日本一美しいサイクリングコース：しまなみ海道

日本一美しいサイクリングコース：しまなみ海道

[Music] this is the shim namiko a beautiful 70 km cycling route which goes around the Sito Inland Sea in Japan it is a route where nature and man-made infrastructure meet you cross six beautiful islands and also six iconic and historic Bridges this route connects the mainland of Japan known as honu to the island of shikoku and while there are other routes for cars and trains to get to Shoku the shimanami Cado is the only route that’s traversable by bik and foot to get to that Island this fruit has a bit of a funny name and it’s flown under the radar for me for a long time but this ride just kept coming up in conversation not only with my cycling friends but also people that I know don’t do cycling either and the common theme between everyone’s stories was it was the most beautiful ride they have ever done if you do the most direct version of this route from onomichi to imabari it’s about 70 K but you know me I’m not going to travel all this way just to do 70 km we’re going to do a 2-day trip and try and do 60 km each day for a total of 120 km now I know that doesn’t sound like much to a road cyclist but I’m also going to be doing this with my wife Jess and my good friend SOA both of which aren’t cyclists so this is definitely going to be a bit of a challenge for them I asked you guys on Instagram if you like this to be a one or two-part series and more people voted for two parts so this video is going to be about how I got there and our first day of travel and video two which would come out a week after this one will be about how you can organize this trip and what we got up to on our second day if you want to see part two and you also like seeing sing Adventures I’d appreciate if you hit the Subscribe button but before we can even start the ride we’ve got a little mini adventure to get to onomichi because it is a 2our shinen and train ride so let’s wake up really early get our morning coffee and head over [Music] there I’m a little bit nervous because I’m not used to catching shinen ends and the ticket buying process was actually quite stressful it’s almost like buying a domestic flight you have to reserve a seat and I’m really want to make sure I don’t miss this train because I’m pretty sure if we miss it the next one we can get there is like an hour or two later head over to the nearest station which is T GUI and then we’ll go to Kyoto and get ashin Ken to onomichi let’s go [Music] I’m not sure if you’ve caught a shinen Zen or bullet train before but they are just incredible the speed we were going was just mindboggling we’re going over 250 km an hour up until this point my experience in Japan had been fairly limited I’ve been staying in the big cities of Asaka and Kyoto and I’ve only rather seen Urban and City Landscapes so I was really happy to see the sea of RS disappear and the Green Hills Come Over the Horizon and and I was filled with excitement and of course I brought my trusty camera our last leg of the trip was catching a small local train to onomichi all right after 2hour shinan Zen and multiple train trip we’ve arrived at onomichi and we’re right near the port the water is right there and we’re going to embark on our trip soon our shimi kaido shimi Kido onomichi is a historic Port Town to the north of rosma I looked at some quick Wikipedia fun facts population of 125,000 people apparently it’s got a rich history in uh Buddhism and it’s got lots of nice little historic streets but for now let’s go get some breakfast we arrived a little bit earlier than soda and also our bike booking so we’re excited and eager to just explore the city a little bit and most importantly find some coffee [Music] we found a small local coffee shop which served us a meal consisting of fasha fruit and an egg the Japanese love doing meals consisted of lots of little dishes and they view this as being more balanced diet however it wasn’t long before we had to quickly head back to station and pick up our bikes now I need to admit that we’re doing a little bit of cheating when I booked this trip I noticed that there’s actually quite a bit of elevation even though most of the rout follows the coastline so I’ve gotten us some ebikes because I want to maximize our fun our guy has met us outside the station he’s delivered us our bikes and then what he’s doing right now is he’s actually adjusting the seat height for us so that’s most comfortable they’re also going to take our bags to our accommodation so it’s like a fully end to-end service which is really good also I didn’t get to introduce so before hello surprise check out my new merch all right link in the description to buy it I’m kidding no I wish I had a merch store I don’t have one yet this is only for myself so far but maybe in the future exclusive use our guide gave us a quick briefing on how to use the bikes how to change the gears and turn on the motor and I was pleasantly surprised about how comfortable they were these are really nice highquality specialized Vader ebikes and they were much more comfortable than my road bike I loaded up the route on my phone and we’ll point it in the direction of the ferry which will take us to the first island so let’s get going and we are off I tell beautiful conditions loose SK it’s going to be really good [Music] we’re riding through the town for a few kilometers before we get to the coastline uh where it’ll be much more Scenic and I think there’ll be less cars and I hope it’s warmer cuz I’m really cold it’s the start of almost actually it’s almost winter here but the sun was out before and it was really warm and I was feeling quite ambitious about how warm i’ be I think I was wrong made a bad judgment call Josh K and not dressing appropriately for the weather name a more iconic Duo I’m Keen to get dropped like J T today [Music] we quickly made our way to the edge of mosima Island and for the first time we saw the SEO Inland sea but it wasn’t long before we came across our first Viewpoint of the day and a good opportunity to sit on this interesting looking furniture and enjoy the view and we are 6 km in and it’s on gei break time time for an on gei but yeah the scenery is spectacular every direction you look there’s a bridge there’s a beautiful like mountain range there’s even like a secet bridge over there you probably can’t see it all the way in the distance there there’s like a little secret Bridge h house there and the water is like a really nice ACAC color be but that’s enough Ming around and we need to get moving to our first Bridge of today day in Aima Bridge the bridge is about 1.3 km long it was built in 1983 and it had quite a unique way of letting cyclist ride on it and the true value of our ebik was about to be found for most of the route you ride along the coastline which is at sea level but these bridges are high up in the air which means anytime you need to get up to the bridge there’s a quite a long and steep climb you know inoshima Bridge our first Bridge here we come I heard that there’s a lot of uphill to get to e the Bridges cuz they at such high elevation might need to turn on the assist 1.1 km at 3% it isn’t AA street but it’ll do no but honestly on the bike Can You Feel the elevation a bit more you do great [Music] yeah so there’s a separate cycle way underneath the bridge the cars are above us right now it’s really [Music] [Music] nice going up means that we get to go down and on the other side of the bridge we had a beautiful descent back down to sea level the next Island in Aima island did not disappoint us once again we’re surrounded by vibrant colors the the CA in N SE on our right and this was contrasted on our left to the oranges and greens of the fresh fruit and vegetables that they were growing on the island and even though I had my phone on for navigation you may have noticed something on the ground there’s a blue line on the left hand side of the road this signifies the main route of the shami Cado so it’s actually very easy to navigate just follow the Blue Line something Japan is famous for is the quality of the food at their convenience stores and as you know already one of my favorite snacks is a nice Oni as well as a PA so we’re going to stop at Family Mar just before the next Bridge enjoy the view and get a bite to me all right so in Japan there’s a regulation where if it’s not like pure then you have to use an artificial like cartoony oh picture picture so this is how you know that this is like legit cuz it’s a real picture AR picture yeah oh and this oh okay that’s a real picture yeah so that’s a little HCK also snack that I really love that’s exclusive to family Mar is fam chicky which is essentially like KFC without any bones and it tastes awesome it’s also about $2 quickly stuffed myself with a pumpkin sule pafait as well for some reason this is like one of the only ones I found on the entire trip even though I went the family M multiple times a day and then we got back on our bikes to go into the second bridge of the day akuchi bridge this takes us to akuchi gima Island don’t really have any fun facts with this bridge except when I was looking it up on Google it’s only got 4.3 stars and I was wondering who is giving a bridge less than a festar rating so I went and looked at the Google reviews and there’s someone here complaining about how steep it is to get up onto the bridge and another person who’s left a three star review and just said big bridge well I have to say my experience runting of this bridge was five starszy [Applause] [Music] [Music] he [Music] and though it’s getting a little bit colder and there’s some rain clouds in the sky this wasn’t going to deter me from our ear stop we had planned for Uchi gima Island which was going to doce ice cream all right even though it’s cold outside I’m still going to get an ice cream and they got some pretty unique flavors here and I think I’m going to try sea salt and milk which is their number two flavor their number one flavor though is lemon this is the sea Sal milk and over here is the Fig and I’m going to do a li taste test then mang M the sea Sal’s really good and I know we said we hadn’t planned any more stops for this island but there was two spots where we just could not help ourselves one was this little yellow bridge that goes over to one of the small islands and the other is this beach here which was just spectacular both times we took the opportunity just to sit relax enjoy the view and take some [Music] photos but now it’s time to go onto the third and final Bridge of the day which is Tara Bridge which will take us to onisha island onisha island is the biggest island out of all these that we’ be visiting and it’s also where our accommodation is for the night to get up to the Taro Bridge we rode on an elevated cycle way and this took us through some fruit orchards and you can see plenty of fresh oranges and lemons I believe this variety is actually local to the area they’re riding through like an orchard of these lemons they’re huge and very round very round and plump I don’t know how to say it they look more round than a normal lemon how can something be more round maybe they’re a bit more like squat so not circular but they bit more like plump [Music] Deco Pond is that what it’s called Deco pond [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] at this point it’s getting a little bit late in the day but I was really Keen to keep exploring so I said why don’t we just do a half lap around omishima Island make our way to one of the local Villages and we can get lunch there this end up being not such a great idea we are 53 km in and we’re in some like little random back back cycle pars right now doing what you call off the main track so we’re not on the main course right now we’re on this one called the island Explorer and I think morale is a little bit low Jess is tired so is SOA the uh we’re trying to find our way way to find someone to have lunch but the view has always looked good like look at this it’s a cycling Paradise so I think we can get food in the next 3 km just need to keep on chugging along we arrived at the town and it was almost completely empty it was almost a bit spooky how quiet it was but Japanese convenience stores always come to save the day and for three cold and hungry cyclist anything would do Lawson to the rescue luckily there’s a huge variety of food that you can get a convenience stor that they can heat up for you and I settled for a creamy pasta with some fish R Dak it’s like a pancake with some cream and red bean we tied legs and a slightly sore butt we made our way to our accommodation which is only a few kilm further by the time all was said and done we almost done 70 km and something I didn’t mention before SOA decided to do the whole ride without the motor on for the ebike he is just crazy for the night we’ll be staying at a nice Cottage that overlooks the water and just after we checked in we were really lucky to get this amazing Sunset the big windows in our Cottage took full advantage of the view and we spent some time sitting back reflecting on the day and also filming some last bits of content outside just taking some photos of me this is our accommodation and it is Cafe over there that’s our Cottage there boom here’s the background and we’ve been absolutely spoiled with a crazy Sunset look at the color on the clouds over there I don’t even know what mountain that is we’ve got the bridge here let’s take some B- roll see you guys can see it up say something to the vog real quick yes recommended joshing this place you’re a legend so I don’t know who that [Music] [Applause] is for dinner we went across the road to a little local restaurant we had one of the most unique experiences of the trip at this restaurant it was a tiny place you could probably only sit about 10 to 12 people and we sharing the table with some Japanese locals about halfway through our M they started trying to talk to us but there’s an obviously a language barrier but using a combination of hand signals some commonly understood words as well as Google translate we told them that we were from Australia they were really excited about this that people traveled all the way across the world to see their part of Japan and they generously told the chef to make us more food so he made us a surprise little dish of peppies and sip it was really aomy slightly salty and a perfect thing for a cold night afterwards so to mention that this is an experience you usually wouldn’t get in one of the big cities as people keep more to themselves and don’t interact with strangers this was a really wholesome way to end our first day and safe to say we were completely knacked and ready to go to bed I hope you guys enjoyed this video there’s lots coming up in part two so make sure that you hit the Subscribe button so you can see it when it comes out all right thanks very much for watching and I’ll see you in the next one bye oh [Music]

The Shimanami Kaido is a route which has been mentioned to me many times. As someone who loves riding bikes as well as travelling in Japan this was a match made in heaven. The Shimanami Kaido is a beautiful 70km cycling route around the Seto Inland Sea in Japan. You traverse islands, bridges and incredible Japanese coastal towns. It really is a once in a lifetime bike ride and I highly reccomend it. In this video I go through how I got to the Shimanami Kaido, what we explored on the first day, and the adventures that happened. I will also detail a guide on how to plan and book this trip as well as some MUST KNOW tips in my next video which should come out soon! If you plan on travelling to Japan, even if you aren’t a cyclist you need to do this ride. I’m sure after watching this video you will agree.

Day 2 and all the information you need to plan your trip: https://youtu.be/HbI0w9j1DtE

Ride on Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/12927644076

Intro 00:00
Getting to Onomichi 01:36
Picking up the bikes 04:11
Our adventure begins 05:25
Innoshima Island 08:47
Ikuchijima Island 10:28
Omishima Island 14:01
Accommodation and Dinner 16:09
Photos of bikes; pastries and good times ☕🥐📸
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/josh.kwan/

My rides, routes and activities 🚴🏻🏔🏃🏻
Strava: https://www.strava.com/athletes/31132875

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