During this segment, we left behind the more remote area (and hills) of the eastern part of the large Honshũ island. We revisited our travel itinerary and opted to take advantage of one of Japan’s numerous ferry services to move us quickly from the city of Hiroshima to Japan’s Shikoku island. This itinerary change allowed us to spend more time sightseeing in Hiroshima as well as save us a few cycling days. Shikoku, world-renowned for its 88 temple pilgrimage, is an island that has fast emerged as one of Asia’s most unique and inspiring cycling destinations. The island offers quiet, winding roads, forested landscapes and dramatic seascapes.

2024.05.11 – [JP] Tsuwano ==> Iwakuni (100 kms | Total: 1281 kms)

We loaded the tandem before enjoying our Guest House host’s breakfast at 7:45am. After a few photos with our host, we left the village by 8:30am. We first enjoyed a slow descent over 10kms followed by a long ascent over 35kms. Traffic was fairly light but the headwind kept us working harder. At mid-journey, we arrived in the small town of Yoshika at 12:30pm. This was the town we had initially planned to stop for the day but due to the unavailability of accommodation, we needed to cycle another 50kms further to Iwakuni. Before continuing our journey, we stopped at a grocery store in town for food staples for lunch. After 30mins, we resumed our cycling. Thankfully, the hardest part of our journey was behind us. We coasted downhill for over 20kms. By the time, we arrived at our hotel at 5:00pm, we had crossed 17 tunnels (7 on the uphill and 10 on the downhill) – gratefully most of them were fairly short (~100-200 m). After a well-deserved shower, we had dinner at nearby ramen restaurant. We later walked to a supermarket for some next day snacks and beverage. We were quite proud of ourselves for having covered 100kms on the tandem – our longest distance ever achieved. Surprisingly, we were not completely exhausted even though we faced a headwind throughout the day.

2024.05.12 – [JP] Iwakuni ==> Iwakuni (0 kms | Total: 1281 kms)

As we woke up, we were not surprised, looking out of room’s window on the 14th floor, seeing the ground below was wet. We enjoyed the hotel’s extensive complementary breakfast. We spent the day in our room reviewing our itinerary and reserving hotels for the remainder of our Japan stay up to Osaka. In the afternoon, we could see the rain coming down heavily. We kept on reminding ourselves that we had made a wise decision to push our cycling distance yesterday in order to enjoy a rest day in our cozy (and dry) room. Jenny got video calls from both her daughters as it was, after all, Mother’s Day. We even stayed in our room for dinner and ate our snacks from our previous evening grocery shopping.

2024.05.13 – [JP] Iwakuni ==> Hiroshima (48 kms | Total: 1329 kms)

After another great breakfast offering, we left our hotel at 10am. Our cycling was relatively slow as we kept on having to stop constantly for traffic lights. We also kept on moving from the sidewalk to the road shoulder while continually looking out for trucks. At mid-journey, we finally were able to enjoy secondary roads with less vehicle traffic. We cycled directly to the ferry port in order to inquire about the sailing frequency and cost from Hiroshima to Matsuyama – across the Hiroshima Bay. We later cycled back towards our hotel. Along the way, we stopped at a supermarket for snacks. As we checked into our room, we were quite impressed by its size 33m (roughly 3 times the size of room in Fukuoka). We had forgotten about the Booking.com Genius perk which offered a free room upgrade. Given our room was well equipped with microwave and flatware, we opted to get our dinner from the nearby supermarket – with a 5% discount offered by our hotel coupons, but we forgot to use it.

2024.05.14 – [JP] Hiroshima ==> Hiroshima (0 kms | Total: 1329 kms)

We both had a great night sleep – each one of us in our own double bed. We had a plentiful breakfast in our room before heading out for a day of sightseeing. We visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, its associated beautiful park, the Atomic Bomb Dome, the Hiroshima Castle and the Hiroshima Shukkei-en Garden. As we had walked to each of these sites, we opted to return to our hotel with one of city’s tram line. We stopped again at the grocery store for food staples for lunch and tomorrow’s breakfast. We relaxed in our room for a few hours before taking a tram a few kms away to a popular building. There were over 25 food stalls distributed across 3 floors serving essential the same local dish: okonomiyaki. Hiroshima is famous for okonomiyaki, a savory vegetable and meat pancake cooked on a griddle in front of the customer. We had to queue in front of a stall for our seats even though each stall offered 10-12 seats, they were fully occupied by both local and tourist alike. We enjoyed walking back to our hotel. By the end of the day, we covered over 13kms.

2024.05.15 – [JP] Hiroshima ==> Matsuyama (17 kms | Total: 1346 kms)

After finishing breakfast in our room, we left our hotel at 9:30am. We easily cycled the 6kms to the Hiroshima port. Upon arriving at the port, we promptly bought our ferry tickets for us and the tandem. We waited an hour or so before boarding the 11:20am ferry. The 2 hour and 40 minutes crossing was very comfortable and peaceful with so few passengers on-board. We were impressed by how efficient the loading and unloading of the ferry took place. After arriving at the port of Matsuyama, we cycled 10 kms to our hotel. Once we checked into our room, we quickly changed shoes and went out for a short visit of the nearby Matsuyama-jõ castle. In the evening, we had our dinner at a restaurant along the Õkaido pedestrian street. By the end of our impromptu sightseeing , we had covered 9kms.

2024.05.16 – [JP] Matsuyama ==> Imabari (47 kms | Total: 1393 kms)

As I woke up, Jenny was quick to tell me “We will have trouble today as the wind is very strong (40km/h, gust 51km/h)”. After checking my weather app and Windy app, I was relieved to report that the wind’s direction was going to provide us with a strong tail wind for most of our journey. We had a hearty hotel complementary breakfast before loading the tandem. We found Matsuyama to be the most bicycle friendly city up to now in Japan for its well designed cycling paths and clear signage. Once we left the city behind us, the coastal route we took was quite scenic and enjoyable. With the strong tail wind blowing, we felt like we were riding an e-bike with some pedal-assist feature. We arrived at our hotel at 1:00pm – much earlier than we anticipated. We had to wait in the lobby until our 3:00pm check-in. During our waiting time, we went to the nearby grocery store to buy some lunch and tomorrow morning’s breakfast. After finally checking into our room, we opted, for a nominal fee, to do some clothes wash using the hotel’s provided machine. We actually skipped dinner as we still felt stuffed from our late lunch.

2024.05.17 – [JP] Imabari ==> Niihama (43 kms | Total: 1436 kms)

After our breakfast in our room, we reviewed and selected pictures for our next blog post. As our cycling distance was not meant to be very long, we left our hotel at 10am. We bought some water before leaving town. Our KML route directed us through many small secondary roads through our journey. The main road was quite busy with cars and trucks traffic while the shoulder was often disappearing. As we arrived in town at 1:30pm, we stopped at a grocery store for snacks before showing up to our hotel nearby. We had to wait 2 hours for the official check-in. Thankfully the lobby was quite comfortable while we ate our lunch. In the evening for our dinner, we purchased some instant noodle soup and pork/rice meal which we ate in our room. Today’s scenery along the way was clearly not as spectacular as yesterday’s coastal road.

2024.05.18 – [JP] Niihama ==> Kanonji (51 kms | Total: 1487 kms)

We had a great night sleep in our Toyoko Inn room. This was ou 2nd stay at this hotel chain and we really appreciated the room size and the great value it offers namely the extensive complementary breakfast. We left town around 9:20am and started a long gradual climb over 9 kms. Our route kept us, for the most part, on small residential roads or wide cycling paths. Along the way, we stopped for an overdue ice cream break. Although today’s distance was longer than yesterday, it seemed to us a lot more enjoyable. As we arrived at our hotel around 2:00pm, yet again, too early for our 4pm check-in. We walked over to a nearby McDonald’s for some snacks where we waited until 3:30pm for our room. In the evening, we walked over to a local fast food for dinner.