Hamada to Shimonoseki: Adventures in Navigating

There was little doubt by this point that we had taken a wrong turn.


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Google Maps, our longtime navigator, had steered us up more than a few mountains in the past few weeks, but of late, its advice had gotten even more suspect (this could have something to do with the fact that Google has no data for bicycle travel in Japan, and the only way we can get directions from it is to pretend to be a car).  Supposedly it was avoiding any tolls or highways, but more than once it had directed us onto a "bypass," an elevated road that loomed over every town.  My feeble gaijin brain has some difficulty appreciating the subtle difference between these towering thoroughfares and "highways."  Whenever we'd encountered one of these monsters before, we had taken the designated detour, which usually pushed us up a tiny mountain road that added many miles and hours to our route.

Now, we thought, having just left Hagi, we thought we'd outfox the Google.  The middle road that we were directed to take seemed pretty straight, cutting through a handful of tunnels, but it was labeled "San-in Road," which in the past had meant anything from "quiet mountain road with wide shoulder" to "giant truck mating ground."  The Kitaura Highway to the south snaked back and forth across the map, a sure sign that it would be full of switchbacks and steep inclines.  So, we thought, we'd take the tiny, pale-yellow road along the coast.  Surely a coastal road would be pretty flat, right?

...Right?

After an hour of climbing up tiny, overgrown, 10%-grade mountain roads, we had gone too far to turn around and too tired to go on (without complaining).  Still, no matter how hard the road, we certainly got a welcome break from the endless parade of trucks and conbinis.  The forest on these little mountains was a thick, primeval jungle, with vines wound around thick, dark bamboo.  Wild raspberry bushes bursting with ripe berries and wicked thorns crowded us into the middle of the street; this wasn't a problem, as we saw only a single car in our hours of pushing.

Just off the coast, tiny spits of land dotted the calm, mirrorlike Sea of Japan.

Harry and Google seen arguing like an old married couple.

The scenery revived our spirits enough to continue onward.  Eventually, we did make it back to the designated route, just in time for more trucks and more conbinis.

Also, we met a frog at the conbini.  This frog is notable in that it was the third dirtiest creature in Shimane (after the two of us, of course).

We had literally been looking for these guys since first coming to Japan.

"I got crabs!"

And just like that, we were finished with Japan yet again, and this time we had no plans to return.  Strange to say, I was never really a Japanophile before coming to Japan.  Unlike some of my classmates, I was never into anime, never really dug Japanese movies or art, even in my three years of Japanese classes.  While living in Osaka, I was constantly told by impressed locals that I must really love Japan to stay so long.  I've always had good and bad things to say about Japan and about Japanese people.  But I think I can say, after leaving this time, after having seen rural Japan and met some amazing people, that I do love Japan.  I still don't want to settle there, and I'm not even sure I'd want to live there again, but I do know that Japan will always have a special place in my heart.

After three months to the day, our tourist visas were up.  We were shipping out the following day, off to another three weeks of cycling, but now in a country about which we knew almost nothing. My stomach sank at the prospect of biking through a place where we couldn't speak the language.  So many of the experiences we'd had seeing Japan's back roads -- the abandoned campsites, the kind passersby, the racist old guys -- we would be unable to appreciate in Korea.

So we enjoyed our last few hours in Japan, hoping to hang onto as much of this place as we could.

Karaoke prominently figured into these hopes.