Over the river(s) and through the concrete jungle to Miyajima

We some sadness, we prepared this morning for our last ride of the vacation. Packing everything up into our backpacks one last time, we checked out of the hotel, climbed aboard our bikes, and set out for the ferry port on the far southwest side of town. Since we had until 3pm before we could check in to our hotel in Miyajima, we decided to stop at Hiroshima Castle, which we had yet to visit.

Impressive, and under construction

The old castle was destroyed by the bomb, though the foundation was still solid. The current castle, built in 1951, is a mixture of the original design and some modernizations to make it a good museum. Inside, there were a lot of exhibits showing the history of the region of Hiroshima, as well as the castle history. One of my favorite bits of knowledge from this visit is that during the Shogunate, merchants in the castle-town of Hiroshima were taxed based on the width of their shops. This resulted in a lot of very deep, very narrow shops. Gotta love medieval merchants gaming the system!

After the castle, we wove our way through the city. Hiroshima has, in my best estimation, 468 rivers flowing through it, and each one has only two bridges, and those bridges are not connected by any single road. I'm fairly certain we crossed each one at least once on our way out to the ferry port. As expected, it took several hours to travel the 17 miles to the ferry port. We arrived, sweaty and sticky (it wasn't raining, but the humidity was still near 100%) and desperately in need of some nutrition. The ferry station had...

Mango/Orange and Momiji Manju Soft Cream. That's nutrition!

Peach Coke? Well, peaches are nutritious...

Momiji Manju is a local specialty of Itskushima (the region we are in). It is a cake shaped like a maple leaf and filled with red bean paste. The ice cream had both red bean and maple in it. It was amazing. The peach coke? Well, I had to at least try it. I can now say I've tried it. We decided to wait on a real meal until we get settled in at our hotel.

Boarding the ferry with our bikes was surprisingly painless, and soon we were on our way to Miyajima! It's a short, 10 minute ride from the mainland.

Happy to be almost there

The torii (gate) of the Itskushima shrine is partially submerged during high tide

Arriving at Miyajima, there were a lot of tourists...

Waiting in line for a tabl...wait, what?

and deer. The Miyajima deer (Japanese Deer, much smaller than the North American White-Tailed Deer). They are all over, and they are not afraid of people. Luckily, they are friendly and curious, but they also know people have food, and are not smart enough to realize your paper map (or money!) is not food, since it looks like leaves to them.

We checked into our hotel, Sakuraya, cleaned up, then turned around and headed back to the mainland for dinner. Miyajima is a tourist island, and the food is both expensive and almost entirely seafood, so really not much in the way of choices for two slobs with nothing but biking clothes. So we rode the ferry back across and walked a few blocks to Cafe Gusto, a chain restaurant. Sumi ordered spaghetti, because that's what you do in Japan, and I ordered their "Beef Cut Steak", which is thin slices of beef that you grill yourself.

The garlic sauce was strong, and yummy

Feeling full, we headed back to Miyajima to watch the sun set. It was a peaceful, intimate affair with about 50,000 of our closest friends and their children. Actually, there were a number of overnight school trips, and they ALL needed their pictures taken at the gate. Luckily, we got there early enough to enjoy the sunset before being invaded.

Tomorrow is entirely dependent on the weather. Rain is in the forecast, but depending on the amount, we may or may not get to climb Mt. Misen and visit the shrines at the top.

The Peace Memorial and Kagura

As expected, it was raining when we woke this morning. We lazed around in our room for a good long while, deciding what to do today. Eventually we got our butts moving and headed to the station.

In the US, there would be protests...

We got our JR Passes for the train rides we'll be taking the rest of the trip, reserved some seats on the Shinkansen for Saturday, then headed to the tram station to catch the local train to the Peace Memorial Museum area, where there are a number of places of interest. First up was the old Hiroshima branch of the Bank of Japan. It was one of the reinforced concrete buildings that was blown out and burnt, but remained standing after the bomb. It has been converted into a museum filled with personal stories not just of the atomic bomb, but of other bombing survivors around the world. There is no English here, so it was a bit of a struggle for us to follow some of what was being said, but the overall impact was felt.

After the Bank, we visited the Peace Memorial Museum. We had visited this on our last trip to Hiroshima, and I was interested in revisiting it. Sadly, the museum was under "renovation and earthquake-proofing", so the exhibits had been moved to a much smaller side building. They were still there, and there were some new exhibits, which was nice. Unfortunately, about 45 minutes into our visit, every middle school in Hiroshima took a field trip to the museum. As the space was much smaller than the regular museum, it got very full and very loud very quickly. We decided we'd had enough, and headed out towards the Peace Memorial itself

Obligatory memorial photo, but still nice

The Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall. The building at the center of the bomb detonation and the only structure that was still standing afterwards. Now the "Genbaku Dome" is a symbol of the destructive power of nuclear weapons.

It was raining pretty steadily at this point, and we were hungry and tired (the week catching up with us, I think). So we had a conversation about where to eat. It went something like this:

Me: Well, we could try some Gyuudon or Okonomiyaki?
Sumi: Let's get some gyoza!
Me: OK, but maybe that place we passed yesterday?
Sumi: I want gyoza!
Me: How about...
Sumi: GYOZA!

And thus we found ourselves at Gyoza no Oushou, a chain of Gyoza restaurants that serve Chinese-inspired dishes, as well. Sumi did get her gyoza and some tonkotsu ramen, while I had the "Service Lunch" special, which on Wednesdays was spicy tonkotsu ramen and a version of omuraisu (omelet served over or stuffed with rice).

Generally Oushou is great at gyoza and meh at everything else, but the ramen was quite good, and the rice and egg concoction wasn't bad either. Full and sleepy, we headed back to the hotel for a nap....

Three hours later our alarm woke us up (good thing we set one). We roused ourselves and stumbled out to the train station to get ourselves to an evening of Japanese culture. Well, sort of. We were going to see a Kagura performance. Kagura is a form of ritualistic dance that dates back well over 1000 years. It was originally sacred dances performed by miko for the imperial court, but have evolved to a great degree, and there are multiple types of kagura. We were going to see Izumo-ryuu kagura, which is more of a dance tradition that enacts old folk tales. Every Wednesday night from April through December, there is a kagura performance in Hiroshima. Well, it was Wednesday, it was June, we were in Hiroshima. Kagura it is.

Of course, on our way to the show, the Hiroshima Carp faithful were trooping back to Mazda Zoom Zoom stadium, hoping this game wouldn't get rained out. They weren't alone...

What the...?

Lawson konbibi's mascot. A dancing squirrel, Mr. Popo

Yup, just another day in Japan.

The kagura was at a very nice local cultural performance hall. It consisted of four musicians (chuu-daiko, shime-daiko, chappa, and fue) and the dancers.

All of the costumes were hand-embroidered

The big battle!

Archers save the day!

The musicians were very good. The fue (flute) player, as we were told after the performance, was a 9th grader! These troupes are people who do this in their spare time, and she was as good as many professionals I have heard. The dancers...danced. I confess I am not much of a dance connoisseur. I did learn several important cultural details of import, however. I learned that people in ancient Japan walked in circles. A lot. And that when you fight a supernatural being, it requires both extended exposition by said being and a dance-off of at least five minutes.

All kidding aside, it was an interesting performance, and we were glad we went. But it was now 9pm, and well past our bedtime. We headed back to the hotel and called it a night. Tomorrow is our last cycling day as we go cross town (not a trivial ride) to the ferry port and visit the great temple island of Miyajima!

Go West, Young Man! ( to Hiroshima)

On this, our fifth day of cycling in a row and our last full day for this trip, we decided to bike all the way to Hiroshima.

OK, it wasn't quite that simple. Rain being in the forecast for this afternoon and all day tomorrow meant we only had a short window of good weather. Plus, there really isn't much anywhere to stay between Onomichi and Hiroshima, though we could have stopped about halfway at Higashihiroshima (East Hiroshima). Getting up this morning at 5 was only a little painful, as our bodies were starting to feel the wear of continuous cycling. It's one thing to bike every day. It's another to bike through mountains and crowded streets with bumpy roads, bad sidewalks, lots of poorly timed stoplights and a 20# backpack in direct sunlight with no shade every day. It's a lot of fun (except for that bit on route 11), but it makes you a little sore.

 Well, we really wanted to get out of Onomichi early, because the whole first section of the ride was going to have to be on one of the main roads, route 185, through the region, because the mountains and ocean squeeze down to a very narrow bit of land just west of Onomichi. Thus we found ourselves at 6am pedaling as quickly as our little bikes would go down 185 before all the trucks woke up and realized we were on their road, and we were mostly successful. Arriving in Mihara, the first town west of Onomichi, we were able to turn off onto a smaller route that took us up and over what I think was Arigahirayama.

Tunnel approach. This one was very short

On the other side of the mountain was Takehara, a historical town with a lot of things to see and a ferry to Ookunoshima, the Rabbit Island. Unfortunately, trying to beat the rain, we only had time to stop at the station for some lunch

Sorry guys, maybe next time (Presto!)

The station at Takehara was small, but had a 7-11 Kiosk where we could get some snacks to go along with our trail mix. They were running a lottery and we spent over ¥1000, so Sumi got to reach into the mystery box and pull out a prize. The last time this happened, she won a free bottle of placenta.

I wish I was joking

Well, second time's a charm. She won a free cafe latté! While that is only slightly more appealing to me as the placenta, Sumi was quite pleased, and this made our stop in Takehara a success. That and the cute little bird casts on the parking separators

 Back on the road, we were forced back onto route 185 for a little bit until we got to Akitsu, another small coastal town, and could turn off back into the mountains, this time to climb Kanashiokuyama. It was a quiet, beautiful ride up, bamboo and pine forests, old terraced rice fields, and nearly perfect weather.

Hand-made stone terraces

Reaching the top of the mountain, we were greeted with a few nice signs

"Welcome to East Hiroshima"

East Hiroshima City Saijo-cho

and a 1/2 mile long tunnel with no shoulder or sidewalk

Being all downhill, we put on our lights, waited until no one was around, then made a mad dash through the tunnel. There were only a few vehicles behind us at the end. It had also begun to rain slightly.

As we made our final descent into Saijo city, the inevitable finally happened. A flat tire. After all of the biking on really bad urban sidewalks and through overgrown brush, it was only a matter of time. I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing, but I've had so much practice changing inner tubes, I had the new one on and ready to go, including digging out the spare tube and pump and using said tiny portable pump, in ten minutes.

Sumi felt the need to capture this for posterity

It was sprinkling and lunch time, so we found a konbini and sat down to figure out what to do. The rain was light, but was likely going to get heavier as the afternoon wore on. There was nothing in East Hiroshima, other than farms, and we were likely not going to be able to ride tomorrow, as the forecast was rain all day. We were already wet. So, we made the decision to suck it up and go for it. We had no clue how to get to Hiroshima without riding on the busy highways, so there was a lot of map checking (in the rain), a lot of last minute detours to avoid route 34, which had become the main thoroughfare. We passed through the town of Kumano, which is known for its calligraphy (it even has a Calligraphy Brush Festival and Oversized Calligraphy competitions).

Calligraphy stores, schools, etc were everywhere

and possibly the creepiest pachinko hall decoration ever

a 15 foot tall king of diamonds is watching you...

and finally our third and final mountain of the day, Kanagadoroyama.

If you do enough biking in Japan, you start to see the tell-tale signs of "This one's gonna be steep". We refer to them as "the squiggles". It's when your map starts looking like this:

"The Squiggles"

Well, it was either that or get hit by a truck, so we opted for the former. And for the next 45 minutes or so, in the intensifying rain, we climbed. And climbed. And at a certain point, you kind of stop realizing how high you have gotten, or how long you've been climbing as you get lost in the activity and effort of the ascent. We saw perhaps four vehicles the entire climb, because who climbs an isolated, steep mountain on a Tuesday afternoon in the rain? Only an idiot would do something like that. Well, for their effort, these idiots were rewarded while turning a corner at the start of our descent, with an unexpected view of Hiroshima

The end is in sight!

The descent into Hiroshima was very steep. So much so, that with all the rain, we rode our brakes heavily all the way down, having to stop and rest our hands about halfway, and walking some of the steeper (10% grade) slopes to avoid sliding off the mountain. Finally reaching the town, it took another hour to weave our way through the suburbs of Hiroshima (a city of over 1 million) to our hotel located next to the Hiroshima train station.

Our hotel, the Hotel New Yorishiro, is a business hotel with some traditional tatami rooms. The shower was almost as wide as my shoulders (almost), meaning we had to stand sideways in the shower to fit, but it was clean, quiet, and dry.

After all that work (about 90km) over three mountains, we were starving. And where do you go when you are starving in Japan? Coco Ichibanya Curry House (round 3). As we left the hotel on our way to dinner, we were greeted with a flood of people looking like this

Go, Carp!

It appears that we chose a hotel very close (about 6 blocks) to the Mazda Zoom Zoom Stadium

It's actually on the stadium as that

where the Hiroshima Carp play. The game had been rained out, and all 45,000 fans were making their way home. It was definitely unexpected. As an aside, I've always felt that, perhaps with the exception of the Ham-Fighters (what does that even mean?), that the Carp was the silliest name for a baseball team that I had heard. While I still feel that way, the Carp (koi) is apparently an important part of Hiroshima history, so there is a good argument to be made. I'm still not convinced about the Ham-Fighters.

This also brought to my attention that the Mazda corporation comes from Fuchu, an inner suburb of Hiroshima. And that the company was originally called The Tokyo Cork Kogyo Company. And that the name comes from the Japanese god of light, mazuda. And that its first vehicle was the Mazdago autorickshaw

Looks like a tricycle to me

Enough of that rabbit hole. Tomorrow looks like all rain, so we're grounded for a day and will likely be playing tourist and visiting some museums and trying to stay dry.

The Shimanamikaido

Five years ago, we rode the Shimanamikaido from Onomichi (on the main island of Honshu) to Imabari as the first day of our trip to Shikoku with our trailers in tow. Today we planned on riding it in the opposite direction with just some backpacks. As I've mentioned previously, the Shimanamikaido is a series of bridges connecting some the islands between Shikoku and Honshu. At both ends there are terminals where you may rent bikes to cross one way, dropping them off at the other end. I recommend a better bike than that, if you are interested in seeing all 70km of the trail.

Getting up early to avoid traffic, we were on the road at 6, weaving our way north through Imabari to the trailhead. I was surprised at how little I remembered of this portion of the trip, but I suppose it being only our second cycling trip, being very jet lagged, and in Imabari at the end of a long ride, it would make sense that I wouldn't remember details. Well, we made the 6 mile trip to the trailhead in about 45 minutes, which isn't bad, considering all the stoplights and numerous map checks.

And we're off! 69.5 km to go!

Reaching the start, we stopped to get everything in order, put on sunscreen, check the batteries on the phone and GoPro, and we're off! The first bridge connects the island of Ooshima to Shikoku, and the waters below the bridge have several different currents converging in the same place, creating some very interesting tides, including a number of small eddies (whirlpools). It was fascinating to watch. And the view wasn't too shabby, either.

Early morning view

The cycling portion of the bridges are usually shared with pedestrians and scooters under 125cc. This morning, we were practically the only ones out at the first bridge, but that changed quickly. When we arrived at Ooshima, we were surprised at the number of scooters on what we thought was a bicycle path. Turns out, it WAS a bicycling path. There was a pack of ne'er-do-wells hoping to sneak by early to avoiding paying the ¥500 toll at the end of the bridge. How often did they do well? Ne'er.

I won't bore you with trying to describe the amazing scenery on this trip. We could have taken hundreds of pictures. Every turn yielded a different view. It's really a pretty spectacular ride, especially in good weather, and today was gorgeous. Clear, 78 degrees, no wind. A perfect day for cycling.

About halfway into the trip, in Omishima, we decided to stop for a snack at the local 7-11. In many of the rural areas of Japan, most of the konbinis have a small seating area for customers to relax and eat/drink whatever they purchased, which we take regular advantage of. This particular 7-11 had USB and electrical charging available to customers. Nice!

One of the best trail foods I've found is gorotto. It's jello, but without all the fake and sugary sweeteners added. Instead, they put fruit in a cup, pour the gelatin around it, sweeten it with the fruit's juices and let it set. It's sweet, filling, quenches your thirst a little, and mostly good for you!

Gorotto Mixed Fruit

When we arrived at the next island, Ikuchijima, we were greeted with a rather strange sight.

Large stone lemons?

Ikuchijima, it turns out, is Japan's leading producer of lemons, as well as producing other citrus fruit. There were a lot of lemon-related artwork and posters throughout the island. When we passed by a roadside market advertising fresh-squeezed juice, we couldn't resist. They didn't have lemonade, but hey did have fresh-squeezed orange juice

Yeah, this'll do

Hoo boy, was it good. Especially after about 50km on the road. We forged ahead to the next island, Innoshima, and to the next bridge, which is a special one, and one we both remembered very fondly, as it was our first bridge, and a unique one, at that. The bridge between Innoshime and Mukaishima is about 2 miles long and has two levels: One for cars and one for bicycles.

Our very own bridge

We finished a bit early (about 1) and our hotel check-in time wasn't until 3pm, so we hung out at a rest stop in Mukaishima for a while, enjoying the weather and the atmosphere. The Shimanamikaido is really a must-see for anyone traveling to this area of Japan. Truly remarkable vistas, great cycling, and good food.

As it approached 3pm, we headed to the ferry terminal, and rolled on for the 2 minute crossing to Honshu (¥110 each, with the bikes). Reaching Onomichi, we checked in to our hotel and walked to a nearby MosBurger for dinner. MosBurger is like the Wendy's of Japan. The food isn't as bad as McDonalds... That's about all you can say. But we were underwhelmed by the nearby choices and too tired to head downtown and try Sumi-chans (!), an Okonomiyaki place. We probably should have tried it, but sleep beckoned. The MosBurger menu had a bunch of specials, so I tried the "Spicy Double Cheese", which turned out to be two patties, tomato, lettuce, jalapeño peppers, chili, and "sauce". Sumi opted for the standard Tobira-burger with lettuce and tomato. They were surprisingly good, and the Spicy Double came with something I think all messy-on-purpose meals like that should have: a spoon. You see, once you've eaten the burger, there's very likely a bunch of "burger stuff" still in the paper sleeve. No reason it should go to waste, amirite?

Did I mention the Strawberry Shakes? I didn't mention the Strawberry Shakes.
There were Strawberry shakes.

Really better than MosBurger meal had any right to.

Tomorrow we suck it up and bike all the way into Hiroshima. Unless we change our minds. Or get up late. We'll see what happens.

Mi-kyan, the Ehime Prefecture Mascot, cautions about bad behavior on the trail

Found on most of the bridges, an anti-littering PSA. Apparently the boats are quite sensitive...

A hidden in plain view smiley-face at one of the rest stops.