Uwajima to Nakamura

The rain had finally let up after going for most of the night, and we were anxious to get going. Clothes washed and dried, well rested, we were ready to head out. The hostel owner was up to see us off, even though it was well before 7:00

He loved our bikes and the trailers, and made us pose with them for pictures.

While riding down the mountain, we got to see the vista we missed while struggling UP the mountain yesterday

Next time, I'm sleeping in the bus stop at the bottom

Uwajima castle, viewed from the hostel

After another quick konbini breakfast we were off to get ourselves to Nakamura. The ride was gorgeous. Rather than try and explain, I'll post some pictures, but even they don't do it justice.

A pilgrim rest stop. Pilgrims on the road can stop at buildings like this and spend the night.

Some more great bridges

A restaurant featuring a very local dish, River Shrimp. Back in the Midwest, we call them crawfish and don't mistake them for shrimp.

 After a beautiful ride, we rolled in to Nakamura and headed for the train station, only to find, once again, no information counter. Wait, we ARE in Japan, aren't we? Turns out, the information center is actually its own building a few blocks down (whew!), so we headed there, booked a nice room WITH INTERNET with help from the woman at the counter, grabbed some Sukiya (Japanese fast food) and came back to the room to plan our day tomorrow and for me to catch up on all the blog posting.

Tomorrow, we head for the coast again, this time to stay on the Cape of Ashizuki!

And a few more odd/cute pics for you

Wait, we really ARE in Japan, right?

Our toilet bowl was sanitarized for our protection

The Road To Uwajima

Up early and ready to get going! We stopped at the nearby konbini and grabbed some breakfast, and found a great little park behind the store to eat breakfast in. It reminded me of all the things I loved about our old parks when I was a kid that have all been sanitized and child-proofed for, well, children. All the playground equipment was themed, metal and interesting, which of course means a little dangerous. There was no rubberized surfaces or plastic. It was sand, dirt and metal. Exactly what a playground should be.

Apple juice, yogurt and bread!

That, my friends, is a zip line. In a public park.

A jungle-gym ship!

So, after breakfast and a few rides on the zip line (OK, not really, though I kind of wanted to. I'm too big for everything in Japan, and explaining how I broke the poor city's zip line didn't sound appealing) we had two choices in getting to Uwajima. Take a major highway with no bike lane through the mountains for about 45km or take a tiny road along the coast for 75km. Sumi took one look at the mountains and said "coast!", so that's what we did. And it was worth it.

The coastline along the Uwa sea is dotted with small fishing villages that, in many ways, time forgot. You bike down a narrow one-and-a-half lane road along the coast, with a 300m sheer mountain face on your left and a 200m drop to the sea on your right (sometimes with a guardrail) for about 10km,

We had a guardrail this curve, so I felt a little better about leaning out to take a picture.

then you enter a small village where the buildings are built right up to the road, so opening your front door is a morning adventure if the delivery guy is running late. Some of the buildings pre-date WWII, and are classic, two-story wooden buildings with large, shuttered windows on the second floors. There were only a few elderly people out walking around, often giving it a odd, ghost town-like feel.

A more modern area of town

The road would take us up and down along the coast, sometimes inland just a little bit, where the vegetation got so dense, you felt like you were in a rain forest (the 100% humidity didn't hurt, either).

When trucks came by, we had to move into the bushes to let them through.

Another way the area felt like a land from another time was all the old artifacts of earlier days still around. The occasional bomb shelter was still standing, often covered in ivy or moss. Old signs from the 1960's were still up, sometimes by deserted buildings from the same time. Up in the mountains, there were lots of these:

motorized mini-train that carries supplies, and people, up the mountain.

These contraptions had to have been 50 years old, at least, yet there they were, most still in service.

FInally, the rain hit. It had been five days since the first storm was predicted, and we had seen nothing, but it came, at last, and we had several hours left to ride. At least it was a warm rain, so other than being soaked, we were in pretty good shape.

A pause in the rain to dry off. The stairs lead up from the village below. We were stopped at a bus stop. Villagers would climb over 100 steps up to the highway to catch the bus.

Finally arriving in Uwajima soaking wet after an 80km day and looking for the Youth Hostel we were staying at this evening (we still haven't been able to camp, with the threat of rain every day), we wove our way through tiny streets with no signs, and then a mile up a hill that was at least 300m and often at a 5+% grade to an old elementary school tucked in a forest in the mountain overlooking Uwajima that was turned into a Youth Hostel.

It was as cozy as it looks!

The proprietor was incredibly friendly and helpful. He apparently lived there with his kids and there were silly little things all over the hostel, like Hello Kitty towel hooks, Moomintroll stuffed animals, etc.  The private room we had was cozy, if a little odd

The room was huge, as it was part of a classroom at one point. The beds felt like adult cribs, but were comfortable enough.

After cleaning up, we headed into town(a good 20 minute walk) for some dinner and came across a shopping arcade, but everything was closed. Not abandoned, but closed for the day. It was a Thursday, with no visible holiday, at about 4:30pm. The arcade should have been bustling with people, but it was quiet and dark. We still don't know what was going on. We were so tired when we got back, we forgot to ask at the hostel.

The other attraction in Uwajima, other that the fertility shrine, is Bull Sumo. No, I'm not kidding.

The hostel had "wireless" if wireless meant you could surf the web like it was 1992. The speed was as close to dial-up as I had seen in many years. My e-mail took almost 5 minutes to check. I asked about an interent cafe, and there was one a few miles away. That was before May 3rd when it closed down, so there was effectively no internet in town. Great. I ended up making a poster in Photoshop using LogMeIn on my iPhone using my cellular connection to my home iMac, where Photoshop and the poster file were. That was fun.

Tomorrow, we head down to Nakamura for a ride along the Shimanto River. Another 80km day!

And some more random silliness from Japan:

They look so proud of themselves

Love the guy on the left rescuing a puppy with a helicopter. Can you imagine the US Army recruiting with South Park characters like this?

Be careful to them. They have done a lot of Tsunami awareness recently, for obvious reasons.

I feel bad that all I could think of when seeing this is the old Atari Pitfall.

To Yawatahama

Wow, so this is the first day we have had real internet since leaving Matsuyama. I'll break it up into individual days to make it more readable, but there won't be a lot of text.

So, we left Matsuyama bound for Uwajima, which was really quite a long way away. We had decided to see how far we got by noon, and figure out where to stay after that. On our way out of Dogo Onsen, we went through the shopping arcade as we usually did, but this time saw a rather interesting shop

It reads "Uguisu-ya". Uguisu is a small bird. Ya means shop. The large beetles? No idea.

It took a very long time to weave our way through the urban sprawl that is Matsuyama, and we didn't even get out of town until close to 9:30, even though we left around 7:30. So, finally climbing up the mountain just outside of town, we ran into a real o-henro (pilgrim). He was from Kyoto and biking his pilgrimage. We didn't get his name, so he is Henro-San

Henro-san. Smiling because he is going downhill.

Our goal was to avoid all the mountains and ride along the coast for most of the first part of the trip, a bit iffy since the weather had been forecasting rain all week, though we hadn't seen any. The result was a beautiful ride.

No mountains, yay!

Snake. Snake? SNAKE!

 So, we finally, and to turn inland to get to Yawatahama, the halfway point and our Plan B if something were to go wrong. It was already pretty late, as it took us so long to get out of town. The beginning was great, although the mountains really kicked our butts.

Beautiful park by a mountain stream. Most importantly, it had drinking water.

Some great little tunnels for bikes and pedestrians.

And then, finally, something went wrong. We had our first flat. Shikoku has a littering problem, relative to the rest of Japan. This means there are cans on the side of the road sometimes. Sumi managed to run over an exceptionally sharp one. So, we had to do some emergency roadside service.

Oh, right. THAT'S why she didn't go into surgery.

She did all right for her first time ever changing an inner tube. Unfortunately for us, the inner tubes I ordered (that matched the tire specs and were listed on the bike manufacturer's web site) were not the right size. They were a little bigger. Not too much, but enough to make it not fit well. We gave it a try anyway, hoping to get into town, but no luck. I ended up having to find the leak and patch it. We were very lucky it was just one small puncture. So we now have 4 spare tubes that aren't the right size, and the size we need is very non-standard. Great.

Well, with Sumi's bike up and running again, we limped into Yawatahama at around 3:30, pretty late to be finding a place to stay. We headed to the JR Station to look for the city information counter....to find that there wasn't one. This has never happened before. We looked around. I asked the guy at the ticket counter, who was able to give me a map with a bunch of local hotels. I called a hotel that I could see out the window of the station, Hotel New Toyo. The conversation started something like this:

Front Desk Woman: (in Japanese) Hello, Hotel New Toyo
Sean: (in Japanese) Hi, my Japanese is a bit so-so, can you speak English?
Front Desk Woman: (in Japanese) This is the Hotel New Toyo, how may I help you?
Sean: Um..

I loved how she completely ignored "can you speak English?". I guess that was my answer. The good news was, she was very good, both on the phone and in person, to speak slowly and clearly, so we had no trouble understanding what she was saying. We booked the room (it was the cheapest we'd stayed at the entire trip: $33/person), walked over, and all was good. She even gave our bikes their own parking spot in the parking lot! The down side was there was no internet (either in the room or via public wifi), but after all that had happened today, shower, dinner and bed was enough.

I'm embarrassed to say, dinner tasted awesome.

Don't judge me! You ride a few hundred miles over four days and walk by a McDonalds and not cave.

Tomorrow we pick up the second half of the ride to Uwajima along the coast. Rain in the forecast for the fifth day in a row.

A Day in Matsuyama

So, the rain that was supposed to materialize never did, so we ended up with a cloudy, but very pleasant day to explore Matsuyama. First up, we headed to Dogokoen, a park just in front of the onsen market street that houses the ruins of Yuzuki Castle, a predecessor to Matsuyama Castle. Mostly, the ruins are just overgrown, but you can still see some bits of foundation. There's also a number of nice areas in the park, including a Gate Ball field. What is a Gate Ball field? Why, a place where they play Gate Ball. What is Gate Ball? I had no idea until today. Go here for more information. Who are "they" that play Gate Ball here in Shikoku? Mostly older to elderly people. In Fukuyama, we passed a very large Gate Ball park with a covered field that was holding some major competition, complete with trophies. It was quite a bizarre sight. We didn't take any pictures of Gate Ball, since the people were pretty serious about it and I didn't want to make anyone feel self-conscious. We did take pictures of the rest of the park, though.

Lots of beautiful garden areas and tons of flowering lily pads

The very first hot spring source in Matsuyama. 

There were museums, as well, but we decided to get going and take a pilgrimage to Temple #51, Ishite-ji, so o-henro Sumi could stop by, make an offering and get her book stamped. It was a short walk (about a mile) from our hotel. Along the way, we got a good look at the Matsuyama Daibutsu (Large Buddha) on top of a hill overlooking the city.

16m tall. This picture was taken from roughly two miles away.

The temple itself was very busy. Most of the temples we have visited in Japan were mostly tourist attractions with some Buddhist activity. In Shikoku, it is the opposite. Pilgrims come to pray throughout the day, ringing the large bell, then reciting the Heart Sutra, sometimes in front of several shrines, and other devout Buddhists come on their own to pray. We tourists are in the minority, which is rather refreshing.

Front corner of the temple grounds. There were many more statues and other adornments at this temple than I'm used to seeing in Japanese Buddhist temples.

The Pilgrim passes through the gate.

Small jade statue in front of the main gate representing a folk tale I should remember, but don't.

Three story pagoda

VERY rare example of women in Buddhist works in Japan.

Another resident of the temple

After gaining enlightenment, as well as a stamp in her book and yet more souvenirs (the temples love pilgrims like Sumi!) we headed back towards the station to catch a train to downtown and Matsuyama Castle. The whole Dogo Onsen area is famous, both for the onsen and for Botchan, a novel written by Natsume Souseki in 1906. It's one of those books every Japanese school kid has had to read and write an essay on, one of the most read books in all of Japan. Botchan (like Souseki himself) used to hang out at Dogo Onsen, so there are many little things in the area that pay homage to him, such as one of the trains, dubbed Botchan Ressha (more here)

An original Botchan Ressha from 1888. Still runs every day!

Great little station, Dogo Onsen Station is the end of the line, has two tracks and only single car trams run in and out of it.

Ten minutes and we were downtown. The castle is itself in a park surrounded by downtown, so we took a short walk up to the entrances where you could get on a ropeway or chair lift (chair lift?) to head up to the castle. It was just a 10 minute walk up a hill, but we decided to rest our legs and take the ropeway. At the last minute, we (I) decided the chair lift would be more fun. It was certainly that, but it was also quite a surprise.

Tucked between boutique stores and a post office, a cable car station.

Now, let me point out a few things about this chair lift picture above.
1) No strap harness or anything keeping your butt in the chair.
2) The elevation that you can't see here extends up to about 300 feet or so
3) About ten feet below the chairs is a chain link "net" with steel beams to catch your belongings (or you) if something were to fall
4) I swear the chairs are recycled from my old middle school desks. Thin plastic that bends and groans when you move.

So, this contraption would never, ever be allowed in the US, yet retired Japanese tourists were happily riding it up and down. I loved it.

The castle was very impressive. Easily the largest we'd ever visited and clearly built for defense. There were three separate gates as you scaled the hill towards the main castle building and spiraling paths approaching each one. And the walls were enormous.

View from the lower grounds of the castle. You can see the city of Matsuyama and the coast beyond

The main castle, complete with mascot. 

The second approach

Go ahead, fill free

So, the armor was too small for big American Gaijin, but not for little Korean-American Gaijin!

Some mikan gelato for the hard working samurai

The museum inside the castle was quite nice, as well. They had "Extra Big" slippers for us monster gaijin (usually my relatively small American size 9.5 feet can't fit in the normal slippers), though there was not a single doorway I could get through without ducking, and I'm just on the tall side of average at 6'. The exhibits were in English and Japanese and the castle was very well displayed.

Time for lunch! We saw a Coco Curry House on the way in and we had yet to try one. We attempted to a while back in Akihabara, but it was so busy we couldn't get in. The curry was good and, amazingly, spicy! The Japanese usually think food is hot if you add salt. This was hot enough to make a spicy food lover like myself sweat!

Sumi's Level 2 Spicy Chicken and Vegetable Curry with a side Potato Salad (a scoop of potato salad on top of a salad)

My Level 5 Spicy Vegetable Curry. You are required to prove you can eat one of these before they will allow you to order Levels 6-10. I don't know that I would want to order anything spicier than 5. Not shown: my side Egg Salad (cabbage salad with a hard boiled egg)

So, we still had yet to try the onsen, but needed to get some laundry done before tomorrow, so we got directions from the front desk and carried our laundry bags over to the Matsuyama Coin Laundry:

Yup, that's it

A hallway with some washers and dryers. This is bigger than most laundromats in Japan.

And finally, off we went to soak in Dogo Onsen!

We got in just before the high school field trip did. Seriously.

The onsen was nice, but certainly nothing special. The staff spoke zero English, but had a few pieces of paper with some instructions. We mostly got it right, though no one told Sumi that there were three baths she could try, so she ended up waiting for me for almost 20 minutes while I bath-hopped, assuming she was doing the same. We received a pamphlet afterwards helpfully explaining all of that to her. I think the allure is more historic for Japanese visitors. Personally, I prefer the baths in Beppu and Hokkaido, but it was still nice and relaxing. Plus we got to see the emperor's bath and chambers, including the emperor's personal toilet, which is a lacquer hole in the floor and a removable sand-filled box underneath. Yes, the emperor of Japan used a litter box.

To bed early for us. Tomorrow, if it's not storming, we are looking to do a long 100km ride into Uwajima, famous for many things, but thanks to YouTube, mostly for their fertility shrine and annual fertility festival.

And, the weird and/or cute from Japan. First, from yesterday, the little baby chick mascot that Sumi took a shine to is Bary-san, the mascot of Imabari. He has his own Facebook page. Now some more pictures:

Toshiaki-kun, the Matsuyama Castle Samurai mascot

Sumi and friends

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess they didn't secure naming rights.