So this was it. Not quite the whole way around, but nevertheless a total of 465km in three days. Click here to see how he did last year. The one thing I haven’t mentioned this year is the heat. This is Japan. This is summer. It is hot. Nevertheless, he was probably riding at top temperatures of about 34°C to 35°C and that’s at least 3 to 4 degrees lower than last year. It makes a difference!

He says he wants to finish the route next year and then possibly take on the neighbouring island of Kyushu … it’s a bit bigger!

You’ve seen the picture on the right before, but I thought you’d like to see Milan on the morning the adventure started. Taken at the same place (outside the hotel) with Milan in a somewhat pensive stance.

Follow the red line. Milan left Mugi in the southeast of Shikoku at 8am and reached his destination some 150km away in Takamatsu almost exactly 12 hours later. When we caught up with him he looked remarkably ‘genki’ (well, good, strong) and his legs were pumping away right to the end. He said he’d kept telling himself “only an hour to go … for the last three hours”. More details later.

A good breakfast (his “best meal of the trip” he said) to start the day and then he was off on a 17km gruelling coast road with lots of ups and down. Nevertheless, he made good time to the city of Tokushima where he had to take shelter for a couple of hours from a heavy thunderstorm. He then raced the next 40km to where we met him and he followed us in to his goal at the Parkside Hotel in Takamatsu where it all started.

Finally, a quote from Milan: “The tunnels are really scary. There are no pavements for pedestrians or cyclists and there are huge trucks coming through and you’re never sure if they’ve seen you or not.”

This was the map we used last year (hence 2010 on the front cover) and luckily for us it includes Shikoku. You can see the little post-its on the copy Milan held with him last year. Departure for Shikoku on Sunday and Milan rides off from Takamatsu on Monday 15 August.

The 66th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Click here for more photos.

Duration: 4 days
Distance: 425 kilometers
Highest temperature during ride: 38.8°C
Lowest temperature during ride: 27°C
Average temperature (approx.): 35°C
Top speed achieved: 61kph (downhill into Hiroshima)

And then – for reasons I couldn’t understand at the time – he took much longer to get to the Atomic Bomb Dome than he should have at the pace he was going. The picture below is one of the reasons.

He plays a baseball game on his PlayStation Portable in which he has plays at the Zoom Zoom stadium where the Hiroshima Carp play their home games. He said he became a “tourist” for a while.

It was as he was approaching the Atomic Bomb Dome that I got the idea of looking for a webcam at the Atomic Bomb Dome … and lo and behold there was one and controllable at that. Try it yourself (Japan daylight time) by clicking on the link in the previous sentence. We were able to see moving pictures (not stills) of Milan at the Dome and talk to him on his mobile. Milan’s aunties and cousin in Australia and Switzerland also saw him as did DJ in Tokyo.

From there he went to a friend’s house in Hiroshima (up a very steep hill which he still had the energy to cycle almost to the top) to pick up a cycle bag we’d posted to him, then cycled down to Hiroshima station where he dismantled his bike and got on a bullet train back to Kyoto (see picture below) and home. Pretty much his first words on arrival were, “it’s so good to be back in Kyoto”.

There’ll be more posts as we get some of his stories out of him and I decide the best way to put up the pictures he took en route.

He kicked on from there though and approached his destination of Takehara at around 8pm in the dark. If it had been a full moon the view he would have seen as he hugged the coast of the Seto Inland Sea might have looked something like this.

Our friend Wikipedia says, “The coastal area of the Inland Sea is one of the most famous tourist destinations in Japan. Even before Japan opened to foreigners in the middle of the 19th century, the sea’s beauty was praised and introduced to the Western world by those who visited Japan, including Philipp Franz von Siebold, and after the country’s opening, Ferdinand von Richthofen and Thomas Cook.”

Within striking distance of his goal now. Less than 60km to cover tomorrow!

And the hottest place in Japan today? Fukuyama in Hiroshima Prefecture where Milan passed through when the temperature hit its peak of 38.8°C.

This is another post that Milan will probably gloss over, but hey we’re on a tour of western Japan here and you might as well learn something along the way. All over the world there are pockets of culture (more often than not in the form of museums) hidden away here and there. Big cities like Paris have small places like the Musée Marmottan, and small cities like Kurashiki have the Ohara Museum of Art. For a city that almost none of you (non-Japan residents anyway) have heard of to have such a gem of a museum is nothing short of remarkable. Go to this page on the Museum’s website to see some of the paintings they have in their collection. The picture above is one of my favourite paintings exhibited there – Ferdinand Hodler’s ‘The Woodcutter’ … and yes, as you can see, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris also has a copy of the same painting.

Milan’s youth hostel was just minutes away from the Ohara Museum.

It was pitch back coming back up the hill with no lights anywhere. The whole road up is surrounded by graves and that hill is a category 2 climb. I was so scared I absolutely raced it back to the top of the hill. I used up more energy in that short ride than I did the whole day getting here.

It certainly made me laugh. Then, I read this review of the hostel on ‘Trip Advisor’ written by a guy from Toulouse. For those of you who don’t click on that link, here are couple of snippets.

Don’t go there

- it’s far from the train station (40 mn walk, assuming you don’t get lost)
- even by bus, you still have to walk up a hill for 10 mn through a dodgy area and a cemetary
- the guy at the reception is the most unpleasant Japanese I’ve ever met, cold as ice

Clearly our man from Toulouse shares Milan’s thoughts on the cemetery and Japanese readers will also see that the 3rd of the three reviews corroborates the sentiments on the character of the guy at reception.

A final word on the heat. The news programmes are spending a long time discussing the heat wave that is going on here at the moment. It really is quite phenomenally hot. It is also unfortunate that Milan is in the hottest part of the country. I will be advising him he can give up anytime he wants. He hasn’t said a single word indicating he wants to. On the contrary I’m convinced he wants to see this through, but the weather doesn’t look like its going to abate until at least the weekend. He is taking on board plenty of liquids and we are telling him to eat even if he doesn’t feel hungry (doesn’t seem to be a problem so far!). He certainly is a tough little cookie!

When Milan reads this blog later, this entry won’t interest him much. “Pottery? What were you doing writing about pottery? And what’s that cup doing up there?” Well, pottery is “one of Japan’s oldest art forms, dating back to the Neolithic period” (read more on Wikipedia), and the Bizen style of pottery is one of Japan’s oldest pottery making techniques, introduced in the Heian (794-1185) period. Indeed Bizen is one of the six remaining kilns of medieval Japan – again (read more on Wikipedia).

So what’s all that got to do with Milan’s trip? Well the very center of all things Bizen is the village of Imbe where Milan stopped for lunch today. What he didn’t know was that he has been there before to try his own hand at making Bizen pottery back in 2003. You see the result up there. Not exactly a museum piece, but he was only 9 at the time.

You can see it is already above 25°C at 7am. The weather forecast for the rest of the day isn’t any better. Hot. Hot. Hot. He’ll have to slow his pace down.

Edited later: I’ve changed the original static picture to a moving temperature map for 7am to 7pm on 18 August.

He did go wildly off course so it is possible, but his original route had him doing 158km. We don’t think he was that far off course. Still let’s say 174km. He sounded tired “standing up feels funny”, but he’ll be leaving his hotel at 7am tomorrow morning hoping to do another 140km or so. More updates on the morrow.

Again, lifted straight from Wikipedia:

he Akashi-Kaikyō Bridge (明石海峡大橋, Akashi Kaikyō Ō-hashi), also known as the Pearl Bridge, has the longest central span of any suspension bridge in the world, at 1,991 metres (6,532 ft). It was completed in 1998 and links the city of Kobe on the mainland of Honshū to Iwaya on Awaji Island by crossing the busy Akashi Strait. It carries part of the Honshū-Shikoku Highway. Read more about the bridge here.

Joe (through the car window): “You’ve gone too far, turn left and follow me.”

Milan duly turned left and then at a traffic light, went on ahead and then sailed past another road we could have taken to correct our course.

Joe (frantically and finally reaching Milan on his mobile and with raised voice): “Come back, you’ve gone too far again.”

Milan returns, I shout through the window, “we have to turn right at the traffic lights and then left on Kujo”. Milan shouts back, “it’s no good telling me street names, I don’t know Kyoto.” Shaking my head in disbelief, I guide him to Kujo and then onwards. What on earth is he going to do in towns he doesn’t even know the names of – if he doesn’t know his own home town? :+(

Here’s a picture of the bridges at the confluence (a new word Milan learned today!) of the rivers Yodo, Uji and Kizu. In its own way it is quite a geographical spectacle. Wide open spaces carved out by the waters flowing down the mountains from three different directions. There is certainly more time to appreciate that sort of thing when following at cycle pace.

I took him 30 km out of Kyoto and left him on a cycle path on the Yodo river in Osaka.

Joe: “Good luck and cycle safely. I’m sorry I shouted at you earlier. Don’t shout at your own children. Though that’s probably too late now.”

He smiled and went on his way. All he had to do was go down the river, cross at a certain bridge and then find the cycle path 1km further down. Errrr … ‘all’. Anyway, it all went pear-shaped. I was back in Kyoto when I got a call.

Milan: “I’ve been riding on the small river for ages now.”
Joe: “Do you know where you are? If not, show someone pages 28 and 39 on the map and ask them exactly where you are. Call me back when you know.” Some 30 minutes later I got the call.

Milan: “I’ve gone totally off course, but I know exactly where I am now. I’m going to take Route 171 all the way down pages 28 and 39 and join Route 2 at the end.”

The temperature was 31 degrees celsius at 8am, and 33 degrees at 9am. It is probably about 35 degrees as I write this at noon.

He’s doing OK! :+)

This following bit is taken entirely from Wikipedia.

Gozan no Okuribi (五山送り火), more commonly known as Daimonji (大文字), is one of the iconic festivals of Kyoto, Japan. It is the culmination of the O-Bon festival on August 16th, in which five giant bonfires are lit on mountains surrounding the city. It signifies the moment when the spirits of deceased family members, who are said to visit this world during O-Bon, are believed to be returning to the spirit world—thus the name Okuribi (送り火) (roughly, “send-off fire”). Read more here.

It is so iconic that Google paid homage on google.co.jp today.

We didn’t have time to go. Early start tomorrow.

If you find yourself in Kyoto and need your bicycle fixed go to Kazu Matsumura.

The final touches before the big ride.

And we’re all set.

Of course it doesn’t look quite like that now. It looks more like this.

Projected date of departure is still Tuesday 17 August.

Last week I rode 165km from Kyoto to Nagoya along the route you can see below.

A typhoon caught me out on the way back and I only cycled half the route back. I’m now planning a trip from Kyoto to Hiroshima. Depending on the route I could be cycling 485km. As long as this blog is up and running properly by the time I leave you’ll be able to follow my progress here.