Japan 2023 Notes

Aren't the roads busy?

Isn't it expensive?

What about language?

1. The back road riding of Japan is outstanding.  Japan features an impressive road system with courteous drivers. The rural areas are quiet because many young people have moved to the cities so the "intimate" old roads often carry very little traffic.  The larger expressways and new highways take most traffic. Japanese cities are relatively easy to ride with a plethora of bikes on the wide sidewalks/pathways. Inevitably, cyclists may have to ride busier roads to reach their destination, but many of them have pathways/sidewalks. You can watch clips of cycling back roads in the video link towards the bottom of this page.

2. Decades of low growth and low inflation combined with a weak Yen make Japan very affordable. Japanese travel costs are significantly lower than in USA & Canada. Accommodation costs are similar to Europe but restaurant meals are considerably lower than in Europe.

3. Japan is well organized and the people are helpful, so the language barrier is not an issue. Smart phone free apps provide  conversational and menu translation by Google Translate & Lens. Mapping and routing information (eg Google Maps, GPS applications) support navigation.

Creating the route. Although the Japanese back roads are fabulous, you need to choose them carefully. Our main objective to was to ride on interesting roads with minimal traffic levels. I developed the route with an emphasis on quiet roads and made a gpx route using Ride with GPS (RWGPS). I searched out river roads and smaller coastal roads. Rindo (forest) roads are terrific but are sometimes hard work (hilly). In built-up areas, cycle pathways were sometimes available, often along rivers and canals to avoid traffic. After developing a route, I converted it into .kml format and looked at it in 3D Google Earth, looking for nearby alternatives and options to make further refinements. I also used Google Street View to take a look at some of the sections where I had traffic concerns, looking for pathways, if necessary. I also checked some of the tunnels ahead of time for length, sidewalks and traffic levels with Google Street View.

Navigation. Once in the field, I was somewhat disappointed with the performance of the premium RWGPS (perhaps the 300km gpx files were too big/long). So, I made use of Gaia.gps for which I already had a premium subscription and had already loaded the maps and gpx files on my phone. Japan has wide cellular phone coverage and I often used Google Maps on the road as well, particularly to locate particular places such as restaurants or temples. Typically, I would have looked  ahead with Google Maps for restaurants and places of interest, and saved them as "favourites". Most road signs were in Kanji and in Roman script, but they were largely irrelevant when navigating with a digital map. Our actual track is available in gpx format from links on each of the trip reports.

A few standout sections of note on our Shikoku ride would include:  Kiki to Hiwasa, the coastal #147 between Hiwasa and Murgi, the None River #101, Nahari River roads, coastal #47 west of Kochi City, the coastal #320 between Awa and Tosa-Kure, the old roads along the Shimanto River,  #352 along the Soro River, through the centre of Western Shikoku on the #304 & #409 (hard work), the old unnumbered road high above the Yoshino River on the east side south of #45 (more hard work), and the Iya River #32. On an earlier cycle trip (Kagoshima to Hiroshima), we were impressed by the coastal stretch north from Uwajima to Yawatahama, and of course the Shimanami Kaido (largely for the numbers of Japanese riders we encountered). 

Standouts on our Ki Peninsula ride: Hiki and Shiro Rivers, the Koza River, the back roads into Nachi Falls, Shingu to Hongo was nice on the east side of the Kumano River, our route from Koyasan to Dorogawa and then onto Yoshino was hard but quiet, and the #15 from Yoshino River to Inabuchi Rice fields was a nice, quiet forest climb. The Keinwa bike pathway into Osaka was convenient and away from traffic but we did not find it to be exceptional riding.

Cautionary note about the Wakayama 800 along the Wakayama coast: the Wakayama Prefecture has designated a number of cycle routes and marked them with blue lines. At times the blue line is no more than a blue line on a busy, narrow road. I had been forewarned and designed our route accordingly, riding inland on some fantastic alternatives. If you look at a map of the prefecture, you can see the E42 expressway parallels the #42, but east of Susami (at Esumi), the expressway ends, so the traffic levels increase on the #42 and cycling is not recommended. The #42 south of Gobo to Minabe also passes through mostly urbanization. You can ride inland or take a train to avoid such sections.

We found credit cards were widely accepted and made full use of them. We pulled cash out of Seven Bank (7-11) ATMs, largely for restaurants and convenience stores (not all Japanese ATM's accept foreign cards). Restaurant prices are low for a developed country. Sometimes we had full restaurant meals for as low as 5 USD, and most were below 10 USD, with only a few exceptions. 

Since our first visit to Japan in 1986 when we camped and hitch hiked, we have moved up the food chain and travel with a larger budget. Accommodation was our biggest cost. We intentionally stayed in some fine places at reasonable cost. We averaged 100 USD a night for two, usually including breakfast and sometimes including dinner at ryokans. We could have easily reduced the average accommodation cost by 25% or more if we wished to. Prices in Japan are driven by the large domestic market and with negative population growth expected, so I would expect that Japan will become even more affordable in the years to come.

Our aim was to have a full, comfortable experience, not necessarily to travel cheaply. Staying in ryokans (traditional Japanese inns) and onsen hotels are unique to Japan but they are generally more expensive than hotels but they enhanced our travel experience. We visited 20 different onsens (a few were public but most were on the accommodation premises) during our 7 weeks. We opted for central downtown hotels, sometimes cheaper "business hotels" (nice, but smaller rooms) and guesthouses. The advantage to guesthouses, was that the owners/managers were often English speaking and you could gain more insight into Japan. On this trip, we also rented houses for some multi-day stays, especially when we first arrived and during Golden Week. House rentals costs are relatively modest in Japan. We didn't stay in any love hotels, motorcycle rider houses or "warm shower" home stays, which add to the tapestry of Japanese accommodation choices.

I looked for accommodations on Google Maps. I booked almost half of our stays with Booking.com, followed by Agoda and AirBnB. I also used Japanican. In some cases, I booked directly, sometimes navigating Japanese language websites using Google Translate. Note that Booking.com allowed for payment closer to the arrival date, while Agoda often charged my credit card immediately  (though still allowed for a no-fee cancellation). All our reservations were honoured. I opted to book everything in advance, knowing that I could alter dates if required. In the end, I cancelled only one booking (no penalty). 

Japanese double beds can be quite narrow, so we opted for twin rooms when available.  We were generally very happy with our accommodation choices and would like to single out our favourite house rental: Tamanoura Sea House in Shimosato, near Taiji, Wakayama (玉の浦sea reserved on Booking.com). 

Eating out and eating in are some of the real joys of Japan, a true food nation. We tried to avoid having meals from convenience stores, because there was more joy in restaurants and supermarkets. Restaurant service is quick and efficient. Once you have decided what to order, the process moves fast. We founded servers were patient with our Google Translate tools. As our trip was over 7 weeks, we took breaks from restaurant food and enjoyed self-catering and shopping in supermarkets. 

We did find that in the areas that we toured in Shikoku and on Kii Peninsula, that the road side stations (Michi-no-eki's) were less impressive than the experiences that we had on an earlier trip through Kyushu, but they were still worth looking out for (there is an app for that too!). Soft ice cream aficionados are well looked after at most Michi-no-eki's.  

Going through some of the key food options in Japan (restaurants normally specialize in various food types)....

Ramen houses were largely found in cities and usually had an interesting vibe with a rapid turnover of customers. Most of them had machines from which you selected your ramen type, which was a snap for Google Lens. 

Teishoku, or set meal, restaurants were perhaps the best overall value restaurants with a main, rice, miso and pickles on offer.

Noodle restaurants offer a choice of hot or cold noodles (Udon and Soba),  often available with tempura and were crowd pleasers on our tour. 

Sushi (either bespoke of conveyor-belt) had probably the largest price range. Supermarket (and convenience store) sushi was cheap. Kaiten-zushi (conveyor-belt) was also super cheap but it was worth ordering the premium items because the basic offering seems to have shrunk to keep the price down. You can spend much more and get more at a proper sushi restaurant, though they often offer set combinations. 

We had a few meals at  Okonomiyaki (a distant relative to pancakes) places and we found them a little wacky and quite filling. They are not my favourite Japanese food type but they were always some sort of an adventure. 

We had a couple Kaiseki meals (traditional multi-courses) and they were very good, but are obviously more expensive than regular meals.

Karaage (fried) chicken and Tonkatsu (pork cutlet)  were other options. The fried chicken was often quite flavourful but we found the pork cutlet option a little too plain for our liking. Although beef is relatively expensive in Japan, we found it to be prepared very well (eg, kalbi short ribs, steak, hamburger, yakinuka). Japanese curry restaurants are cheap and also surprisingly good.

Indian restaurants varied in quality; some were excellent and others served cheap slop food, but most offered naan bread.

Konbini (convenience stores): we often purchased onigiri (rice triangles), karaage (chicken fried on the premises), ice cream bars and of course beer and potato chips.

Japanese breakfasts: yes, they are different than Western counterparts and they are part of the attraction of travel. Embrace the adventure. I admit that we sometimes took a break from them, but they were fun, especially the better quality breakfasts. There were often individual items that we couldn't identify and I would sometimes describe them as "inoffensive".

The Japanese service industry is so switched-on and helpful that language was rarely an insurmountable barrier.  Foreign tourists are not expected to speak Japanese.  Google Translate & Lens have made travel into the Japanese hinterland much easier. In our three weeks in Shikoku, we saw only one English language menu, and we sure didn't have problems ordering food. Restaurant menus are easily translated, even in advance from either a menu photo posted on-line (Google Maps) or outside the establishment.  

Most hotel receptionists spoke some English, but on some occasions, we used Google Translate Conversation to organize things. Hotel staff were used to using Google Translate and they would often reach for their phones when they saw us coming. The conversation mode can facilitate some fun situations. The Google Lens is a particularly fun facility for translating signage, food labels, etc. Inevitably, the exotic sign in the middle of nowhere said "no dumping" or "road closed".

Our trip was from late March to mid-May, 2023. We did not ride in the rain (just in some light drizzle). We had a little more  rain than anticipated, though it was sometimes at night, or it ended by mid-morning. Over 7 weeks, we "lost" 3 or 4 days of riding to rain and made up the time with more direct routes and sometimes used trains to leap ahead. I kept an eye on incoming weather (mostly on "windy.com") and found that precipitation seemed to be difficult to predict with any level of accuracy for more than three days out. When it rains in Japan, it can really rain hard.

On the flip side, the cooler and slightly wetter spring we encountered meant that we did not have hot days. We mostly had daytime high temperatures hovering in the low 20C's, with just a couple of days that hit 25C until we reached the end of our trip in Osaka. We could have started our trip a couple of weeks earlier (early-mid March). By June, it starts to heat up and it becomes more humid so many touring cyclists head for Hokkaido in summer.

Although we did not make extensive use of trains, they came in handy. Hopping on a train to skip a section, avoid a rain event, getting to and from start and end points can be useful or sometimes essential. On most Japanese train routes, bicycles must be completely covered. Therefore, travelling with a "rinko" cycle bag is an excellent idea (we used Montbell large bags). The rinko bags are good "insurance" if you need to travel quickly. I used Google Maps to determine train times and fares. We were fortunate that the trains that we took were not busy.

There is a case to be made to take trains in and out of larger cities as it seemed to take about half a day of riding through urban settings to and from.

Japan is a mountainous country. There are plenty of  tunnels and they keep adding more to straighten out roads. The new roads feature loads of tunnels and they suck most of the vehicles away from the old roads. There are now about 11,000 tunnels in Japan (second only to China) so unless you ride exclusively on the flat plains of Japan, you will deal with them. 

On the one hand, tunnels can be your friends as they reduce the elevation change but on the other hand, they can be dangerous and they are normally much less appealing than riding out in the fresh air.  Newer tunnels were generally safer than the old ones. Most tunnels have the length marked on the ends and you can use Google Street view to look at the openings (and even go through them on your computer) when planning a route. Japanese cars aren't required to drive with running lights and many don't even turn their lights on in tunnels. The smallest motor vehicle sounds immense inside a tunnel and it is difficult to gauge where they are. We found that pedestrians, and therefore cyclists, were well catered for near the Shikoku 88 temples either in the form of good sidewalks on roads and tunnels or sometimes separate tunnels altogether. 

It is most important, as a cyclist to be seen and be able to see, so good lights, front and back, are important for riding tunnels. We rode the tunnel sidewalks if that was feasible. If we couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel (i.e. a turn in the road) it could be trouble.  Better yet, we often rode around the tunnels when we could, and the riding was more enjoyable.

Japan is the land of the rising sun and it is also the land of skinny bike tires. The roads are surprisingly well surfaced and clean; there is no reason for wide tires. We saw some construction flagmen sweeping roads behind trucks that were entering paved roads. Gravel roads are hard to come by.

We rode on classic touring bikes. Sheila's bike has an aluminium frame while my old Raleigh was a steel frame model, both with Schwalbe Marathon 28mm tires (no punctures). At times, we wish we had disc brakes for some of the steep descents. We didn't have any mechanical issues and therefore did not have any experience with Japan bike shops. Bikes represent freedom, however two potential issues are getting them to & from Japan (addressed in a separate heading) and security, particularly overnight storage. 

We did not feel that bicycle security was an issue. Locked bicycles could be left out on the street or in parking lots overnight without loss. In the larger cities, we could have left our bikes in supervised parking lots, but didn't feel the need for it. When we checked in, we would normally ask reception where they suggested we park our bikes. Some hotels had parking places, or nearby public parking, while some directed us to park them in the lobby and still others suggested we bring them to our room. Normally, we didn't see the need to store them in the room.

We weren't camping, we were staying in towns and cities, but  even so, we had some encounters with wild animals. We were quite surprised by the number of times that we saw monkeys, mostly in forests, but sometimes in towns. We saw a few Japanese badgers, all of which scurried away quickly. We saw very few deer (Nara excepted) and no wild boar. Up in the hills of the Kii Peninsula, we passed through bear country but didn't see any. The estimates of bear populations in Japan are surprising. There are an estimated 10,000 black bears on Honshu and 12,000 brown bears on Hokkaido. The latter can be slightly more aggressive.  

Britain may have train spotters, but Japan has drain spotters. Back in the 1980's, costly sewer projects were made more visible with interesting manhole covers. Apparently, there are about 12,000 different manhole cover designs across the country. We merely scratched the surface.

I have been a member of the Facebook "Japan Cycling Navigator" group for a number of years. It is a very knowledgeable group and you can review or search the postings  for information. If you cannot find what you are looking for, ask the question  of the group and you will likely receive a well informed response.

It is an unusual topic, but it is worth noting that most accommodation offered washing machines. Some were free, some Y200 and others Y300. So, rather than hand washing, we used machines every few days. We could have brought less spare clothing (especially socks and underwear).

On the topic of toilets, I only wish to say that clean, public toilets are many. As a cyclist, we had less need to pee in the bushes than any other country that we have cycled in. 

And leave the soap at home (it would be like "bringing sand to the beach"). Soap and shampoo dispensers appeared in every onsen and virtually all accommodation.

Into Osaka KIX. I purchased "rinko" bags from the Montbell Japan site ahead of time (Y1500 postage, delivered in about 10 days to Canada). We arrived KIX at 9:30pm and wheeled the bikes in cardboard boxes to the Nikko Kansai Airport hotel on a KIX trolley. After the hotel check-in, I wheeled the boxes into the hotel elevator and to our room. The twin room was large enough for the two bike boxes and the baggage trolley. In the morning, we unpacked the boxes and put them in the rinko bags. I had packed a box cutter with the bikes and cut the cardboard boxes down for recycling. We wheeled the rinko bags to the KIX train station, left the trolley in the return area and hopped on a Nankai train to Wakayama Port & then caught the ferry to Tokushima, Shikoku where we completed the reassembly of the bikes.

Flying out of Osaka ITM. I booked the New Hankyu Hotel (Osaka Station) only because it serves as a bus depot for the airport limousine bus service. As it turned out, the hotel provided us with bike parking in the outside entrance area and we were able to pack our bikes in the same covered out-of-the-way place and we were able to store our boxed bikes in the cloakroom the day before our departure. I purchased cardboard bike boxes from roadbikerentaljapan.com and was able to ride with the folded boxes to Hankyu. The boxes were not as robust as factory bike boxes, but they were easier to transport. The boxes are not stapled, so they need plenty of tape when packing to reinforce them. We purchased packing materials at a hardware store (Cornan Pro Work & Tool), however most materials are also available at Daiso for less (tape, bubble wrap, zap straps, box cutters). On our departure day, we carried the boxes a short distance to the bus depot (Y650 to Itami). The airport bus also serves KIX, and offers services to/from Kyoto and Nara. The bus baggage handlers hesitated because they couldn't load the boxes in an upright position, but otherwise they were fine with them. On check-in with ANA at the airport, security was called in and a fellow went through the box contents methodically (so don't bother taping the box tops up more than the minimum). The bikes made it home without incident.

When we arrived in Japan in March 2023, we still had to show proof of 3 Covid-19 vaccination shots. That is no longer required. Initially, we found that almost everyone, although not required to,  wore masks inside public places, especially in public transport and supermarkets. Golden Week 2023 seemed to mark a change (perhaps it was the influx of people not wearing masks) and less Japanese seemed to wear masks indoors thereafter. However, service industry personnel, with few exceptions, all wore masks, as a courtesy to the customers.