By Roz
Our last blog left you as we were about to get the train
from lovely Okayama to Imabari for a two-day cycle trip. The train to Imabari was delightful in
the way that Japanese trains are.
By this I mean: quiet, pleasant and on time (resulting in lots of opportunities
to focus on my book). Imabari
itself proved to be an unremarkable town from what I could see from a taxi to
the start of the cycle and I felt relieved that I had designed our holiday to
start here rather than finish.
We acquired two good bikes with ease (and I should take the
opportunity to rebut the general narrative that Japan is expensive – bike hire
was a grand total £16 for the two of us for two days, including a phone number
to call if we got into trouble…albeit with my Japanese the trouble would have
to be quite bad before I decided to make a phone call…!). As we set off – following a blue line
on the ground that was to accompany us throughout our 70km journey – we gazed
with some trepidation at the Golden Gate-esque suspension bridge that we knew
we’d be traversing shortly. But
our fears proved unnecessary. The
winding path that took us up to the bridge was an attractive, relatively gentle
incline – an approach that the designers of the Shimanami Kaido cycle path
proved to have repeated for each of the five bridges, much to my relief.
And the cycle itself was a delight. Each of the six islands – all linked by
towering glamorous suspensions bridges – has its own speciality ranging from
stone carvings (Layla spotted an excellent one of a lady in a top hat) to
roses, salt, oranges and lemons.
It was fun cycling through the islands (never worrying about being lost
because of the blue line showing the way) seeing people’s daily lives and admiring
their random speciality. About
25km into the cycle I decided that lunch ought to be on the cards and a quick
bit of googling from the side of the road brought up information about an
unlikely-sounding patisserie / café on the second island. The pictures looked too delightful for
there not to be a problem but this pessimistic perspective proved to be
entirely inaccurate and before long we were ensconced in a lovely place with
brilliant floor to ceiling windows facing the sea, filled with nice Japanese
ladies (all of whom clearly made a conscious effort not to grimace at the sight
of two over-eager and not-so-glamorous cyclists). We then found that it was a seafood café (doesn’t every town
have a seafood café and patisserie?!) and I feared that all was lost. But in fact the café staff took our
vegetarianism in their stride and produced a delightful corn soup, cheese on
toast and salad set meal for us, which fuelled us up nicely for the second part
of the cycle.
The third island – the island of oranges – had a brilliant
rest area for cyclists. It’s a
park overlooking the sea with facilities from bathrooms to an orange filled
souvenir shop. We parked our bikes
and lay on the sea wall and read for a while in the sun and then went to
explore. I wanted quite a lot of
the orange products, but resisted because of a lack of enthusiasm for adding
additional weight to my bag. We
were disappointed we couldn’t buy just one orange but only 6…and then immensely
touched when the nice shop lady smiled, rummaged around in a box and produced
one: “presento”, she said.
We headed onto the fourth island, the lemon island – where
we were going to be spending the night – in the middle of the afternoon. By this point, I was keeping my eyes
open in hopes of seeing Dolce, the famed ice cream shop (whose speciality is,
unsurprisingly, lemon ice cream). Alas no luck by the time we’d come to the
ryokan where we were to sleep. So,
having checked in, and verified that we were staying somewhere perfectly
adequate, if alarming, but not sufficiently lovely to linger – I persuaded
Layla that we should get back on our bikes and go in search of ice cream and
explore the town. I was surprised
that I was successful in this, since Layla’s face gave a clear message that
cycling 40km in one day was more than enough (all the more so since we’ve not
really cycled since Washington).
But the promise of ice cream does have its own persuasions, I guess…
If I’d known how far the ice cream shop was going to prove
to be, I don’t think I’d have made the case in favour of “just cycling a bit further” so
vigorously. But it turns out that
a 12km cycle is what we are prepared to do for the sake of ice cream (I’m not
proud). Fortunately it was mainly
along the beautiful coastline and on the flat, but even so… And I can report that the ice cream was
indeed excellent. Retracing our
steps, we stopped off in town to poke our noses through the gates of the now
closed sculpture garden (yes, I know we should have prioritised that over ice
cream, but heigh ho) and saw a few temples and such like.
Back in our ryokan – eventually – we decided to go for a
shower in the slightly terrifying shared shower / bath room. This proved more fun than I’d expected
– it was a bit like a mini-onsen but with just the two of us there – with a
couple of showers and giant Japanese bath filled with steaming water and, of
course, lemons. After this it was
pretty much dinnertime, and we stood outside the dining room with our noses
pushed up against the window almost as though we’d not just greedily eaten ice
cream. Dinner was peculiar and
quite good. They’d agreed to come
up with something vegetarian, and so they had. We mainly didn’t know what exactly we were eating, but it
was all relatively nice. We did,
however, discover, that the eating pace of two hungry girls who’ve cycled more
than usual is rather different from elegant Japanese people (only some of whom
had cycled, and who had clearly found it less challenging) and so were bemused
to find ourselves finishing our first course just at the moment that our fellow
diners were musing on lifting their chopsticks. Ah well…
Up in our room after dinner, we played an excellent game of
Scrabble. I say excellent because
I won decisively – possibly the first time this has ever happened. I slept the sleep of the smug and woke
up next morning feeling only a tiny bit sore. Layla, however, had acquired a cold. Colds are a disaster in Japan, since
Japanese people are horrified by sneezing and so managing a cold requires
either (a) a lot of leaving the room or (b) a lot of offending people. However, like the heartless beast that
I am, after breakfast I told Layla to buck up and get on her bike. With a large number of whimpers Layla
did so and we got back on the road.
The fifth island was my least favourite of the lot – with lots of
factories and such like – though we did have a pleasant stop-off in a deserted
flower garden (where Layla blew her nose to her heart’s content). Our last bridge proved the most fun,
though, since the cycle path was immediately beneath the bit of the bridge for
cars and so it felt as though we were in a bizarre and beautiful open tunnel in
the sky.
The very last bit of the cycle was a tiny ferry journey
(which kind of seems like a cheat and kind of seems delightful) which took us
to our final destination of Onomichi.
And so just before lunchtime we found ourselves in this seaside town
depositing our bikes and feeling pleased with ourselves. Onomichi is an intriguing place. It is famed for having being one of
those dilapidated towns with no young people and no jobs. And then, it began to change. Though what sounds like a distinctly
unconventional scheme, the local government managed to attract young people
back by giving them free broken down houses and saying that they could keep
them if they repaired them. And the increase in young people has had meant that
the town is now full of charming shops and coffee shops and a boutique cycle
hotel in a converted warehouse – our home for the next two nights.
We staggered into the hotel, though taking the time to revel
in its fabulously hipster vibe.
It was too early to check in, so we went to the bakery and had a
delicious squash and cheese toastie and coffee. We went for a poke around town (including a stop off in a
delightful café with pancakes and strawberries) until it was time for us to
check in. I then had a bath (sadly
sans lemons) and then returned to the bakery for more coffee whilst Layla
showered and called her parents.
In the interim, I found something on the internet about a ping pong
parlor and it struck me that this would be the perfect activity to finish off
our afternoon. But alas, no
address. Layla manfully went to
consult the hotel staff about this (I read my book) and returned clutching a
map. Sweetly, the hotel staff had
phoned to check that we could go and so we were all set.
We headed off into the old town. Apparently ping pong was to be found in an old Japanese
house – one of the ones repaired by a returning Japanese young person. It was brilliant walking through the
old twisty Japanese streets and eventually we found the venue. Well, kind of. We went into a café that was supposed
to be next door to the ping pong and asked for help. The café occupiers looked disconcerted and doubtful. After much discussion – which I
couldn’t follow – a young Japanese man with a beard and flowing hair pointed us
to the next building. We poked our
head through the door doubtfully.
Our ping pong parlour turned out to be an empty dilapidated room lined
with old manga books, with a very distressed ping pong table. We weren’t absolutely sure what the
building was – eventually we concluded it was either a community centre or a
squat. However, we were there and I like a game of ping pong. So we pushed 300 yen into the unwilling
hands of the lady in the next door café, fixed up the ping pong table and
started playing. It was all
slightly surreal until I won three times in a row at which point I felt
confident that it wasn’t a dream.
Random, but fun.
We went for another walk along the sea front, before
settling down to a good, if unslimming, dinner in the warehouse restaurant in
our hotel.
Next morning, we awoke after sleeping brilliantly on the
first comfortable beds we’ve had in ages.
We lay in bed till the late hour of 9 and then got up for
breakfast. We were dismayed to see
it was raining and consulted numerous forecasts about the day’s weather. We chose to believe the one which said
it would stop raining shortly and decided to continue on with our plan of a
temple, literature and cat walk around the hills of Onomichi. Alas, we believed the wrong weather
forecast and what would in sunshine have been a delightful walk was, well, wet
and a bit less delightful. We
continued on stoically for a while, passing temples, seeing stones with quotes
from Japanese literature carved on them and random carvings of cats and we
walked up to an observatory to admire what would have been a stellar view on a
more delightful day. We ended up
taking refuge in the art museum.
This was small and the art ranged in quality. But it was fun to see (and was not outdoors). And then we headed to lunch.
Our lunch venue of the day was a café called Yamaneko
(Mountain Cat) which I’d read about (though the name remains a mystery since we
are not the mountains..). It was
almost full and very hippyish but cheery and had a delicious vegan set lunch.
Since this had been one of our best meals so far, whilst Layla was paying I
took a quick look at the dinner menu and decided to keep it in mind as an option
(since the previous night’s gnocchi and copious cheese, whilst delicious, was
probably not something wise to repeat).
After lunch, we decided to make the most of the weather and
return to our delightful hotel to read (in my case) and work (Layla’s case). By the time we’d finished, the rain had
cleared up and it was one of those lovely post rain skies: almost
luminescent. We went for a walk
and explored a Japanese bookshop – and then it was time for dinner. My enthusiasm for reading had meant I’d
not thoroughly investigated our dinner options and so I persuaded Layla to
return to our hippy lunch venue for dinner. This we did, and had another satisfactory meal and some
grapefruit beer. Our walk home was
enhanced by the local practice of lighting up all the cranes beautifully –
turning them into art – and so we arrived back our hotel in a cheery mood for a
final drink before bed.
And now, we’re off to the depths of the south – an island
called Yakushima which is famed for its beauty and rain. Fingers crossed as to which of those
two we see the most of…
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