Bicycling Japan: D10-D13

Day 10-13: Uncle Gann's Island (no biking)

So. Uncle Gann's Island. He found it while looking for a place to make traditional wooden Japanese boats. The art of making these boats is dying so he wanted to contribute to the movement of keeping it alive and hired a carpenter with the knowledge. He's had quite a few made and has and donated them to universities and kept some for people to look at. He built his "summer home" on the island with the intention of making it a place where students could come and study boat making, etc. It's like, amazing. And the island is like, amazing. We ate, drank, slept, and ate again, went sea-shell hunting, kayaking, and walked around the island (which takes about 45 minutes).

All around really pampering and it made me really soft and really wary of continuing our trip!!! Thanks Uncle Gann.

Uncle Gann's friends who own a dairy farm in Fukushima also came to visit. They were super fun and we had many entertaining nights.

Ushima, Uncle Gann's house on the right. He designed it himself. 

 

There are all these little islands surrounding Ushima with interesting statues and buildings from the old days. 

Uncle Gann with "breakfast"

He can be a bit crazy at times.

Enjoying the view (through the window)

The OMFG biggest spider ever. GROSS.

Yes, we drank all that. And then some.

Hard to see, but one of Uncle Gann's Japanese boats.

Uncle Gann's organic lemon orchard. To the left is a neighbor's garden. She's 81 and tends to it all on her own. 

Bicycling Japan: Day 10

Day10: Aosahana - Paradise Uncle Gann's Island (~49 miles)

Up early, out of the beach and onto our scheduled destination--Uncle Gann's Island! Well, it's technically not "his" island--I'll explain later.

To get to Uncle Gann's Island, we took the "shimanami kaido" or the island-wave roadway, a gorgeous  route that island hops across six islands and takes you from Honshyu to Shikoku. It's a big highway but with a really awesome bike route/pedestrian route right next to it. It was great.

I got general directions from my Uncle, but we were fortunate to bump into some Japanese guys who lived in the area and were cyclists who told us that we had to take a ferry from Onomichi to the first Island, Mukaishima in order to start our bike ride. Turns out one of them is here in California biking around for a month!

Our very helpful guides who told us how to start the route.

A map of our route.

Jason looking giddy on the ferry ride.

First bridge from Mukaishima to Inoshima

Second bridge: Inoshima to Setoda.

Third bridge: Setoda to Omishima

Fourth Bridge: Omishima to Hakatajima

It's 50 yen (~$0.50) to cross each bridge if you're on bike. Pedestrians are free.

The route is really nicely marked throughout the islands.

The only crappy part...the bike entrance to the bridges is uphill. gah!

Once on Hakatajima my Uncle picked us up and we took the ferry to his intsy wintsy island of ...30 people!!! Ave age: 70?? maybe? 

Waiting for the ferry to take us to oh oh ParaDissssseee!!!!!!!!!!!

Bicycling Japan: D8-D9

Day 8: Kyoto - Ako (train)

The letter "red" is the first letter for the city of Ako (赤穂).

We were on a bit of a schedule this time because we wanted to get to my uncle's island home by April 6th. So we cheated again, and took the train from Kyoto to Ako (train station Banshu-Ako) to expedite our traveling. I'm not sure about my feelings about travelling on trains with folding bike+lots of gear. Given it was golden week, it was pretty crowded in the train so we had to stand the entire time and occasionally almost sit on our stuff. Even if it wasn't GW, it would have probably been just as much of a hassle (as we repeated this once more).

Bum camping #4: under a bridge.

We camped under a bridge this time. It was really cold in the morning so we had jackets on and were peeling them off to start our bike ride when an old man ran up to us and began chatting and asking us what we were up to. When we told him, he gave a big sigh of relief and said "ah! I thought you were about to commit suicide! So I got worried and ran over here to make sure everything was okay."

ummm....thanks?

Bike fixing a broken spoke on my back wheel.

Day 9: Ako - Aosahana (need to confirm location and mileage, but around 40 miles)

From Ako, we traveled along the coast. At one point, we couldn't figure out how to get on a bike-friendly road and the only option we had was the high way, which is closed to bicycles. Since we sort of didn't have a choice, we jumped the fence and rode on the highway. It was not too bad and we got a great shot of a seaweed farm.

We had lunch at a really pleasant park next to a river and camped out at a beach for the night.

Bum camping #4: the beach somewhere between Ako and Okayama. 

Bicycling Japan: D6-D7

Day 6: Lake Biwa to Kyoto (~25 miles)

We decided to "cheat" a little and take the bridge located at the bottom of the lake so we didn't have to ride around it to get to Kyoto. The bridge was really nice, equipped with a pretty substantial pedestrian/bike path on the side (I don't care if this is the result of some crony building infrastructure to get money, but the ped/bike paths were aMazing).

The beautiful bridge (pic by Jason)

....too bad it was uphill

On our way to our destination, Jason, who has an eye for anything bicycle related spotted a "keirin-jo", or a bike racing track. We sneaked a peak and J even caught a guy training on the tracks. Pretty cool.

Unfortunately, we happened upon Kyoto right at the start of  Golden Week , meaning our chances of of getting any beds at a hostel were slim to none. Somehow, the bum camping gods were with us, because we were able to acquire TWO nights at the same hostel! yippee. The parks were nice and all, but nothing beats a soft bed.

The folks at the hostel told us about a vegetarian restaurant called Sunshine Cafe, which had really good food and amazing interior decor. Afterwards, we wandered around the downtown area, had a snack, and checked out Gion, but didn't come across any Geishas. darn.

Din din at Sunshine Cafe. 

Ladies preparing "nori-mochi", delicious grilled mochi wrapped in nori. 

It was like, amazing.

Antique Taxi.

Day 7: Walking around Kyoto

The next day, we devoted to walking/biking around Kyoto. Given the massive number of people in the city, it was a bit challenging to get around and find things but we were able to see Kiyomizu-dera, a really impressive temple a bit higher up the hill and also check out the Kyoto University campus. We also befriended a young Mexican guy who was traveling around Japan and was at the same hostel as us and had dinner with him. He had stayed at a capsule hotel in Tokyo, which sparked our interest for a future stay.

Went by a knife shop. It was amazing!!! I went and done bought a knife too--at a smaller, more quite knife shop. So excited.

Octupi on a stick!

Sesame frozen yogurt!

Kaiten-yaki: flour pankakes filled with sweet bean. Ohhh drool. The machine was pretty cool too. The guy in the back is delicately snipping off the little edges that stick out so that the final product is perfect.

Rows and rows of pickled veggies.

Rows and rows of fresh tea....

...and of course, why not end your day with this notice by your hostel bunk? WTF???? (in Japanese, "sit" is pronounced "shit". I'm giving them a big benefit of the doubt here)