Japan 2019 - Summary

Summary of 6 weeks in Japan:
Total distance cycled: 1,725 km
Distance travelled on ferries: 475 km
Number of days riding: 36
Number of flat tyres: 2

One of the major issues with cycling in Japan is to find roads with little traffic but not too much change in elevation. We did not encounter many other long-distance cyclists and the official cycling trails are usually just a day ride. Here is what we did to find good cycling roads:
1) Research other people's blogs;
2) Decide which places to visit;
3) Find back-country roads to connect these locations;
4) Go to Google Maps with contours and check that the change in elevation is not too brutal;
5) Go to Google Earth and check that the road does not show too many trucks and is not too wide, e.g. roads with no median strip are usually good; and
6) Find where to camp or stay in hotels/ryokans along the way.
Our daily limits are 1,500 m for elevation and 90 km for riding distance. Japanese road numbering is random, i.e. a smaller number is not necessarily a bigger road and the same number can start off as a narrow road and all of a sudden turn into a four-lane highway. Preferably this research should be done before going on the trip, not like us!

Japan has beautiful sewer lids, specially designed with each town's claim to fame! Some of them are even painted. Here are some examples:

On the last day in Osaka we visited the aquarium, which is very impressive. The main attraction is a gigantic tank with two whale sharks. The visitor viewing area is circling around it like a cork-screw. A few final photos below.

Japan 2019 - Back to Osaka

It is amazing how you can cycle from Kyoto to Osaka by following a green strip along the river with a cycling path all the way! So much easier than navigating the congested roads with hundreds of traffic lights! They even built some special cycling corkscrew access to an island!

We didn’t know that in Osaka you have to pay to park your bike and received our first parking ticket warning. Imagine trying to get your impounded bikes back 24 hours before the flight and with my very limited Japanese! We investigated and found a close-by underground bike parking station.

We had three more days in Osaka, plenty of time to explore some more sights, visit a few museums and wash the bikes. Some places are a bit crazy, a restaurant full of tame owls that you can pat, seafood restaurants with a big tank where you catch your own fish, a pub with sumo sized meals (I watched a skinny Japanese eat a basketball-sized bowl of french fries!) and outdoor rock climbing on a sky-scraper!
Shinsekai is a fun place to visit at night time.

Kirsten loves the Japanese creme caramel, so I wanted to buy her the sumo sized one!

Shinsaibashi and Dotonbori are busy night and day!

We had another great meal here in a teppanyaki restaurant.

The Museum of Housing and Living has a real size reconstruction of a street in Osaka during the late Edo Period (1830s). Their attention to detail was amazing. They even changed the environment from day to night time, full moon, sunrise, clouds, thunder, fireworks. Very interesting!

This is a small model of modern city housing in Japan.

The Swissotel kept our bike boxes for six weeks, so we spent the last night above Namba station again.

Japan 2019 - Flora and fauna

The most iconic and common Japanese species we have seen are the Japanese maple, the Eastern Great Egret and the Koi and turtles, which seem to be present in every pond in every Japanese garden.

Japan apparently has 130 species of land mammals, which seems a lot for such a small land mass and such a high density of population. I was surprised to read that Hokkaido has Brown Bears and Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu have Asian Black Bears (we didn’t see any). When travelling on a bicycle many animals can’t hear us approaching, but run away as soon as they see us. Like the Japanese macaques, of which we saw many, but only managed to photograph once.

Some deer are very shy, while others are used to humans and ignore us.

Butterflies are very difficult to photograph. There were thousands!

We saw and heard many different birds, the smaller ones mostly in the forests, raptors circling above us and herons in the rice paddies and rivers. This little one probably fell out of its nest.

On rainy days we encountered many frogs, salamanders, snails and worms. Even the snakes seemed to be more active in the wet.

We called these drop worms. They are caterpillars hanging from trees on a silky thread and letting go when you pass underneath. Annoying but beautiful.

Loquat trees were everywhere and the fruit is delicious, with a texture and flavour similar to a kiwi.

The Japanese seem to be avid gardeners. Every spare patch is planted with rice, vegetables or flowers and the forests have mushroom farms.

And then there were many wild flowers.