Japan: Kyushu - May 10-17, 2009 - solo

[colin]

Our hero in the morning.

This is the latter half of the route. Zumo didn't remember the first part.

From the campsite, went across the 324 to the 266 and then the 57 recommended road to Kumamoto. From Kumamoto, took a ferry (1 hour, about 2000 yen) to Shimabara. I kinda cut through Shimabara to make some time and caught the highway to get further north, so missed some of what I wanted. Probably needed one more day to cover all of it, but had plans to be in Kobe in 2 days.

 

[colin]

Another ferry. This one used a tie down....

Shimabara castle.

Another volcano just next to Shimabara. Didn't quite figure out the name, thought Unzen, but I think I'm wrong.

They made this path for lava to flow down the mountain.

 

[colin]

Finally got some champon.... I wanted the local dish, some kind of hot pot, but a bunch of schoolkids had the whole restaurant booked out, so I settled for this. Still, tasty....

lighting sucks on this, but was an appropriate looking shrine for the area.

Here's some detail to the second half.

 

[colin]

For some reason, I felt like I was supposed to go to Sasebo. I'm not sure why.... I had heard of it, and seemed like a reasonable idea.

wrong. Traffic sucked. No interesting roads to speak of. Big US naval base, maybe that's why I had heard of it. Oh well. I got through it and went to the nice islands further out.

My goal was to camp at a good looking location (camp, onsen, hotel) north of Imari. Seemed reasonable. was going to be a late one as i was going the wrong way. But totally worth it. That Vermont-shaped island was fantastic....

All these bridges were tolls. And had to pay both ways. Quite irritating. Once would be enough, not like there are a lot of options to get off the island.

Coastal road was SWEET! Completely empty out there.

 

[colin]

So I tried to find that great campsite. It is a marina, was getting dark by the time I got there. Saw some campsite signs. but that's it. Couple of dudes at the marina basically said there wasn't any. But were nice enough to point me in the direction of an autocamp place a couple more miles away. Was in the navi, so sure, let's go.

Got there, completely closed. Which isn't really a problem, looked nice enough, fairly hidden. But it was after 8, I was hungry, and there was a very light shower.... hmmm. OK, too bad. 4 nights in a row camping is a new record for me on a bike anyway. Let's go back to that town and have a good rest and good meal....

Saw a couple ads, some biz hotels were like 30 bucks. Hmmm. Usually those are pretty dire. Another called the Grand Hotel Imari said 50. Fine, sold. Called them up, plenty of space, so there I went. Kind of funny, first couple people I saw in the hotel were foreigners. Bit odd for middle-of-nowhere Kyushu.

Got some pointers for a couple restaurants, so walked around looking for the sushi one.

Another one of those all-kanji menus. didn't recognize any fish either. Hmmm.

Eventually found the 1-person sets. Great, gimme the 20$ one (included sashimi but not some fried fish thing).

I couldn't believe how much food there was. woah.

Started with this:

hmm. some form of sea snail. complete with barnacle things and seaweed growing on them. Safety pin was used to extract them. hmmm. I had 2 of the 4, that's enough. Once I found out that the sucker part of the snail is not so edible, I kinda stopped.

Sashimi and tempura, ok, now we're talking....

oh man, more. miso, rice, that tofu stuff in a pot that I don't like, watermelon (which i also don't like) and some seaweed noodle thing not pictured as it was on the left. lots of food....

i was full.

 

[colin]

I had an awesome sleep. Camping, well, I just don't sleep all that well or all that much. Got a nice late start and pointed toward Kobe, 8 or so hours away. ok, no prob.

While heading toward the highway, saw a sign for some Pinocchio house.... cool, let's go find that. House was some day-activity thing. Nothing so exciting (or even open). Roads were all right, aside from the wet debris.

Going back, the navi took me to some neat place.... the area is actually quite famous for pottery. (expensive!). Here it is known for the blue/white style....

 

[colin]

Hoofed it out to Kobe to meet up with friends. Couple other folks joined as well, cool night.

FOOD!

My friend Brad just got the coolest toy. Saw it at the Tokyo Motorcycle show, but didn't try it. It is addictive.... meant to practice balance, you can do wheelies, stoppies, bunny hops, all sorts of stuff. I just tried wheelies. Brad is pretty good at it. In the back, one person is nursing a hurt ankle from this toy. so please be careful.

well, that's about it for the fun. In the morning I took off for Tokyo. I had a hard time getting out of Osaka, thought the highways connected, Zumo kept telling me to exit. Got on and off the raised highway three times. slogged through shitty traffic and eventually (like over an hour later) got on the Meishin. From near Kyoto, it started raining. The whole way back was wet, lots of water on the road, not very fun. or fast. My rear was shot, so was a bit wary of that. Eventually got to tokyo, nice and soaking wet. But home.

-the end-

 

[NoCage]

Always love your ride reports Colin... thanks for taking the time to take pics and write a narrative.