Warning! Long blogpost with many pictures ahead! We've cycled 57 days through Japan; only in Thailand we stayed slightly longer during this bike trip and that includes the 2,5 weeks in Koh Lipe without cycling. Where to start with a Japan summary, there's so much?... Maybe some more statistics first. We covered roughly 3200km; around 900 in Kyushu, 1000 in Honshu and 1300 in Hokkaido. We stayed around half of the nights in hotels or guest houses - more than we had in mind initially, more about that later - and camped the other nights, 27 nights in the tent in total (oh, and 1 night on the long distance ferry). And despite all that camping we spent... much more than in any of the other places before, more than double on average, well over 1000 EUR per person, per month.
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Shrine entrance
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| At the Great Torii in Miyajima |
Let's start with people. The Japanese are wonderful! They're a bit shy and distant but super friendly and helpful; I don't remember any unfriendly person here. They will get things done for you if possible at all. We've also had so many gifts; a bit of fruit (wow, that one time with the grapefruit and loquats!), some tea, some snacks, a drawing (the one from Kyoto Compass!), a picture, ... While language is certainly a big barrier, it was hardly ever a problem. Most people speak or understand at least a few words of English, or if not there's usually someone around who does, and if all else failed Google Translate still helped. People can be a little bit NORS and rigid, partially Japanese culture, partially what the pressure does to them I guess. We saw a lot of people who just looked depressed - maybe they weren't, but that's how they appeared. Especially in cities, it's almost robotic sometimes... People just move about, no expression, no emotion... In more rural areas there are lots of older people, often still working in the fields, quite impressive. Lastly, we really need to mention the incredible hospitality we encountered in some of the Airbnb's (the Tamino's in Hiroshima!) and even more, the final warm showers stay in Sapporo with Kenichi and Nazumi. It's been very inspirational to experience such limitless hospitality, far beyond expectations!
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| Prayer notes on a tree at a shrine |
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| Origami cranes for peace |
Cycling has been extremely varied. We've had lots of nice roads to cycle on, with or without cycling lanes. We've also had terrible roads, busy roads with hardly any place for bicycles, riding up and down sidewalks with borders, avoiding all kinds of obstacles. Japan seems to have a bit of a love-hate relationship with bicycles; there are quite a lot of bicycles, and there are bicycle facilities, but at the same time these are often not well maintained, bicycles can not stay parked on the street in cities, it's almost impossible to take them on trains or buses, ... Bicycle lanes are very haphazard, stopping and starting without reason or warning, changing sides of the road, going from a good, wide lane to a narrow one in terrible condition. So, while generally it's fine to cycle, it's definitely not always the case. We saw many people on bicycles but hardly any other tourbikers, but had a good time meeting up with Joke and Jurjan in Honshu several times, and Khalid and Emily in Hokkaido.
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| A fantastic bicycle path, between Fukuoka and Kitakyushu |
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| We cycled through many tunnels, some like this: well lit with cycling lane, others dark and without... |
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| A typical road in Hokkaido: straight, little traffic, beautiful view, and here even a stretch with cycling lane |
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| Another beautiful road in Hokkaido, now without cycling lane |
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| Difficult to take bicycles on trains and buses, but no problem at all on ferries! We took many ferries, some short rides, some long - like this one from Tsuruga (Honshu) to Tomakomai (Hokkaido), 20 comfortable hours |
In terms of scenery, it's also been very varied. We've had wonderful nature, mountains, rivers, valleys, national parks (very nice national parks without entrance fees, unlike Thailand), volcanoes. There is a lot of cultural heritage, especially on Kyushu and Honshu where you feel very much in Japan, much less in Hokkaido. Hokkaido is mostly about impressive, pure, wild, abundant nature. We've had impressive coastal scenery, and lovely lakes. We saw a lot of deer, foxes, birds (and birds, and birds, and... very noisy crows in Hokkaido), some dolphins in the distance, and did not see bears. About those bears... you'd really prefer not to see them in the wild, yet it would also have been fascinating... Riding through rural areas there are rice fields and many other crops, on beautiful hills (Biei!), with sympathetic small villages, small roads with little traffic. But also here there's a flip side to the coin; some stretches of our trip were really uninteresting, busy, boring. This was certainly true in and around big cities, metropolitans like we've had Fukuoka, Kobe and Osaka and some others. You can usually cycle safely on the sidewalks but there are so many traffic lights which hold you back constantly; and of course urban cycling is not interesting most of the time in any case. But we've also gone through other areas that were not so nice, like the short ride on Shikoku which was boring most of the time. It's normal when you cycle such a long time that some days are less nice; in Japan however, we felt that either it was really nice (most of the time!), or it was really less pleasant, there was little in between.
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| Around Mt Aso |
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| Rivers, forest, cliffs, ... |
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| Fascinating rock formations in the Takachiho gorge |
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| The rolling hills around Biei, with Daisetsuzan mountain range in the background |
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| Traditional architecture |
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| Quite a lot of temples and shrines in Kyushu and Honshu, much less in Hokkaido |
Camping in Japan has been very nice and convenient. In Kyushu and Honshu we mostly camped wild, as there were not so many campgrounds - and those we found were still closed most of the time as they only open during high season. It's not a problem however to find good places to pitch a tent, with (drinkable) water and often toilets in the area, and it's widely accepted in Japan. In Kyushu and Honshu we sometimes had the feeling people didn't really appreciate 2 weird people traveling on a bicycle and camping - why not rent a car and stay in hotels like everyone else? - while it was clearly very well accepted and appreciated in Hokkaido. Hokkaido also has so many very nice campgrounds, relatively cheap and even sometimes free, that it made camping even more attractive. Many campsites did not have showers on site, so we became creative to wash ourselves after a sticky cycling day in rivers, with a cold water hose, in a sink in the toilet building, and so on. We loved the onsen and bath houses on the other hand, often not far away from campgrounds; the natural outdoor hot spring in Daisetsuzan is one of the highlights and most beautiful memories. Still we stayed in hotels more than we expected. We stayed quite a few nights in hotels (and a fantastic ryokan) together with Jan and Christine on their holiday in Japan, which was great. We also stayed 5 nights in Kyoto. And then we chose a dry hotel room over a rainy campsite quite a few times. We had a lot of good weather, but we also had some very rainy days. Our very first day in Japan, from Fukuoka to Hita, was the worst we had, a whole day of continuous heavy rain. We had some more rain on Kyushu and Honshu, but not too much. By mid June we made sure we left Honshu to avoid the rainy season, and went to Hokkaido where it was supposed to be better weather - cooler and drier. The Hokkaido weather didn't really work out well for us however, and we had more days with rain than without, of which a few where very wet (and cold!). So we stayed a number of extra days under a dry roof and enjoyed that too!
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| Quite a lot of rainy days, especially in Hokkaido |
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| Camping in a park, Iwakuni |
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| Or camping at the beach, Tobishima Kaido |
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| Beach camping doesn't get much better than this |
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| Incredible campsites in Hokkaido |
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| Our bathroom for a day |
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| In the land of hot springs |
Japanese food was, not surprisingly, nice. Although we often prepared our own campfood, we also enjoyed restaurants regularly. Food is not too expensive in Japan, especially not if compared it to the astronomically high cost of accommodation. A nice ramen soup or cold udon for lunch, a great izakaya dinner (we loved izakaya, had some great times in Kyoto, Tsuruga, Obihiro!), some yakitori, delicious okonomiyaki (Hiroshima!) and sushi of course! We did miss some spicy food however. Buying food was mostly very easy, with plenty of supermarkets and especially convenience stores - although we certainly cycled through more remote areas where you needed to take supplies along. These convenience stores are incredible, they're almost everywhere and have all you need. You can also buy ready meals and have them heated, for a convenient quick lunch on the way. And, we had our almost daily (ice) coffee with some sweets at 7-Eleven, very nice and very affordable. We easily found bread for breakfast everywhere, although most of the time it was thick slices of industrial "sponge" bread; occasionally we found very nice bread in cities and even sometimes in smaller towns. It was easy to find good coffee everywhere, often freshly ground coffee, and it was difficult to find my much needed Nutella 😉
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| Who can resist this?... |
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| The lunch menu at a small restaurant; what will it be, noodles? |
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| Coffee break! |
When thinking about the Japan highlights, there are quite a few things that come to my mind. The area of Mt Aso in Kyushu was fantastic. We very much enjoyed West Honshu, following the Japan Cycling route from Shimonoseki to Hiroshima. Then the Tobishima and Shimanami Kaido towards Shikoku were wonderful, especially the Tobishima Kaido part in fact. And finally, most of Hokkaido was great. Specific highlights were certainly also Nagasaki and Hiroshima on the one hand, with their sad history that left a deep impression and Kyoto on the other hand, with all its incredible cultural heritage.
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| Mt Aso caldera |
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| The karst fields of West Honshu |
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| On the Tobishima Kaido |
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| The A-bomb dome in Hiroshima |
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| Golden temple in Kyoto |
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| Fushimi Inari in Kyoto, so impressive! |
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| Sunshine after rain, Hokkaido |
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| Shiretoko NP in Hokkaido |
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| Turbulent Mt Iwo |
To finish with, some words about carbon footprint... While cycling around it's not always easy to avoid using plastics and making garbage, and this was certainly true in Japan. Everything is packed in a lot of plastic, and plastic bags are widely used, it's often difficult to avoid getting a bag. Meals often still come in polystyrene boxes. We generated more garbage than anywhere else before, and just couldn't avoid that. There are hardly any garbage bins however, so often we had to carry the garbage with us for a while until we finally found a place to properly get rid of it. Garbage is being separated for recycling in Japan, but it's often complicated to do this (or maybe it was just difficult for us to understand); we had the impression that there was often a mix of garbage in the separation bins anyway. Just as an example: in some places you're not supposed to just throw away a plastic bottle in the designated bin, but even throw the cap and the plastic label in separate ones. Now, that becomes complicated and it seems many people just ignore it. I've seen several times that drivers just threw things out of their car while driving: plastic bags, cigarette packs and butts, cans and bottles. Awareness in Japan seems to be pretty low still, although that would be a bit contradictory if you see how many hybrid cars are out on the street, how many solar farms we saw and how clean it is everywhere. Surprising... Also surprising: cars are often left with engines running while parked! Seems there is still a lot of awareness building needed.