Bicycle touring South Korea and Japan: a comparison

Posted on January 30, 2020 by Bryan Keith

First, to conclude our journey:

In contrast to our quick 21-hour trip from Antalya to Seoul (with one short stop in Moscow), it took 44 hours to return from Miyazaki to Antalya.  We had an overnight in Incheon — fun — and a fairly long wait in Istanbul since our original Istanbul-Antalya flight had been canceled and the later one they switched us to was delayed — not so fun.

I must say, the Incheon airport is a very easy one for an overnight layover.  Seoul is very far, and Incheon is kind of far, but right near the airport is a place that may (or may not) be called Airport New Town.  We took the cheap (1000 won (US$0.86)/person), frequent train less than 10 minutes to Unseo.  From the station it was less than a 10-minute walk to a guest house where we found a clean room with heat and hot water in the attached bathroom for 30,000 won (US$26)/night for two people.  It doesn’t get much easier than that from a giant international airport.

This is the same area where we had our first meal in Korea two months earlier:

IMG_20190926_134840 by bryandkeith on flickr

Here we are back in front of the same restaurant but without our bikes this time:

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Bicycle touring southern Kyushu: Ebino to Miyazaki

Posted on January 20, 2020 by Bryan Keith

As with my ski trip to Hokkaido a couple years ago, I was grateful for Keiichi’s help in planning this bicycle tour in Kyushu.  He lives in Kagoshima now, and I was looking forward to visiting him there.  However, with our detour to Usuki and the days spent there at the bamboo lantern festival, Ferda and I ran out of time.  Being a fair bit out of our way we ended up skipping Kagoshima.  Thank you, Keiichi, for all the help and sorry that we weren’t able to get together.

Our crossing from Kumamoto to Miyazaki Prefecture was through the scariest tunnel of the trip.  As I mentioned in my last post, we hadn’t planned on crossing those mountains on such a busy highway, but the little road we wanted didn’t go through.  The 1800m long tunnel was pretty narrow.  We started the tunnel on the very narrow sidewalk with quite a high curb.  I keep hitting the periodic reflectors with my right front bag (we were riding on the left as always in Japan), scared that I’d lose balance and crash into the highway.  I had to stop part way through to calm my nerves.  It was good timing as a fast truck zoomed by followed by the typical swirling wind.  When the road started obviously going downhill, I got off the sidewalk and sped the rest of the way through the tunnel with no vehicles passing me.  We rested in the sun on the other end, again needing to calm down.

An 1800m tunnel to take us from Kumamoto Prefecture to Miyazaki Prefecture by bryandkeith on flickr

The rest of our days in Japan were characterized by the wonderful people we met.  We coasted down to Yoshimatsu, and an outgoing woman on a bicycle with two kids and good English gave us a short tour of the sites in her neighborhood: a spring and a shrine.

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Bicycle touring Kumamoto Prefecture

Posted on January 10, 2020 by Bryan Keith

Even though it’s been over three years since a series of earthquakes rattled Kumamoto, the devastation is still readily apparent.  As a reminder that we’re in a seismically active area Ferda and I started our Kumamoto tour by slowly bicycling up the rim of the huge Aso Caldera, “one of the largest calderas in the world” according to the Aso UNESCO Global Geopark literature that we picked up in the town of Aso.  From the high point on the road we dropped quickly and steeply into the caldera itself.

Here’s a view from that descent looking down on the farmland in the caldera.  The opposite rim of the caldera is in the far right of the photo while the peaks in the center of the caldera start to be visible in the left of the photo.

Looking down into the massive Aso Caldera by bryandkeith on flickr

To try and get an idea of the enormity of the caldera also consider this photo, taken from the slope of the mountains in the caldera’s center looking toward the rim of the caldera.  The mountains in the background are outside the caldera, but it’s easy to see the caldera’s rim shown as an unbroken horizontal band of green all the way across the photo.
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Bicycle touring Oita Prefecture: Usuki and the bamboo lantern festival (Takeyoi)

Posted on December 31, 2019 by Bryan Keith

November is apparently bamboo lantern festival season in Oita with Usuki the first weekend, Hita the second weekend, and Taketa the third weekend.  During my planning for this Kyushu tour, my original route was too long, and one of the places I skipped to make the route shorter was Usuki.  However, I added it back in when I realized it was the only convenient place for us to catch one of these bamboo lantern festivals.  It was an excellent decision as our time spent in Usuki was certainly one of our Kyushu highlights.

With a bit of extra time we followed the coast around the peninsula NE of Usuki and just like coming into Nakatsu we stumbled upon a bicycle path, the Saganoseki Cycling Road.  It’s interesting that South Korea really touts their cycling infrastructure, but you don’t hear much about Japan.  Off the designated routes in Korea, the cycling conditions were pretty grim.  In Japan, however, we found great riding almost everywhere we went.  Japanese drivers are perhaps the best in the world.

Another unexpected bicycle path in Japan by bryandkeith on flickr

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Bicycle touring Oita Prefecture, the north: Hita, Nakatsu, Usa, Beppu

Posted on December 21, 2019 by Bryan Keith

A continuous surprise during our tour in Japan was just how good the riding is.  I went to South Korea expecting great riding and found great food.  I went to Japan expecting great food and found great riding.

IMG_20191023_093938 by bryandkeith on flickr

The start of our convoluted route through Oita Prefecture was downhill through rice paddies to the pottery village of Onta.
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