Shortly after leaving our ferry from South Korean, we started noticing differences in these neighboring countries. Beyond food differences, we realized that both the cycling infrastructure and cycling culture in Japan were not as developed as in SK. As a plus, we felt Japanese drivers were much more courteous than in SK. We saw a lot more couples with children as opposed to folks in SK pampering their dogs. Credit cards are not as widely accepted as in SK. Only to name a few differences…

During this first segment in Japan, we started cycling from the island of Kyushu – the third largest of the four main islands and second the most populous. After a few cycling days, we crossed (via an under river pedestrian tunnel) to the island of Honshu – the largest and the most populous island, with the capital Tokyo.

2024.05.02 – [KR] Busan ==> Carmella Line Fery (4 kms | Total: 936 kms)

We enjoyed our last hotel breakfast in South Korea as it also happened to be the best breakfast offering from our entire stay in the country. Yesterday, we opted to purchase a late check-out until 2:00pm as the ferry company’s service counter only opened at 4:30pm. After loading the tandem, we cycled towards a money exchange office in China town to convert our remaining South Korean Wons into Japanese Yens. We also purchased some food staples for our evening meal on the ferry. We still managed to arrive at the Ferry terminal by 3:00pm. We learned that today’s ferry sailing still had 1st class room available – unlike their website saying these were all sold-out. As the check-in counter opened, more guests started to show up including a few cyclists. It was interesting to go through the security screening process with the tandem. Once we got to the ferry waiting lounge, there were over 8 cyclists who had gathered to exchange their stories. The real heroes of the group was a young French couple (Bertrand and Marion) who had started from France and had been cycling for the past 17 months. Our 1st class bunk-bed cabin was compact but comfortable. Its small size was kind of a reminder of what to expect in room sizes in Japan. As there were no showers on-board, I visited the ferry’s onsen public baths. The ferry departed the port of Busan at 10:30pm.

2024.05.03 – [JP] Carmella Line Fery ==> Fukuoka (3 kms | Total: 939 kms)

We had a good night rest even though we felt, at times, the ferry’s movement in the wave. The ferry arrived in Fukuoka by 6am. For some unexplained reasons, the disembarking was scheduled and took place only at 7:30am. Each group of cyclists parted in different directions. We struggled to leave the 2nd floor terminal with our tandem as the passenger elevator was too small. A member of the Camella Ferry helped us to get access to a freight elevator. The cycling, now on the left side of the road, to our hotel was pretty easy as the vehicle traffic was very light. As expected, at the hotel, the best option we could benefit from was to leave our luggage and tandem behind and do some errands and/or engage in some sightseeing until our 3:00pm check-in time. We had breakfast at a fast food outlet across the street from our hotel. Later, we visited an electronic store in search of a SIM card for my Android phone. Jenny’s Ugibi eSIM for Japan worked seamlessly. We opted to buy a day pass for the subway. We took our first subway ride to the airport with the hope of purchasing a particular SIM card brand that offered a Japanese phone number. Sadly we could not find a reseller for the Mobal SIM, hence we ended purchasing a data-only 30 day 10G SIM for $54. Later we took another subway ride to visit Õhori Park. After strolling around the artificial lake, we slowly made our way back to the hotel. We managed to check in to our tiny 12 square meter room an hour earlier. Our shared bed was slightly wider than a single bed. We learned that Fukuoka was hosting a festival over the weekend. We hoped that was the explanation for our $200 night/room. In the evening, we got some take-away microwave warmed-up meals from a nearby 7-eleven store. The convenience stores (e.g. FamilyMart, 7-Eleven, Lawson, etc) in Japan are the budget travelers’ best friends – for both quality and price. By the end of the day, we had walked 10kms.

2024.05.04 – [JP] Fukuoka ==> Fukuoka (0 kms | Total: 939 kms)

We both managed to get a good night sleep even in our cramped bed. We had breakfast at the same restaurant as yesterday as it provided a good value in a nice environment. After a brief rest in our room, we set out for some sightseeing of the Kushida Shrine and the buddhist site of Shofukuji. We strolled along pedestrian streets and stopped viewing a traditional dancing show. We had a long and enjoyable rest at a bakery- namely serving soft ice cream in a half croissant. Later, Jenny managed to purchase another piece of clothes at Uniqlo. Before returning to our room for a well-deserved rest, we located a ramen restaurant on the 10th floor of one of the shopping malls which we targeted for our dinner. In the evening, we made our way to the Ippudo ramen restaurant while expecting to queue for some time but we were lucky as we only queued for 10 minutes. A note about queuing in Japan, it seems the last time we saw so many people queuing for different services (coffee shops[Starbucks], bakeries, restaurants, etc) were in Cuba. We walked 12 kms throughout our day.

2024.05.05 – [JP] Fukuoka ==> Ashiya (57 kms | Total: 996 kms)

We repeated our breakfast routine from previous days. We realized that we had not cycled for more than a week – since our arrival in Busan. After loading the tandem, we purchased water at a nearby convenience store and started cycling out of the city. The cycling was rather slow as we negotiated many traffic lights while repeatedly moving from the wide sidewalks to the road shoulder. Finally a mid-journey, we left the urban sprawl behind us. Although the cycling infrastructure was far less developed than in South Korea, we still benefited from a separate bicycle path for the later half of journey. Near the end of our cycling day, we met a solo female cyclist, originally from Spain but now living in Switzerland, who had been cycling in Japan for the past two months. As we checked into our 1st Japanese style room, Jenny fell in love with the setting. Our room was probably 3 times bigger than the one we had in Fukuoka. We used the hotel’s onsen bath (“au naturel” gender separated bathing) as our shower substitute. In the evening, we had dinner at the only nearby restaurant as our sea front hotel was some distance from the town center. We both enjoyed our delicious meal there.

2024.05.06 – [JP] Ashiya ==> Kitakyushu (40 kms | Total: 1036 kms)

We both had a great night sleep on our respective tatami mats. As today’s cycling distance was fairly short, we opted to check-out from our hotel as late as possible (9:45am). To our delight, the forecast rain had dissipated over the early morning. We cycled into town in order to purchase and eat some breakfast staples before embarking our actual cycling day. The cycling route was clearly not flat as South Korea but the gentle slope and winding roads made the journey fairly enjoyable. The scenery up-to-now has not been particularly captivating. We rode again on a mix of road shoulders and sidewalks. We had our first short ferry ride mid-journey. We arrived at our hotel by 2:00pm but we were asked to wait until 3:00pm check-in. We finally got access to our room by 2:20pm. As we left the hotel lobby for our room, we noticed the rain coming down. We had once again evaded the rain. We were quite pleased by our hotel location and room. In the evening, we had some Japanese curry at quinte restaurant. Later, we purchased some breakfast staple and snacks.

2024.05.07 – [JP] Kitakyushu ==> Mine City (44 kms | Total: 1080 kms)

As we had often done to-date in Japan, we had breakfast in our room. As we brought our panniers outside the hotel lobby, Jenny and I looked at each other with an expression of concern. The wind was blowing very hard. Thankfully we realized it would be a tail wind – hence pushing us. After cycling a few kms from the hotel, we had to take an elevator down several floors in order to access and walk across a 780m long tunnel under the river. We moved from our first island in Japan: Kyūshū to our 2nd island: Honshū. We continued to cycle mostly on the narrow road shoulders. Except for the vehicle traffic, the cycling route was quite manageable. The further we moved away from the urban area, the less traffic we encountered. Upon arriving in the town of Mine, we felt it looked pretty grim due to its mining infrastructure. We stopped at a grocery to purchase some snacks. To our surprise, we managed to check-in to our smallish room by 1:30pm. We did a small load of clothes wash with the hotel’s machine. As our hotel appeared to be outside the town center, we had to walk back to the town center for our evening meal as well as purchase some breakfast staples.

2024.05.08 – [JP] Mine City ==> Hagi (49 kms | Total: 1129 kms)

After our room breakfast (i.e. left-over pizza and yogurt), we left our hotel around 9:15am. We noticed that the wind was blowing against us today. Vehicle traffic was much less hectic. As we climbed to our summit, we experienced some mountain weather – rain drizzle. Although we encountered several climbs, the grade was often below 6% which made it more manageable for us to slowly cycle up. Along the way, we collected some ripe oranges from some road side trees. Free fruits were a nice surprise as they were fairly expensive at the grocery store. Another surprise was our encounter with a lady driving a car. As we had been approaching our target town, she stopped on the side of the road and called to us. She had seen us at an earlier rest stop and kindly offered us some candies and small towel she purchased for us at the rest area. This short encounter warmed our hearts and made our day’s climb seem worthwhile. We stopped for groceries before heading to our hotel. The hotel reception was adamant that the check-in time was 4:00pm. As we did not want to pay a premium for an early check-in, hence we waited in the lobby while we were eating our snacks and drinking free coffee and tea. We appreciated our large comfortable room after a headwind climbing cycling day. Although we had planned to have light Udon soup dinner, we ended having a great meal at a small family restaurant (Thank you Google Translation for the menu translation).

2024.05.09 – [JP] Hagi ==> Tsuwano (52 kms | Total: 1182 kms)

We appreciated our hotel’s unexpected complimentary breakfast. We anticipated a fairly difficult cycling day as we expected to climb up to 450m from our current sea level in Hagi. Surprisingly, we managed to cycle most of our ascent as the slope was, for the most part, quite manageable. We arrived at 2:30pm to our Guest House in Tsuwano after stopping at a grocery store for some food staples. Unfortunately, no one was there to provide us access to our room until 4:00pm. We found a nice coffee shop in town while we were waiting for our host to show up. Although we sent a message via Booking.com about our early arrival, our host only responded a few minutes before our official check-in time. We were quite pleased with our Guest House accommodation even though Jenny needed to get comfortable with the shared bathroom facilities. We did our clothes wash with our guest’s machine. Our friendly and helpful host Kana was fluent in English which was well appreciated. In the evening, we had dinner at one of the few restaurants opened in town. Apparently, the town sees more tourists only on weekends. As Kana helped us to confirm the unavailability of accommodations in our next target town (Yoshika – 47kms) , we made the significant decision to cycle a very long day (~100kms) to the next big town of Iwakuni. We were able to modify our existing hotel booking in that town to extend our stay by an early extra one-day arrival.

2024.05.10 – [JP] Tsuwano ==> Tsuwano (0 kms | Total: 1182 kms)

We had a good night sleep on our futon mattresses but the night was chilly hence we appreciated the thick bed covers. Our chilly night reminded us that any wild camping in or around our next planned small town in the mountains (Yoshika) would not be very comfortable hence our commitment to cycling to Iwakuni was even greater – not to mention that some heavy rain was expected on the following day (Sunday). We spent the morning reviewing our text and photos for a new blog post. I did some tandem maintenance before we headed out for some sightseeing. We climbed the path to the nearby “Taikodani Inari-jinja Shrine” and later strolled through most of the village. Before dinner Jenny did some expenditure tracking while we were sipping tea. We went to authentic sushi restaurant for dinner upon our host’s recommendation. It was a unique experience to see the sushi chef prepare our orders in front of our eyes.