Thursday, August 30, 2012

Day 21: Suooshima – Miyajima


[post of Tuesday 28th of August 2012]

Although today’s had to be a short-length stage, it becomes, we don’t know how nor why, another 75 km’s day. We left behind a wonderful island, of which we won’t show you any picture not because we’re egoists but because of the heavy rain that follows us when we left Suooshima. The rain keeps with us for the whole day, but we cannot complain considering what’s happening in Kyushu because of the typhoon. Because of it, the temperature has increased by 10 degrees. Today it’s the first time we wear long sleeves t-shirts, together with the waterproof jacket of course! To ride a bike when it’s raining is not very pleasant but, at least, we’re going to avoid sunstroke. Let’s have a great Forrest Gump moment: in Japan, there are different kinds of rain. What in Spain is a proper rain; in Japan would be nothing more than a “chirimiri” (Basque word, not Japanese). When there is a typhoon nearby, the rain is in smaller drops, but it comes with a strong wind and it doesn’t stop in the entire day. Japanese summer storms, like the one we were caught into in Karatsu or Fukuoka, are as scary as a typhoon. Those ones had dark clouds covering up the surrounding all of a sudden, in which you had less than five minutes from the first drops (or I should say, huge drop) to find a shelter. 

We leave the main road for a short while, just to go alongside the coast and have a look at the famous Iwakuni Bridge. It’s gorgeous, and it seems to bring you backward to an ancient time, even thou it has been built no more than a couple of years ago after a typhoon destroyed it. The kamis are on our side again, and we get a break from the rain when we stop to eat, and to take some picture of the bridge.

Finally, we get onto the ferry to Miyajima. In Miyajima there is the famous red door that is regularly flooded by the tide twice per day, that same red door that is among the picture of the photo gallery for Windows screen savers.

When we get down from the ferry, we’re asked the tickets again, and we have to do our best to make the woman at the ticket office understand that we don’t have them because we had to give them when we got into the ferry at Suooshima. Well, it’s our fault since when the ferry landed we stop to have a look at a dear and, when we finally headed on, the barriers had already been closed. In any case, how should we get to the island, with the bikes and our luggage? Swimming?!?

First idea, to camp here; but we’re soaking with water and a bungalow would be better. We go up a couple of hills in Miyajima, and we realise that the camping is farer than we thought. When we get there, it’s already closed. Between talking the new situation over, deciding to assemble the tent in the first good place we find, and to do it’s already dark. Like for the camping, there are no places to eat, so we go to bed like naughty kids, without dinner.  Instead, who did have dinner was a dear (whom we called Paco) who found a banana skin searching our saddlebag!








Day 20: Yamaguchi – Suooshima


[post of Monday 27th of August 2012]

It’s hard to, but we have to say goodbye to Josh and his wonderful family. Josh accompanies us for the first kilometres of today’s stage. He shows us the right direction, and we head on through some nice and easy 20 km on the bike-way of the road, just alongside the river… or at least we should have done so in theory. Instead we get lost for a little while and we need some time to find out the right direction again.

We have few pictures to upload to the blog today. We’ve got no time for tourism because this is the longest stage of the whole route, of more than 100 km.

We feel the typhoon that is over Okinawa, and the intense wind we feel on our faces does not allow us to keep going on. The wind is so strong that we get up to 12 km per hour in one of the down-hills! The forecast says that the typhoon would pass through Kyushu tomorrow and, then, it’ll move to Korea. The “kamis” [Japanese for “gods”] must be on our side for now ‘cause we’re lucky that the typhoon is heading somewhere else.

Past 99 km of today’s stage, Hikaru meets us at the bridge that joins the great island of Honshu to the gorgeous island of Suooshima. We go up and down through a road without traffic, alongside the coast, one that reminds us of the time spent in the South of Kyushu. So far what we’ve seen of Honshu is heavily affected by the work of the human being. It’s like the Japanese managed to tame this island.

Hikaru’s family is waiting us for dinner. By then, the km-meter accounts for 115 km. the dinner is really delicious. Everything, even the rise, has been grown up in the lands of Hikaru’s family. We’ve never tasted such wonderful rice! In particular, we enjoy the chat with Hikaru’s mother, with the help of Hikaru as the interpreter.

Gabriel gets really scared when he sees the biggest spider in the world in our room. It was something like 20 cm size, and we could even clearly hear when ‘it’ walked on the wall. Hikaru and Ainhoa try to convince Gabriel that it’s good to have a spider in the room because it eats up flies, but he’s not very convinced. In any case, we need some rest after the long day.





Day 19: Yamaguchi


[post of Sunday 26th of August 2012]

Today is our first day of real rest. To celebrate, we wake up early, at something like 7am, but we stay in the bed a bit more. We’re really happy for being able to stay in Josh’s house for a couple of days, above all because him and his family will shows around and lead us to the discovery of Yamaguchi.

It’s a fantastic city, enclosed in a valley surrounded by high mountains. Although it’s the capital of the prefecture, we feel in an ultra-modern city, like those we crossed in the North of Kyushu. Yamaguchi conserves the magic of tradition thou, and that’s well present in its architecture with houses in the perfect size for just one family...  and of course, there are its trees perfectly cut in lovely shapes.

In origin, we had planned to walk around with the whole family, but one of the girls misbehaved and she’s not allowed to go out, so she stays in with her mum. Therefore, we go around with Josh and the quieter girl of the twins (or, better said, the one less troublemaker). First, we go to the church entitled to Saint Francis Javier, which is designed in a very ugly postmodern style. Then Josh brings us to the restaurant where some Japanese clans arranged the complot against the Meiji Restoration. A scary story, but we recover.

At midday we go to an authentic Japanese restaurant, one of these place to which we cannot even go on our own because we don’t understand the menu… and even we did, we won’t have a clue about what is what!
In the afternoon we visit one of the most beautiful pagodas in Japan, or at least that’s what Josh tells us. The touristic guides agree and tell us that Yamaguchi’s pagoda is one of the three most beautiful in Japan, although they don’t specify which ones are the other two.

Then, we go on with complots. We continue talking about the well-known crisis concerning politics, economy, good and bad habits… and brotherhoods. In the detail, we talk about the fact that Yamaguchi is sister-city with Pamplona [in Spain], where Ainhoa is from. Every year there is a “Spanish festival” here, one that, in theory, recreates the ‘Pamplona atmosphere’… which in Japanese translates into paella [typical plate with rice, vegetable, meat, and fish], flamenco [typical Spanish folk dance]. Josh thinks this should change into something more ‘authentic’, more ‘Pamplonese’ or, at least, to show something else of the Spanish culture beside the paella and the flamenco. If him and his friends keep pushing in that direction, we would have to learn much more Japanese for the future!

It gets late, and it’s time to go home. Gabriel cooks a tortilla of potatoes [Spanish dish, mainly with eggs and potatoes, although it may come in many different varieties] for dinner, which is a nice accompaniment for the Japanese spaghetti with pesto of today.

Once the girls go to bed, we adult have a proper chat… talking about movies and cartoons. Thanks to YouTube, we can show to Josh and his wife the cartoons we’ve grown up with: Dragon Ball, Heidi, The Zodiac Knights… and with these good feelings we go to bed.










Day 18: Shimonoseki – Yamaguchi


[post of Saturday 25th of August 2012]

The alarm didn’t work today, so we woke up at 9am instead of the planned 6am. We pack as quickly as we can, have breakfast with the ice-cream leftover from last night, and run downstairs to prepare the bicycles. Considering that we have a 75 km stage ahead of us, we won’t get to Yamaguchi in one go. Usually we set up to do at least 10 km per hour, including the time to have a rest and eat, take some picture and stretch up legs. So there is no way we get the whole figure of 75 km for today. No problem, we’ll be fine… we’ll just spend more time in Shimonoseki, and have a better look at its sanctuary.

After the last days of clouds, today the sky is back to its normal shiny look. The sky is deep blue and the warm more pressing than ever. For a change, it’s Ainhoa the more touched by it, and today she feels particularly weak. She cannot cycle up through the smoother up-hills, and she’s experiencing problems in keeping up with the normal speed in the plain parts of the stage. We get a break from the cycling and to give some rest to the cramped hands. Then, we get an even longer stop to recover a normal body temperature, which is quite high. Every time we get more delayed, and Ainhoa is sure we’ll never get there. In addition, Gabriel decides not to bring his bike to a mechanic but to fix it himself once he finds the right screwdriver to tight up the back wheel.

And yet another stop… it’s 4pm and we have more than half stage left. We give a call to Josh, our host for the next two days. He wanted to join us for the last part of the stage, but he couldn’t expect us to be so lame!

We arrange to meet up at a Seven eleven. He’s the one heading the march, and pushing us to make the remaining 35 km left. We go through them without a stop, without resting, without stretching up, without eating. We’ve got no time, it’s almost night and Josh’s family is waiting for us for dinner.

10 km later, we meet another Japanese guy who is doing cyclo-tourism through a route very much like ours… he’s just started six days ago, but he’s got an impressive rhythm of 175 km per day! Since he doesn’t have where to sleep for tonight, Josh gives a call to his wife and ask her is it would be a trouble to host a third person in their house. It’s fine, so we cycle through the last kilometres like a small platoon, a new thing in our personal experience of cyclo-tourism and Japan.

At Josh’s we find his wife and their twin daughters, a perfect company for the dinner. We feel lucky sharing our rest today with such a great family.