Kyoto to Hiroshima

It’s been a week since Kyoto. Some great riding and experiences to get to Hiroshima, here’s the post!

So I left Kyoto in the pouring rain- my first day of riding in the rain for ages! It was the first time it had rained in several weeks, so it meant Indie got covered in grit and grime, not cool.

Back in Osaka I checked back into the hostel I was in a few days ago (J-Hoppers), and headed out for a tour of Osaka run by one of the hostel’s (cleaning) staff..
In reality it was more of a wander through a shopping district in the city. It was ok, but I’m glad it was free- it’s the sort of thing I can do by myself!
Here are some photos:




Beer vending machine!!

It was 6 guys, and no girls. One of the places the guy takes the group to usually (a place where you can try on kimono’s) was closed, so instead he took us to a Maid Cafe. These are cafe/bar’s where the hostess dresses up in a maid’s uniform and serves men coffee and drinks. She also sings to the crowd. It was rather weird. Unfortunately no photos allowed inside, so here’s the sign from the street.

So I spent a couple of days in Osaka- having a look around, doing some work and researching and planning my route to Hiroshima. I decided to take a 4 hour ferry from Kobe to Takamatsu (back on Shikoku). To save on accommodation I decided to take the 1am ferry, which worked out pretty well.
I left the hostel in Osaka in the middle of the afternoon, to ride to Kobe and buy my ticket in case the ticket office closed early. It was a nice ride, although it was all pretty urban (as most of my riding in Japan has been so far).

I had a bit of trouble convincing the guy to sell me a ticket for the 1am ferry- he kept trying to sell me one for the next sailing (which was at 8pm), but then I wouldn’t have had any accommodation. Luckily I got my ticket and went for a bit of a ride around Kobe to get some food and kill the 7 hours I had to wait until my sailing! I found this nice fountain in a park:

So I boarded the ferry at 1am, and managed maybe 4.5hrs sleep before we arrived in Takumatsu just as it was getting light (which happens pretty quickly this close to the equator). I had a ride around the quiet town and discovered another big castle..

It was only 60km to the guesthouse I was staying at that night. So I took a nice coastal route, which including riding through some relatively unpopulated areas.

I found a nice park about 10km from the guesthouse and decided to hang out there for the day! It was right beside the sea and had a place where they extracted salt from the seawater.

That night I stayed at a nice little guesthouse called Mi Casa Su Casa. It was close to some really tasty Udon noodle places, and the host took me to one the next morning, and it was pretty cool.

I had a longer day that day, following the coast still, with a couple of headlands to climb over to add interest!

I used CouchSurfing for the first time that night, staying with Mark, a Kiwi bloke teaching English in Niihama on the JET (Japanese
Exchange and Teaching) programme. There happened to be a JET party that night nearby, and I tagged along. It was a great night, by the beach, and I really enjoyed socialising with a big group of interesting people who weren’t backpackers!

The next morning I was on the road reasonably early (considering the mild hangover) and getting some kilometres under my wheels. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t great- I could kinda make out a decent sized mountain range (averaging around 1600m), but it was too hazy to see them or get a photo. Especially frustrating as later on it cleared right up. But it was a 40km push along the flat to the start of the Shimanami Kando. This is a big series of islands linked by bridges that’s a really popular cycle route. The bridges are pretty new, and they put great cycle access- amazingly engineered access paths for bicycles and big wide lanes separated from the traffic. You pay about 500 yen to ride on them, which is maybe $NZ8 but it’s so worth it for the 70km of great riding. In between the bridges they even have a blue line painted on the side of the road so you don’t get lost finding the next bridge!

After the Shimanami Kando I spent a couple of nights in Onomichi (partly because I hadn’t booked my hostel in Hiroshima- noticing a trend?). Here I stayed at a new guesthouse called Fuji Hostel which seems to cater to cyclists (there was heaps of room for bikes in the front room).
Last night Indie shared the front room with a mini-bike!

It was a 111km ride around the coast to Hiroshima today, nice fast riding with good shoulders and sidewalks for bikes which gives a lot of time for contemplation.

For the first time I saw roadsigns with the radius of the corner on them!

And there was a mile-long tunnel with a separated part for cyclists so we didn’t have to breath the car/truck fumes!

So now I’m in Hiroshima. I’ll spend a couple of days here having a look around. It’s obviously got a lot of history. I guess what I hadn’t realised before I came to Japan was how big it is- these days it’s rocking a population of 1.5 million people.

From here I’m going to take a ferry back to Shikoku, then ride to another one to Kyushu. From there I’ll ride up to Mt Aso (Japan’s biggest volcano) and on to Nagasaki to get my ferry to China!

To see where I’ve been riding in this post, check out the map at the bottom!

As a bit of a postscript, I thought I’d throw in some more photos of Japanese survey marks!

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