Written by Dave

Yonotsu  (Kushishima Campsite) to Matsue – Long monkey day – (97k, 789M)

It was super quiet in the nice, small coastal Kushishima campsite. Although at some point it started rain – well technically it would have to have been no more than a couple sprinkles. We were in bed so early that’s hard to say that the rain woke us or maybe we’d already slept all we needed. I think it was around 3AM. It was windy at camp and by morning the tent was completely dry, so mentioning the rain hardly seems worthwhile J.

We were up at 5:15. I tried getting up at 4:00 but Nancy vetoed that one. When you have lights out at 7PM, a 4AM start doesn’t seem all that early. And with our longer day planned for today, 4AM seemed completely reasonable to me. Getting up at 5:15 and having a dry tent meant we were rolling down out of camp before 7AM. Both of us knew we had a 3k climb to start a long day so we were keen to start.

Morning views were limited to mostly rice paddies so progress was not slowed by picture taking. We did have, however, three Komoot deadends this morning. The first one was minor, we sorted it easy. The second was more involved but we didn’t have to backtrack and worked out a redirection. The third one was about a 500m climb and to rub salt in the wound, we had to backtrack all of it. We passed a lady working in her yard right near the roadblock. She yelled out good morning and something that Nancy didn’t hear and I couldn’t translate. After reaching the end of the road about 30 meters past her home, we worked it out. Luckily, all was redeemed when the woman stopped us on the way back by her house to give us a couple juice drink boxes. She had enough time to run into her house, retrieve them and be ready for our return. Perhaps we are not the first ones to experience this dead-end. Whatever the reason, it was nice of the Japanese woman to chase up a couple juices for us. Thank you!

All morning we played with following Komoot and staying on Highway 9. Because it was Sunday morning, the traffic was so light that mostly it was worth staying on 9. A few trucks passed us as the morning developed and we agreed to follow Komoot to get us off 9 more regularly. There was one really long, steep climb today. We toyed with taking the highway but decided we’d had enough trucks. It was a really hard climb but we were rewarded by seeing a couple Japanese macaque monkeys at the top in the deepest reaches of a bamboo forest that our tiny road went through. Sorry, no photos, they are quick and shy.

We were hoping we might see monkeys in Japan but it’s hard to get good information on them. Nearly every Google search of monkeys in Japan talks about the famous snow moneys that live in the Japanese Alps and use the nearby hot springs. It’s not clear if these are wild or fed monkeys and we had no plans to ride near them. Until today, we didn’t think we see wild monkeys. Well, we did! It was only fleeting but naturally, we were thrilled that we’d climbed the hill and were treated to a relatively rare sighting of wild macaque.

The road from the top of the hill dropped off towards the coast and we thought maybe we’d hit another dead end until an older chap out jogging caught us when we stopped to check the map and said that the road did indeed go through. For good measure, he followed us down the steep goat track leading to the sea. Once at the coast, we had a crazy Cliffside road that wrapped the coast through a couple small villages. It was easy to think that these villages are rarely visited. Sometimes we feel like Martians showing up in these places with our pale skin, bright clothes and bike gear. We can only imagine what people say to each other after seeing us zip past.

After a run of small villages we finally broke out onto a larger road and eventually into a clearly popular surfing area – think hip small hotels and small cafes. There were quite a few folks in the water looking for waves and also a good bunch of road riders out on bikes. Most of the roadies waved to us, many looked like they were kitted out in pretty fancy bikes and gear.

At the end of this section, we had to cut back across a more urban area near the city of Izumo. We trusted Komoot and ended up on a nice streetside bike lane. Rain was threatening so when we passed an interesting looking café, we pulled up and had a look. It was just about lunch time anyway. What a lucky stop it was at the Linq Café. Nancy had quiche meal-set and I had the green curry meal set. Both were just amazing in flavor and value for money. It took two photos for me to capture my $6.50 lunch special. It was way better than yesterday’s lunch!

After lunch we had 40k of what we feared mostly city riding to reach Matsue. Boy, were we wrong. We once again trusted Komoot and ended up first on the Izumo Route river levee cycling road, then the Shinjiko – Kohoku cycling road. The first road (really just a nice path) lasted close to 20k and chewed up a bunch of the remaining miles. At the end we had some sidewalk riding then the Shinjiko path came in and took us nearly into the center of town. Not bad for a city of 200k people.

We are staying two nights at the Green Rich Hotel. There are two of them here and we picked the wrong one in making our map but they are close so no big deal. We’re off now to have yakitori – I’ve been thinking about it since we arrived in Japan so tonight, that’s what we are doing (more on it tomorrow). It really was a good day today – from the monkeys to the goat track roads to the bike paths, well, we shouldn’t have worried. Japan delivered another pleasurable day on the bikes.