Written by Nancy (no kidding!)

After many delays, we are finally headed to Japan for a cycling adventure!  We had initially planned to tour the length of Japan in 2020.  We were researching and planning, and had even bought our plane tickets when the pandemic put a stop to that.  Then other things intervened (tree falling on the family house in Oregon, construction during a pandemic not recommended) to prevent us from getting back on the bicycle touring track.  But we decided we had to get out somewhere to get our cycling mojo back so here we are with a somewhat abbreviated Japan trip set to start on Wednesday.

The general plan is to fly into Osaka, the ride south through parts of Shikoku Island, including the well-known Shimanami Kaido cycling route across the various small islands between Shikoku and Honshu, and then head down and ride around the southern island of Kyushu. We’ll then work our way back up to Osaka, taking a different route to avoid repeating roads.  That’s the plan anyway – we’ll see how weather and terrain may change things when we are on the road!  Dave’s done a map of the route, though because Google maps doesn’t offer cycling as an option in Japan the map is done using the walking option.  We’ve got about 7 weeks to spend in Japan and a little bit of play in the plan so we may make some adjustments as we go.

We are looking at all of the usual challenges when travelling in a foreign country, the first being internet access.  We think we have sorted a data sim that will work in our phone, so hopefully that will work out.  That will give us capability to post our daily blog as we have done in the past.  We are headed into some remote areas though, so there will likely be some “off-grid” days down south. I finally convinced Dave that we needed a navigation device other than just the phone so we now have a GPS device with our route loaded into it.  That means that we hopefully won’t get lost at every possible turn – though I am sure there will be some wandering going on.

The language will be a challenge, but I have been studying Japanese on and off since college days (many, many years ago, when I spent a year living in Tokyo on a foreign exchange program) so am hopeful we can get by without embarrassing ourselves too much.  Many people travel to Japan without knowing Japanese at all, so knowing a few words and phrases has got to be worth something, right?  Actually, I should give a shout out to my current Japanese school, Nihongo Picnic , where I have been taking on-line classes for over a year.  I’ve got a great teacher (どうもありがとうございます,ちはる先生！), (junior editor’s note: now she’s just showing off – her Japanese is more than good) the classes are small and the lessons interesting, and it is a fun way to keep the brain exercised.  Highly recommended if you are interested in studying Japanese in a relaxed but structured way.  Of course, all of the mistakes I will make trying to speak Japanese in Japan will be the result of my own ineptness and not the responsibility of my teachers.  Actually, I think the plan will be to send Dave in to babble incomprehensively a bit and then anything I say will sound better! (Junior editor’s note: Yes, my Japanese is incomprehensive and I babble – this will be fun!)

We are taking our camping gear and hope to camp quite a bit, but we will also try to stay in local hostels and inns.  As we understand, just rocking up (or cycling up, as the case may be) on the day and asking about a room is not always well-received so booking ahead may be required.  Obviously that’s difficult sometimes on a cycle tour, as who knows what may happen on a day that may affect where you end up.  But we’ll try, though many of these small places are not on any booking site and phone calls are required.  I expect my Japanese will not be up to snuff to make phone calls, so that will probably be a challenge! We can always pull off into the woods somewhere if we need to…

Other than interacting with the locals the thing we are most looking forward to is the food.  Ah, sushi, sashimi, ramen, yakisoba, donburi  – so many delicious foods to look forward to.  And, funnily enough, the convenience stores in Japan have great nutritious food so we are really looking forward to lots of time spent in front of 7-11s, Lawson’s, and Family Marts eating delicious food!  There’s some comfort in knowing food will be easily available, though we may need to do more planning when we head to the rural southern areas of Kyushu.

Now we are off to do the final packing. Our early mornings at Cycle Oregon have put us in good stead to catch our flight out of Portland at 6am on Wednesday. We land in Osaka on Thursday to begin the adventure!