Bike Touring Across Japan #2 - Kyushu Part 2

I guess there's no better way to start rolling on the bike again than a stop at you all faithful currently about to leave the city center of Nagasaki to start my Longest Ride yet which is about 113 km today but it's the opposite of the last riding day cuz now instead of climbing the mountains to get into Nagasaki I've got to climb the mountains to get out of Nagasaki so all climbing is pretty much at the beginning after about 5 km in or so and then should be pretty flat along the coastline as we head of the Saga this climb is quite long but it's pretty gradual like so it's really manageable and doesn't hurt that the roads I'm on right now are very nice it looks quite busy right now but it hasn't really felt like it too much majority of the traffic's coming away from where I'm going like into Nagasaki so it's been quite nice going on the other side this is the road I'm trying to avoid this morning on the right hand side oh here I've missed the turn off on this buddy steep section of downhill it's a bloody nightmare try and turn it back around I'm not too long done that climb though when I said it was GR gradual what I really meant was it was gradually getting steeper but we've made it and I've done my mountain pass for the day so should be another chill 100 km for the rest of the day now even though it's 100K the elevation is quite chill so it should be a nice Cruise all the way to Saga but I do have to say I think a lot of it is on Main Road so might be another one of those days where it's a lot of traffic but we'll see how it goes and I don't know how well the GoPro is going to pick this up right now but this descent that I've been going on so far well I'm going this way now but when I started on this road after the climb it was really Steep and you know I've been saying before about how I've got a bit of dissension anxiety if you will that I'm worried I'm going to slip out I feel like it nearly came true there and just as I felt like I was getting a bit more confident with descending I feel like there was just about to come crashing down on me because obviously I'm carrying a bit of we on my bike at the minute and you know just as I was starting to go down The Descent feel myself a little bit you know I started pressing the brake and then I realized oh I'm not stopping as quick but you know it's Steep and I've got a bit of weight then I started pressing my brakes more and then my back tire started to Skid out a little bit and my life flashed before my eyes just a little bit and there was a couple cars behind me so if something actually did go wrong that was probably me dead but I do have enough ey control that I was able to make it out the other side unscathed so that might have scared me on descending just a little bit again but you know it's a step-by-step process of getting over this thing saying all that though I am quite excited to go down the mountain again so how let's get on with it there and ironically enough by picking the more foresty road on the mountain I might have picked the steeper way down but you know I've made my bed now I'm going to lay in it o well I don't know whether I filmed any of this town when I was going to Nagasaki but I've ended up in the exact same town as I started the climbing the other day but it just turns out I've taken a bit of a different road so it's quite interesting must be a bit of a choke point to get over the mountain here that's if you're not taking the big Expressway roads though because bicycles aren't allowed on the biggest roads here in Japan but even so I mean I'm showing you a bit of it now just in case I didn't show you the other day just how nice this area is but even these small roads have proven pretty pretty busy so it looks like a lot of cars as well want to avoid the big Expressway well you don't actually see these signs that often but apparently this road down here is a no no for me I have no idea why I mean I have been on some busy roads already but now I've came to the stretch of road where I'm pretty much going to be on this the majority of the time for the rest of the ride and it does seem like it's pretty busy today it's not like Chalker chocker block but it is pretty busy but given that it's road that a lot of people drive on should have a decent amount of food options on the way so probably go about another hour have some lunch and then try and grind this busy road out I think roll through a town called T just about 12:00 and don't think there's a better time to eat if you ask me and normally right I'm pretty different on huru I think huru stay is a bit mid I'm being honest but that apparently was Wy hu so that elevated it from an okay dish to pretty since it was one year it was a bit more expensive so I think I'll be eating a little bit cheaper this evening and I'm currently stand in this interesting little area where there's a toddy gate area which is basically just a bunch of toddy Gates which are going into the water and like a road which is going into the water as well so it's quite interesting not sure the backstory on that but it's cool to see either way I'm a bit over halfway through the ride now but I think I've still got quite a bit to do on this busy road so I don't think I'm going to touch the camera for a bit so you'll see me and the probably the next thing you'll see after this is when I start a rolling The Saga I bet you came off that Main Road a lot quicker than I thought I was going to which is nice so I can get my camera back out and fling it around capture some of this lovely stuff I'm going to have to calm down with some of this b-roll shooting because I'm going to have to buy way more extra micro SD cards than I was going to originally but me some of this right now unbelievably Scenic I am going to have to reel myself in today though unfortunately so I'll catch up with you when I get to the center of saga well I did forget to take the gopr out with me when I went for a little walk in the middle of saga but all that really happened was I seen the outside of the castle ruins cuz it was closed and then ate some curry went back to the hostel as you can see it rained a bit very early this morning but I think all the rain has already passed for the day I think so anyway but it's not for has to be a lot at least and I'll probably left too early this morning cuz I've only got just over 60 km to do well just under now because I've came out with the city center of saga but I've got just over 60 km to do to ride into fuk Walker so I think I'm just going to take it nice and chill for today cuz I don't have to check in till like late afternoon but yeah I'm just going to have a nice chill ride down probably not touch the camera that much to be honest and you know if I get there too early then Fuko is a big place I'm sure I'll find something to do and it's only been a couple days but tomorrow is going to be another rest day in fuka because I feel like I couldn't pass fuka without giving it like a full day to explore and then after that we'll have one more day in kushu because after fuka we'll be in K kushu which is right in the northern part of the island but for now I'm going to start getting moving because even though I put insect repellent on there's still loads of them around me and I'd rather not be stood here right now and it might be sunny and dryer now but it seems like the wind starting to pick up a bit because looking at the weather there is a gay advisory for food Walker which you know have to deal with a bit more wind again on the trip but at least I'm not going anywhere in a hurry and like I knew this already anyway but i'm solidifying my decision of what is the I don't know the best way I guess scariest roads to ride on in Japan cuz right over there you might not be able to see with the angle of the GoPro it's a wide angle but over there is the expressway right in the background and that's like the big big roads in Japan that bikes and motorbikes aren't allowed on at all so not being allowed on those types of Roads you kind of expect the like next stage down of like the scariest roads to be on are the properly wide like say three four lane roads where there's a lot of traffic going through but that's not the case at all that I've found but it's actually these sorts of roads and what I mean that is that these sorts of Roads apart from the expressways are really good routes for linking up between busy places but you know single Lane and the roads themselves aren't too wide in fact as I was saying like it was even thinner a bit of the road but you know certain times of the day as you see massive trucks are passing right now and when I was riding on before up the road there was about literally seven that passed me in a row like quite close to each other so you know when the road isn't too wide it could be quite daunting riding on something like this and also right now if you didn't feel like being on the road too much like the path isn't doing you too much favors it's quite thin and not that wellmaintained and it's not like cyclists and people on bikes aren't allowed to be on these roads like I am allowed to be on the road and that's where the consideration of Japanese drivers towards cyclist comes in really handy cuz if you put me in the UK right now on this sort of road with this sort of traffic absolutely no way I'd be riding on it I'd be fighting something else I feel like I've been in Japan long enough now that can ride on these roads relatively comfortably but now that I have been staring on this road for a little bit there is like a ton of trucks out and it looks like the path widens out at the bottom so since I'm not going anywhere fast I might chill on the path for a little bit so I don't think I'm on this road too much longer well I hope I'm not anyway but I guess there's only one way to find out eh well the puff did get wide a little bit but it looks like it gets tight again back up there so it looks like I'll have to stick to the road for the time being but as I say I think I'm only on it for about 2 km then I can come off yeah I'm feeling to be that heavy traffic today combined with the headwind so it's slowing me down enough that it makes you feel like you don't belong on the road cuz you're going quite slow and I'm usually someone who never rides on the path flight but you know if it's one of those days where you got a good feeling about something then guess you just got to follow it I thought maybe cuz I'm going chill and slow that maybe we'll see some stuff along the way I can stop and have a look at but as you've seen it's mostly just been busy road with not too much either side apart from the mountains in the distance of course but oh well it is what it is but right now we are pretty much right in the middle of the ride so you know might as well offer some food and I'm in a town called torso right now and you know there's a decent selection of stuff to eat here but I'm not overly hungry right now so I'm not going to go too wild like I did yesterday lunchtime and there's a Starbucks just down the road so that sounds like it'll be just enough for me right now and that'll be my true assimilation actually because cuz Starbucks is very popular here they're bloody everywhere I'm at the Starbucks now but just down the road there is the Golden Archers and I'm not going to lie yet I'm very tempted and there we have it decision's been made McDonald's time yeah I'll tell you what like that's the first time I've had a samurai Mac be and let me tell you that slaps as a side note as well cuz I want to get some coffee afterwards I'm actually quite looking forward to when the comies are going to get rid of the matcha snacks out of their lineup cuz it must be some sort of seasonal thing or just time of the year when there's just a boatload of matcha snacks cuz you know with matcha itself the actual tea I can kind of take it all leave it but when match is like inside of a sugary tree when it's pump full of sugar man for some reason I just can't turn it down just the flavor of Mata and sugar together something about it that just gets me going and I'm a few kilometers out with torso and the roads are still a bit busy still a bit crap so I don't know how much I'll touch the camera from here until we'll get a fuk walker but that's about 30 km away so I guess we'll see what happens this is to know quite interesting now cuz the busy road I was on you know it led you onto the expressway which I'm not allowed to be on but there's a service road running alongside of it which you know it's not the most interesting stuff to look at but it's nice to have a section of a day where there's absolutely no truic on a road and it's undulating a bit but I can get a little bit of speed in and just not have to worry about trucks up my ass it's quite nice and even though I've been taking a quite slow day I'm still going to be quite early for the hostel that I'm staying out in fuka and I'm not quite in the city just yet but with a lot of Japanese cities as you're rolling in or you just are on the outskirts or whatever you get these big wide Rivers usually with the paths alongside them and if you catch it like I have right now and there's absolutely nobody here it can be quite a peaceful place to stop and just kill a bit of time in an otherwise hectic environment so after a nice chill here we'll probably go a bit further down get a coffee in fuk walk and then by that point we'll be ready to check in well I did forget to take the camera out with me when I arrived in fuka the other day but it's got to trust bro Fuko it's a very nice city and it feels to me as I'm shooting these that these sets of videos probably aren't going to be the most coherent thing that I've ever made and to be honest with you the video portion is probably the least of my concerns because you know there's a lot going on on this trip with the being fully self-supported because I mainly want to keep the enjoyment that I'm having on these rides first and foremost above everything else and then you know I've got all the organization to do a booking accommodations and campsites and whatnot so to be honest I can't really be bothered to spend loads of extra time time getting a wide variety of shots I'm feeling quite happy of just pressing the record button at random times and then hoping it comes together later I hope this has been enjoyable but there you go there's my excuse if it's not but today we're riding 105 km from fuka to Shimon noi which I said it was K kushu the other day but it's actually a little bit north it's on the very southern tip of honu instead of being right at the top of kushu and this is the amount that I've done already today so I don't think I'm going to stand here and procrastinate any longer and get back to it I think he a and at the moment it seems like the roads that I'm going to be on during this ride are the same that I was on on the last ride because seems like I'm on these fast moving single Lane roads but I mean there is a few trucks going about but luckily for me today it's not nearly as busy as it was on the last ride and hopefully now that it's been a week into of the journey I can start getting rid of some of the holiday diet mentality because my eating habits over the past week or so have been quite bad like I was in fukoka yesterday and you know it's famous for its Ramen so heavy meals had been had but since it was my day off I was just gorging myself on loads of crap and you know I feel like I am actually heavier than I was when I started which it's quite an impressive feat for a week of cycling and you do read anecdotes online and watch videos about bike touring in different countries and it seems hard to maintain a good diet when you're on the road for so long but you know Japan's one of those countries where you get a decent selection of healthy food and shops that are pretty much everywhere so you know I should really stop acting like an absolute Pig I'm jumping off the busy road now because it looks like I'm about to join an actual cycling course and I've said before like cycling pass and cycling forces in Japan are super hit or miss but it looks like over here we got something that's fairly new paved fairly newly painted so I'm actually looking forward to trying this one out also doesn't hurt to have the cycl path in and amongst all this scenery very beautiful right now and it seems like this by path is just mainly a spruce up River path which I'm not complaining about and I feel like and I know this happens in like loads of other countries as well it happens in the UK as well but I feel like being in Japan where it's so common just anytime there's any sort of river near an urban area just put a path alongside it that you can cycle on and walk on but just put cycl pass everywhere please it would make the world so much better just more people want to get involved and get fit if they've got actual infrastructure to help them along with it it's weird as well cuz I've been riding on quite a lot of busy roads but I've barely passed any Mito Eis which are like roadside stations here in Japan and when you first look at Bike Tour in here like these are some of the first things that you see and people give advice about but I've barely passed them at all and it might be a bit before lunch but apparently these roadside stations are always stock with the local foods of the area so maybe it's time I go and have a look in one and I do realize I just had that Spiel before about eating healthier but you know it'll just be a little bit just a little bit to be honest that roadside station didn't have the best selection it was mainly a supermarket which looks pretty good but it's not what I needed right now and that only had like a few bent of meals really but there was a bakery there which is a bit of a g in Japan cuz bread here isn't too great but it actually turned out to be really nice got a chicken Teri sandwich and I got a doughnut I do promise my breakfast was a little bit healthier though I feel like I'm walking back on my words already about eating too much food and the cycling course takes us down here now and it looks like we've already lost that lovely painted cycopath so we're just going to have to see how busy the road is and it looks like it'll be a nice time it looks like it's going to be by the coast so let's go check it out I'm literally 5 Seconds down the road and the path start again so I was literally up there when I was just talking about losing the path should really not chat about things so early you know wasn't really expecting a cycling course so long and what is basically the middle of nowhere so it's been pretty good riding so far like I say all that though but this stretch along the beach has gotten pretty brutal because you know I don't know if it's been drib driving with rain a little bit and we are next to water as well it's decently humid a ton of flies about there's loads of them I'm getting pelted by flies anytime I go forward at the minute basically I can barely lift my head up to see where I'm going cuz they're just and that's why I'm always wearing sunis even though it's not that sunny today because you know I am trying to look as cool as possible but at the same time like there's so much flying about when you're cycling that you just want to keep out of your eyes cuz you know I want to be able to see the entire time and it also seems like I'm by some sort of military complex or something something I haven't really ridden alongside since Okinawa where buy H I thought I rad pass one every half an hour there I don't know whether it's like a Japanese Defense Force Base or a US base but yeah it's been a while since I rode past something like this cuz you can hear the noise of whatever they're doing behind the trees there I don't know how that's coming across on the camera there but can't really tell what they're doing but it sounds like they're doing something and here we go a bit down the road here's my answer Japan air self-defense Force asier air base and of course you've got to have a mascot for everything don't you and there's proper benches around here as well so they must fly into the air regad it must be like a little show every once in a while but tell you the truth couldn't give a about any military related stuff at all it just really hit me as well I never really stopped to look at any of the smaller shrines that line my journey like I did in some of the original trips that I did but of course course just as I bloody stopped it's starting to rain so I think I'll make this one quick to be honest I think it's because when I'm stopping in some of the bigger cities like I'm going and having a look at the shrines there so I feel like I have seen plenty of shrines but they're just in the big cities and I am always forgetting apparently to take my camera out so none of you guys have seen that it's bloody nice though is it like these smaller sites even though the buildings are a lot smaller still never failed to impress me the way the ls are arranged down the path as well it's really s this one over the top it seems like people are starting to congregate here for some actual reason though so I think I might just quickly slip out now still glad I stopped to see it though towards the end of this ride as well we're going to be passing a pretty interesting piece of wrestling history but unfortunately looking at the ferry schedules to actually get to the area might have missed the chance to do it today but hopefully we'll be able to get a good vantage point from where we actually pass it from and I'm going to keep you in suspense till we actually get there so you got to look forward to at the end of the video now I can't remember whether we have drinks like this in the UK but we got one here CPUs soda and we got another one down here and it's basically like a yogurt drink which is carbonated and I'm not going to lie I kind of with it you know how it is I'm just embracing the culture and all that well I'm at the spot now but I don't know if the bad weather in the wide angle of the GoPro you'll actually be able to see it but I'll put in some phone footage over the top so I can zoom in a little bit but basically what makes this area so interesting is that over there there's a little island called ganima and that was the location of what I think is the longest pro wrestling match in recorded history you know maybe back in the olden days there's ones that are way longer but that is the the site of new Japan's Island death match between Antonio anoi and Masa Saito I think there might have been one of one but I can't remember off the top of my head but I know the real Infamous one is between anoi and Masa sa and I know gri uima is more famous for a Samurai battle that happened way back in the day which is why that match took place on the island to begin with but that's not why it's more famous to me and you know I'm a bit sad that the ferry Tim taes haven't really lined up that I can actually go to the island but at least I'm glad to see it in some sort of capacity and now I think think this is where this video is going to end because I think I'm just going to do kushu in one video I won't really know until a few months time but I think this is where it's going to end because the short amount of time left today is on these sorts of roads and it's getting cold and I really want to get out of it now but I hope you've been enjoying the random snippet of the journey I've been shown you so far and the next time I'll see you I'll be starting on honu so until then I'll catch you later

Channel: tubs

Views: 87

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Id: 6MzBrdgtXCg

Length: 30min 24sec (1824 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 27 2024