Shimanami Kaido

Up early.

There is light drizzle. We are off to Onomichi to do the Shimanami Kaido and will return to our very nice accommodation here at Kurashiki at the end of the day. It is an hour by train from here. The streets are empty! 

But the train is packed!!!  We are wearing masks!! And I’ve noticed the young ones do NOT give up their seats for older people!! I FINALLY get a seat after half an hour…

The Shimanami Kaido is a 70 km cycling route that connects the six islands of Mukaishima, Innoshima, Ikuchijima, Omishima, Hakatajima and Oshima before terminating on Shikoku in Imabari via a series of bridges over the Seto Inland Sea.

In fact, Ikuchijima is known as "lemon island", particularly for the Setoda lemons variety - hence these that we saw along the way:

From the port at Onomichi it is a short ferry ride to Mukaishima Island.

We have bikes booked from Hakatajima Island so there are two buses to get there.

We reached the bus stop after a short walk but it was running late and as this meant standing around for half an hour on a busy road and it was already delayed and only going for three stops to Nibangata, we decided to walk instead to meet the second bus at Mukaihigashi (along some tiny backstreets which showed up Japanese life close and personal: little houses interspersed with vegetable gardens). 

The bus stop took some finding: it was up on the Shimanami Freeway and we thought we were home and dry - when a bus turned up (not at the allotted time) we asked the driver if it was headed our way. We were on the wrong side of the freeway!! After some more convoluted walking under and up to the other side of the freeway, we emerged through a closed door in a metal fence.

The bus took cash only but as we fumbled around, the driver indicated that we just take our seats - we paid him as we exited at Hakatajima.

The bike station had our pre-booked bikes ready to go and what bikes! Excellent Giant road bikes.

This sets us up to ride back to Onomichi - 48 kms.

It’s a bit wet but not too troublesome and eventually dries up in the afternoon. It is very scenic and we start and stop a lot. There are some big climbs too!! We climbed 250m so it was a reasonable amount of work.

Lunch is a yummy seafood salad bought from Lawsons (these stores are ubiquitous, like the 7-Elevens). It is a scenic viewpoint with a shelter (still sprinkling at this stage).

There is nice light as we ride the last 15 or so kms.

We finished a bit before 4 p.m. with a last sprint to the ferry and then to the bike rental at Onomichi to drop off the bikes. There is a train back to Kurashiki about 10 minutes later.

The walk back to the hotel was pretty as evening had followed a pretty pink sunset sky as we arrived into Kurashiki.

MF-san did well with the dinner choice again. Another husband-and-wife team but quieter and more refined than last night. The food was delicious (oishi): grilled eggplant with ginger, baked Shitake mushrooms, the most delicious fried tofu and grilled fish (flathead?). 

And rice, being careful not to leave a grain (although not much chance of that; I was starving!). Hannah Kirschner says in ‘Water, Wind, and Wild Things’ that:

   the rice farmer goes through 88 troubles to grow it.

Not much English spoken but we all made ourselves clear. Finished off with hot green tea.

Back to our hotel for a much-looked-forward-to soak in the onsen; I was concerned I might pass out after my sake highball!

On top of the 48 km ride, MF-san says we did 10 kms of walking today.

POSTSCRIPT: My 10000 yen note (= $A100) which seemed to go missing during the day, turned up tonight in my passport!! Yay!