Osaka and the Shimanami Kaido.
I arrived in Osaka in the evening and made my way to the hotel. I was excited for the trip but didn’t really know what to expect. I hadn’t travelled with Tom since we drove Ring Road in Iceland together back in 2022. That was the first time we did a big trip together and it worked out really well. I liked how Tom travelled. We were pretty good with the flow, making plans up as we went. It was perfect for an exploratory trip where you don’t really know what you want to see or do. He was always down for an adventure.
Tom was flying in later than me because he’d been in Hawaii for a week. We met up at the hotel, organized our stuff, and went out to get dinner. We popped around town, walked along the river, and got a nice meal before heading back. While in Hawaii, Tom had stepped on some coral, so he spent a good two hours in the bathroom trying to scrape coral out of his foot. I’d gone to bed by then, but I think he was up for a few more hours dealing with it. Luckily he got it all out and it didn’t hurt too much to bike on the next day.
I woke up early to use the onsen. At this hotel it was on the roof with a gorgeous view of the Osaka skyline. I watched the sun rise over the city from the warm pool. The mix of the hot water and cool morning air was a perfect way to start the day. It finally hit me that this was really happening—all my half-assed planning was finally coming to fruition.
I met Tom for a quick breakfast before heading over to the bike shop just across town. We chatted with the owner, and I realized we’d actually rented casual bikes, not road bikes. They definitely weren’t going to work for the trip as I had a lot of climbing planned in the mountains. Luckily the owner was able to set us up with two road bikes pretty easily. We probably spent about two hours there getting all the gear together, doing a bike check, and getting fitted on two pretty good Cannondale road bikes.
With all the time spent at the shop we missed our train, but it was easy to switch the tickets to a later one at no cost. We were taking the high-speed rail down to Onomichi, where we’d start the bike ride. We loaded our gear into the panniers, left some stuff at the shop, paid for the bikes, and rode over to the train station. There we had to figure out how to disassemble the bikes and put them into Rinko bags—this is required to take a bike on most trains in Japan. We had about fifteen minutes until our train left, so it was an exciting race against the clock. We ran across the station carrying bikes in one arm and panniers in the other. We made it on with about a minute to spare.
The ride itself was pretty chill, although we didn’t have reserved seats where we could stow the bikes, so we were shuffling around every time other passengers boarded. It all worked out though. It was about a two-hour ride down to Onomichi—beautiful scenery, gorgeous hills with fall colours.
We got to Onomichi around 2 p.m. with about fifty kilometres to ride, so we were on a bit of a time crunch to arrive before sunset. We reassembled the bikes, loaded up, and headed to the Onomichi Harbour. The ferry was easy enough to find, and we took it across to start the ride.
It was perfect—blue water, a few bridge crossings, and gorgeous sunsets as we raced to make it to our hostel before dark. You could smell the fresh ocean air and the citrus from all the orange trees lining the road, heavy with fruit. The wind blew hard against us and from up on the bridges you could see big waves crashing in the sea below. We only saw one other group biking the whole time. There were blue lines painted on the road for this section and we just followed those. Really easy riding, lots of bike lanes, and some fun descents from the bridges. Once the sun went down it got cold fast, but we quickly made it to the I-LINK HOSTEL & CAFE SHIMANAMI. A great warm-up day.
We checked into our hostel and they served a great dinner with sashimi, chicken cutlet, and a nice dessert. The place was nearly empty. I think there were maybe six or seven people there when there’s room for about eighty, and we had our own room. We went to bed early after a long day. Tom was especially tired from switching time zones.
The next day would be our second and final day on the Shimanami Kaido that would end on the island of Shikoku, where the actual riding would start. This was a great warm-up for what was to come.
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