Mie Bicycle Trip

I spent my first day here in Mie prefecture on a fun and fairly random bike ride with Hiroshi (I uploaded some pictures). It was a wonderful experience through some beautiful countryside. Lots of charming little villages, quiet and cool mountain roads, and vast dark green tea fields. Things didn’t wrap up quite the way we expected and we ended up coming home exhausted…by train.

Our plan was simple. After consulting some maps I bought, we basically picked the direction from his house that had the least number of large roads. We first rode to a place called 石水渓, essentially a hill of about 500 meters height where Hiroshi often swam in a stream as a child. Upon arrival we were greeted by a sign which said, 猿に注意 or “Beware of Monkeys” This was in itself amusing to me, and I want to put a similar sign on my dormitory door when I move into one this coming fall, but instead of English, the warning was translated into Portuguese, “Cuidado! Com Macacos!” Hiroshi, who speaks good Portuguese and Spanish, tells me there are a lot of Brazilian-Japanese in this area. After spending a few minutes cooling down by plodding about in the water, I think Hiroshi assumed I would be ready to go home and spend a quite afternoon doing something else.

Instead, I suggested we go back down the mountain and head some 15-20km north to some hot springs deep in the back hills called 湯の山温泉. Furthermore, since travel by larger roads isn’t much fun, I said we should stick to the small yellow and white roads on my map. I said we would probably get there around three in the afternoon and would be able to reward ourselves for our hard ride with a relaxing dip in the hot springs before riding home on the main roads (routes 477 and 306). I had no idea how small those white roads on my 1:200,000 scale map could get…

After Hiroshi initially got us lost, and I realized he hadn’t travelled much around his own prefecture, we assumed a more collaborative approach to navigation and were able to find ourselves nicely along the back roads. We passed through incredibly quaint little villages, many of which had some cottages that I would be very happy to retire in, as well as half a dozen golf courses. The road to 石水渓 was mostly surrounded by wet rice fields, but we now found ourselves square in the middle of Mie’s tea cultivation region (anyone know what those fans in the pictures are for?).

No one seemed to believe we were going all the way to the hot springs via these small roads and made Hiroshi nervous when we occasionally asked some older folks for directions and they insisted it was very far. Finally a helpful elementary school student put us on the exact little white road I wanted to be on in a place called 宮妻. There a “natural scenery road” would lead us directly through some hilly areas to the hot springs. I comforted Hiroshi with the fact that the “mountain” in which the hot springs were located was a paltry 370 meters according to my map and thus nothing to worry about. I didn’t look closely at the elevation lines on the white road getting there.

Suffice to say that, following our tranquil ride through villages and tea fields, we plunged into the forest and ended up climbing around 500 meters of hill, several times over a stretch of about 10km. When we finally got over the last major hill, totally exhausted and out of water, we were looking forward to a long downward stretch. Instead, after a brief speedy run down the opposite side, with only 2.1km to go, the road suddenly disappeared and we ended up at a dam. The signs had been pointing us to the hot springs beginning at the 8km mark. It initially freaked us out by going up to 8.7 at the next sign, but thereafter steadily dropped as we approached. So what happened? We dreaded the thought of having to go back up the mountain and redo the entire 10km of forest road. Instead we found that the road, a white road marked on my road map had suddenly turned into a hiking trail through the forest, complete with steps, rocky climbs, and lots of ups and downs.

Of course, I love these kinds of trails. It was scenic, forested, filled with streams and had charming step ascents up forest hills. However, carrying a bicycle through 2km of this densely wooded area is one of the most miserable things I have ever had to do outdoors. I would gladly have carried three times the weight – anything but a ママチャリ bicycle which got caught on every branch, and could barely squeeze through some of the narrow areas of the trail. Along the way, my tire caught something and I heard the dreaded seeping sound of air escaping my tire.

The rest was depressing. Those last few kilometers took forever but we reached the hot springs, which turned out to be in a ghost town. The only occupied hotel seemed to be a Yakuza hang out and use of its baths and restaurant were well out of our price range. We were hungry and had to walk the punctured bicycle several km down the mountain along the main road before temporarily abandoning both bikes outside a restaurant we visited for dinner. We’ll go back to repair and pick them up in a day or two.

I love biking through the Japanese countryside, and hiking through its well kept mountain trails. However, I never want to go hiking through its mountain trails carrying a bicycle again.