The Sanuki Highway

After spending last night figuring out how we were going to avoid Highway 11 today, we decided on a road that looked like it paralleled the big road for most of the trip, but was always just a few blocks away from it. It was a winding road called The Sanuki Highway, according to Google Maps. Sanuki is the old name for the region we are in, and we were instantly reminded of the Tokaido, a historical route that nobles used to take to Edo during the Shogun era. There was almost nothing written about it online that I could find in my brief research last night, but it appears to be a similar type of road, though used by traders to travel Shikoku. It was, up until recently, still used until the bigger roads were constructed. Now, it is a series of small roads, sometimes one lane, sometimes barely wide enough for a single vehicle, that snakes through the constant urban sprawl, up into the nearby mountains that funnel humanity towards the coast. Unless you had business on this route, you didn't drive it. No trucks could fit on it. It was, in a word, perfect.

Instead of this:

We had this:

An old inn, now a private dwelling

Occasional wooden signs showing the distances on the "Shikoku no Michi" (Shikoku Road)

Give me mountain trails over urban streets any day!

This smile was not here yesterday

It is also part of the larger 88 temple pilgrimage (henro) that Shikoku is known for. Several of the 88 temples, along with some of the smaller 38 temples that have some importance that we haven't yet figured out. We stopped at one of the temples along the Sanuki Highway. The monks were rather surprised to see a white guy and when I said something in Japanese, one of them blurted out "He talks!", as if I were Mr. Ed or something. They then used the few English words they knew("Thank you", "See you later") then began arguing amongst themselves about the proper usage of "See you later". It was a bit surreal.

There was a henro rest stop across the street from the temple, which was the first time we'd seen one up close.

Statue of a pilgrim

Spot where a pilgrim can rest (overnight) on their journey

It was a small open-air shelter, much like a park shelter. People walking the pilgrimage (it takes months), may stop here to rest, even overnight, for free. People will sometimes bring food or drink to resting henro, as it is considered good luck.

We stayed on this wonderful road until it finally ended, about 12 miles from out destination at Imabari. At one point, we had to detour by some temple grounds and into a country club on top of a mountain, giving us my favorite road of all time. Trees had grown up around the road, forming a canopy that turned it into a tunnel through the greenery.

It's hard to see how steep the road is here, but it's heading into the mountains

Eventually, we reached Imabari, the beginning of the Shimanami Kaido (mentioned briefly yesterday). It is a road with a series of bridges that connect Shikoku to several small islands to the north and eventually to the main island of Honshu. There is an entire separate section of the bridges and roads dedicated to bicycle and pedestrians. Because of that, it seems much of this city caters to cyclists. There were bike lanes everywhere, lots of bike shops, and outside every store were large cycle racks for cyclists to hold their bikes while shopping or eating, but not the kind you normally think of.

This rack was in the lobby of our hotel(!) for guests with bikes.

We cleaned up, then hit our second round of Coco Ichibanya curry. It is a great meal after cycling all day, and.... yeah, that's my story.

Sumi's favorite Summer Curry - chicken curry with veggies

I tried the new local special, Beef and Onion curry. That's a whole boiled onion there.

Overall a much better day than yesterday, which was really ruined by the last few miles of the trip. The rest of the day had been fine, up till that point. But numerous near-death experiences with oversized trucks will do that. Tomorrow we return to the Shimanami Kaido!

Warning, Rabbits Working Construction Ahead

I know it's some folklore thing, but I can't stop seeing a guy stomping on a bell pepper.