Okie JET

9.09.2007

Bike Trip of the Inland Sea

Well, it's been a while. So get ready for an update.

Every year, almost every Japanese employee gets some time off during August. They have this holiday time called Obon. It's a time to go to with family to the graves to honor their dead relatives. Therefore, I also get those days. However, those days must be taken during August. Long story short...I took a two-day bike trip around the inland sea. It was nice, but I was a bit tired afterwards.

Let me set the scene. I left at 6 am on a cool morning. The sky was overcast with just a bit of sprinkles. The road was flat for 90% of the trip. Traffic was really low. There was a cool breeze. Couldn't have been better.


I rode all the way over to Imabari in Ehime-ken. Then I took a train to Matsuyama for the night. In the evening I went to the most famous onsen, hot bath, in Japan, Dogo Onsen.


That evening I stayed at a capsule hotel. That was an experience in itself. I did it because it was cheap and because it's kind of a novelty in Japan. They just have a huge room with all of these oversized plastic boxes that seem a bit like dog cages. They are stacked two up and each comes with a locker. And strangely enough it comes completely setup.

There's a TV, light, alarm clock, pillows, etc and a nice locking curtain. But the one thing they don't have is the one thing that I really needed, a fan. It was a bit stuffy. As a rule, this capsule hotel was smoke-free. But I found out that once again, Japan loves to make rules that they have no intention of holding.

I left Imabari at 6:30 am. Once again, it was beautiful weather. I circled up the on ramp for bicycles and headed out across the bridge to the other side of the inland sea. The first run was gorgeous. I couldn't have asked for a better stretch. If I could choose the pathway to heaven, that would have been it. I can't explain how amazing it was. But then I got to the other side. That's when I found out that the bike path wasn't such a great deal. The highway across the inland sea was less than 20 kilometers. However the bike path was 62 kilometers. That's because after each bridge, where you can bike alongside the highway, bikers must get off the highway and go around each of the six islands. Needless to say, it got very tedious going down off the bridge, circling all the way around each island, and then riding back up to cross to the next island.

But I was really happy and felt a great sense of accomplishment after it. After that, I headed up to Fukayama. There I stopped for lunch at McDonald's. I had a Mega-Mac (twice the meat of a Big Mac) Bacon and Tomato Cheese Burger. Its name is shorter in Japanese. Delicious. Then I hopped on the ferry that went straight to Tadotsu. It was a great trip. But nothing was better than being in my own bed that night.

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