Day 9: Shimanami Kaido
The Shimanami Kaido is a 74 kilometer (46 mile) highway and bike route spanning 6 islands and bridges in the Seto inland sea. You can go in either direction, but I started in Imabari and ended in Onomichi.
A lot of people say to split the route into two days, which isn’t bad advice, but it’s easily doable in one day, and I like a challenge. You can rent a bike at either end and drop it off at the other, which makes things easy.
I really lucked out with the weather. There was potential rain in the forecast, but it ended up being just a bit cloudy all day, and not too hot.
Arrival in Imabari
We got into port at 5:30am, and there was time for a quick breakfast on the ferry before getting off the boat. The Japanese breakfast option was a piece of salmon, rice, miso soup, and a cup of natto (fermented soy beans). Not great, but terrible for boat food.
The ferry doesn’t actually go directly to Imabari, so had to take a 45 minute shuttle bus, although it didn‘t matter because the bike rental doesn’t open until 8am anyway.
By 8:45am I had my bike rented and was ready to go. I opted for the e-assist bike, which is the middle ground between the the full e-bike and a regular road bike. Went that way mostly because it had a cushioned seat and a luggage rack, which saved me the hassle of forwarding my bag.
First Bridge and Second Breakfast
The scenery along the route is incredible. The road is mostly pretty flat, except for leading up to/away fron the bridges, but the e-assist comes in big there. On the bridges (and a lot of the rest of the route too) there are separated bike lanes so you’re not next to the cars.
After the first bridge, on Oshima Island, there’s a rest stop with a seafood bbq. Or really, it’s a seafood market with locally causght fish and shellfish, but they’ll set up a tabletop charcoal grill for you to cook whatever you buy.
Second Bridge
Elevenses
On the second island, made a stop for a local specialty ramen — Hakata Salt Ramen — which is served with a very light broth, lots of greet onion, and slices of lemon. And why not some Hakata salt soft serve too.
I was hoping there would be locals specialties to try on each island, but alas this was pretty much it for food along the way. (There were plenty of places I could have stopped, just nothing that seemed particularly compelling).
More Biking
Getting Lost (of course)
Up until around the 50km mark, I was feeling great and making pretty good time. That is, until I stopped at this 7Eleven to grab a bottle of water.
What I missed when I was focused on the store was the road marker indicating I was supposed to turn left immediately after this parking lot. Instead, I kept going for a ways (there was still a blue line for some reason) until I realized that the signs weren’t making sense, and the turned around thinking maybe I had gotten confused about which direction I had entered the parking lot. Ended up backtracking over a 3km stretch, like 4 times before I ran into another biker who pointed me in the right direction.
Found Again
The last 25km were a lot tougher than the first 60ish, but the scenery was still very nice.
Almost There
You can’t bike over the last bridge to Onomichi, so you have to take a quick ferry across.
Made it!
It would have been nice if the end point was a little more festive than a parking garage, but I‘ll take it! Immediately went to the convenience store across the street for a sando and a large beer and lumbered my way to a park bench by the river.
Hiroshima
The nice thing about ending in Onomichi is that it‘s just an hour or so on the train to get to my next stop in Hiroshima.
After checking into my hotel and taking a much needed shower, went to Okonomiyaki Koshida for a real Hiroshima-style Okonomiyaki, made with cabbage and noodles instead yams like the Osaka version.
