Kiss of Kyushu

A Cycle Across Japan begins with a March return to Tokyo from Tucson. I’m still mired in unemployment with a growing fog and gloom about America and where to focus my potential. All the while I’ve lived slowly and intentionally in the desert, not unlike our ubiquitous Saguaro. I decided to mix things up with some of my remaining savings and try something daring. My two week bike trips the previous year in Japan and Taiwan had reawakened the raucous joy within me of adventure. No worries save riding a bicycle from dawn and camping freely? Sign me up. My spirit needed nourishment and this was the direction or distraction I’d take in 2025 as the world burned at home.

The flight back was a good price, and good vibe with a very appreciative airport drop off from some new friends in Tucson, the Holladays. I opted for my first try at a true red-eye night flight and surprisingly beat jet lag. I was also crazily hooked on solving a slot machine game on my phone, Luck Be a Landlord, so the time flew by. I got in at 5 am Japan time, and stayed up the whole day after without much damage to my circadian rhythm. I hope to be lucky replicating that with future far travels.

My reunion with Claire was great, it had been about ten weeks since parting after New Years in Las Vegas. I gave myself a few weeks of time at home with her to acclimate before the big trip. Lounging around her apartment reading or gaming (right now: Helldivers 2), cooking feasts at night, and exploring the shops, parks and gyms of nearby Tokyo were my daily routine. The cherry blossoms were late blooming this year, culminating in a chilly hanami (flower viewing) with Claire’s crew in Shimokitazawa.

We waited until her spring break to begin the trip, as the usual cadences of my trips to Japan have circled around those breaks. Though it would be mostly my journey alone from south to north, I also wanted to spend as much time as possible with Claire both on and off the bicycle. As an expert herself who’s charted many a course across Japan, she was an indispensable part for me in making this journey happen. I even borrowed her freestanding, larger Big Agnes tent, saving me a bit of very limited baggage space and honestly upgrading from my well-weathered Tarptent.

A chance reunion with my old bestie, CJ, in Japan for a wedding, got scheduled the evening before departure. We stapled on some snack bar style karaoke, with CJ and I crooning “Wicked Game” by Chris Isaak before seeing him off for another, indefinite time. I booked us flights midday so the subsequent hangover wasn’t too debilitating. Taking bikes on transit here requires bagging them in a rinkou (bike bag), and the cheap one I bought forces me to also take off the handlebars and racks, so it’s still an ordeal. Though taxing on regular trains and buses, it at least enables me to fly domestically in Japan as a regular checked bag!

As an aside, can I just wax on about how lovely it is flying domestically in Japan? Shoes and belts stay on, liquids, even alcohol, are okay to just bring through security, and snacks, meals and drinks are readily available before and after security with no brutal markup or cratering in quality. Things can still be neurotic though, security did force me to check my bike multi-tool because it measured a few millimeters too long when extended fully. However, they had a tiny cardboard box ready for me to check at no extra charge, so the whole thing was a wash.

After an uneventful flight, we opted to bus our bikes from Kagoshima airport to its bustling downtown. Maybe we should have just rode our bikes out and started the journey from there, but the call of dropping in a unique city for dinner and some last minute bike gear was appealing. Too bad my dinner had an insect crawling in it, and the bike shop closed early. At least we found a rare onsen with private rooms to clean off after the flight and bus. We grabbed a late ferry from the city to the adjacent volcano, Sakurajima, and call that the true start point.

We began at Sakurajima for several reasons. First, it’s a national park. The southernmost point of Kyushu and mainland Japan, Cape Sata (Satamisaki) is nearby and was an obvious marker for me to hit. The route going down and back from it, and then up the eastern coast of Kyushu through Miyazaki prefecture was novel for Claire as well, making it an easy choice. The distance was about ideal for a week to reach the north end of the island at Oita before parting ways.

As a first day of riding, the impression of Sakurajima would stay with me the entire trip. I didn’t brush up on history before starting, and it turns out that this is one of the most active volcanoes in the world. It erupts almost daily and it’s common for Kagoshima residents to brush ash off their windows, indeed I was picking some particles out of my hair after going to one of the viewing platforms. It was even once an island, hence the “-jima” suffix, but an eruption some hundred years ago fused it to the mainland. It was a true highlight to be biking past it and see ash plumes blasting out of the peak.

Down the coast from Sakurajima, we had our first post-ride onsen in the town of Minamiosumi. Striving all day to then clean off and soak in hot tubs, along with a cold plunges or sauna steam, is a simple bliss. Alas, so many are prejudiced against tattoos that it’s an exhausting dance to know if it’s gonna be trouble to get in or not. That day’s visit was no trouble with ink, but a more unusual problem. After a few sharp temperature changes, I did encounter syncopic, almost stroke-like symptoms in my nerves that I later was able to attribute to dehydration and electrolyte deprivation. I didn’t have that problem again the rest of the trip, so thankfully it was a wakeup call to focus better on my body’s needs and nothing worse.

In terms of lasting first impressions, the next day to Satamisaki would stay on with me for the grueling challenge of the day. It’s one of the most remote areas in Japan due to its rugged terrain. “Be wary of trying to do big things on a late start”, might be my take home wisdom of that day. After reaching the southern point and looping back, we found our intended goal of camping at an eastern beach too far out of reach. The simple 75km or so we rode that belied a day’s climb of 1,300m, with a final hill that seemed cruel and unending in the settling gloom. Thankfully, after a fully dark descent from the final summit, we made our fallback point of a town ballfield with a tiny grocery minutes away from closing.

The intensity and remoteness mellowed out some as we made our way east and north, getting back to the comfortable cadence of regular konbini every hour or two. The coastline we hewed to was quite beautiful and frequently peppered with large climbs. I was surprised to see so many cherry blossoms on the way hitting peak bloom. It’s so interesting to see the horticulture at work in almost every small town, and very rewarding to be a traveler witnessing the spectacle of it all. Indeed, my entire journey north would feature beautiful blossoms (often accompanied by debilitating pollen allergies) in a form of endless spring.

The struggle for Kyushu might have been in the multiple days of rejection from onsen on our way up to and including everywhere in Miyazaki city, putting us in pretty foul moods. It’s often hard to find out any individual policy about this matter until you show up at the door. By the end of this trip, I’d had it and opted to just not ask, or even ignore these notices, force a confrontation and face whatever (minor) consequences await. I’ll elaborate on the next chapter about how I got there, but at this earlier part of the journey, I just meekly complied and we left dirty and dejected.

We went inland at the city of Nobeoka to take a more direct route to Oita City over a day and a half, where we’d make a hotel reservation for an evening of hot springs in Beppu before venturing separate ways. Beppu is famous in Japan for the volume of its geothermal activity and water flow, with onsen everywhere. More touristic areas are much less suspicious of tattoos, so we had little difficulty there finding a great onsen to relax in, not to mention also our first real, nourishing vegan meals the entire week navigating the coast. Onigiri gets exhausting after a while, even if it is an ideal ration and easily purchased fresh.

After saying bye to Claire early in the morning for her flight back to Tokyo and work, I saddled up to ride east from Oita City to reach a ferry at Saganoseki to Shikoku which was the closest possible distance for connecting the islands. The wind was at my back for a change, but my luck turned sour as I was told I’d have to wait six hours at the ferry, despite hourly departures. There’d be no wait if I bagged my bicycle and boarded as a passenger. Thinking about the ordeal that is the rinkou and bike disassembly, I opted to wait at the ferry terminal. It’s the modern era, they have wifi, I have e-books, games and writing to do on my smartphone. They tired of my loitering eventually and boarded me after an hour or two. The whole episode made little sense for me, but I eventually was on my way to Shikoku, soon to be encamped near the other side’s ferry terminal and the closure of chapter 1 with Kyushu behind me.