rivers which join up at one end of town and plenty of artificial small waterways and streams. It’s extremely picturesque! I wanted to take a look at the castle and, after a roundabout walk we reached the road leading up to it – at which point Ben decided that he wasn’t really up for that much of a hike. So we split ways and I started up the mountain – taking some stairs through a temple as a shortcut and ending up on some rather unorthodox little paths through the forest shortcutting the road winding its way up to the castle.

I made it to the top with a tiny vestige of daylight remaining and took some pictures of the castle. There were some amazing viewpoints over the town and valley from the top too! I made my way around the back of the castle, poked about a bit since nobody was around anymore, and finally headed back down to town, this time by more orthodox roadways and paths..

At the minshuku I had a quick bath and now it’s time for bed.. fantastic falling asleep listening to the sound of rushing water (and Ben’s snoring..)