Cycling in Tohoku, from Aomori to Kanagawa (Aug 6-17, 2022)
Tohoku Region, also called Northeast Japan, is a region where I had seldom stepped foot on. I only knew it to full of mountainous areas, and fishing villages along the east coast. It is traditionally not as well-developed or popular as Kanto, Kansai, or Kyoshu areas for tourists.
However, it received a lot of attention since 2011, the Great Earthquake and Tsunami occurred in Fukushima & Iwate areas. This trip, we would like to see the damages that were made, and how well these areas had recovered from the great disaster. We wish to give our support to these unfortunate areas.
We reserved the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Shin-Aomori Station on early Saturday morning. Bicycles are only allowed into the trains when they are fully packed into hand-carry bags, but there is no extra charge, and you can try to fit them into the luggage rack or behind the last row of seats. It only takes about 3 hours from Tokyo to Shin-Aomori by Shinkansen.
After we arrived, we immediately looked for our bunch, and had our 1st Seafood bowl in a popular restaurant in the station. It was not bad, but later we found out we have tons of chance to eat Seafood bowls or Sushi on the way, and they all tasted believably good and fresh!
After we got out of the train station, built our bikes as usual, we started riding from around noon. Although Tohoku is supposed to be cooler than Kanto, since it more north, it was still hot & humid in the summer. As soon as we started riding, I immediately noticed “Aomori” (meaning green forest) is really full of green forest! I saw nothing other than thick layers of trees at both sides of the road. There were very few cars, just trees and straight wide road!
Actually, we arrived Aomori on the last day of the famous Aomori Nebuta Matsuri Summer Festival. If we had stayed in Aomori city, we could have watched the Nebuta parade and local dance shows… However, we had already watched the Aomori Nebuta Matsuri during our last visit, about 10 years ago. Also, we wanted to get out of the city and the crowded areas, so we skipped the Aomori city, and headed south immediately.
We planned to stay at the camping site near an Onsen town, called “Owani-cho”(meaning big crocodile”. Indeed, there was a big pink crocodile character standing in front of their train station, and the manhole covers also had crocodile face!
The town was quite rundown, very few shops open, and looked very “showa”. As the Ajara Forest Campsite office was closing at 4:30pm, we must register and get the key for the bungalow that we had reserved before it closes, we had no time to look for dinner, just rode straight to the campsite. We didn’t know that the campsite was actually over 3km and 300m altitude rise from Owani-cho. When we barely arrived barely on time, we were already soaking wet with sweat, dying for a shower. Then, we learnt that our cheap “bungalow” did not include shower. Only people staying at much more expensive “cabin” has shower inside. There was nowhere to take shower or bath, other than Owani-cho 3km away! In the end, we took our “shower” and even wash our hair and our clothes at the open cooking area… It was embarrassing, but we did it.
After the cold water shower, it became very pleasant. The campsite was at higher altitude, so it did have a nice view and camping tables, cool and quiet, no mosquitoes. Also, our bungalow had no electric outlets or A/C, but it was clean & dry, we could sleep with our air mat and sleeping bag comfortably inside…
The 2nd day we entered Akita Prefecture. The scenery had not changed much, still full of trees, mountains, and rice fields. It was so quiet and beautiful. The weather was still so hot. We were so tired, by noon we found a quite family restaurant with A/C & electric outlets to charge our devices. We took a long rest, even a nap there till late afternoon.
When it became cooler, we rode on, and passed by Kazuno city, where we found that the famous Akita Hanawabayashi Matsuri Summer Festival would start that night. Since it was only about 2-3 hours until the Festival started, and we decided to stay longer to enjoy the Festival. We hurried to nearby sento (public bath) for a quick bath before the Festival started.
The night was cool. The Festival was full of local people, but not too crowded. There were many food booths that looked good. We ate very tasty Yakitori (grilled chicken), big and juicy grilled Octopus. We thought the food booths must be held by local restaurants, so their foods tasted so good. We took some pictures of the colorful Hanabayashi, sat at roadside to enjoy the holiday mood, then we rode out in the dark, to look for a place to stay for the night.
We learnt from internet that there are a lot of unmanned train stations in remote areas, where we could sleep inside the train station at night, and no need to build the tent.
After going through some mountainous roads, we arrived Yuze-Onsen train station, near an Onsen town but very quiet. We learnt from internet about this unmanned train station. We waited for the last train to leave at around 9:45PM, then we started to look for place to sleep.
Inside the train station was quite spacious. There were even electric outlets and clean toilets inside. However, inside was too hot, so we tried to sleep at a dark corner of the platform, with our air mat and sleeping bag. It was actually quite windy and cool outside at night. I could see the dark sky full of stars, and hear only noises of insects. However, somehow it was too cold or something, I couldn’t fall asleep, so later I moved to inside of the train station. Still, somehow we couldn’t sleep well, so we decided to leave as soon as the sky became bright, around 4-5AM.
It was so pleasant to ride in the early morning, the air was so fresh and cool at mountain areas. We passed by 2 more unmanned train stations. They were both as small as a bus stop, maybe even smaller than the bungalow that we stayed.
We decided to take a more hilly but shorter route south. As we happily rode pass some beautiful town and road between the woods, we suddenly found big STOP, NO ENTER signs in front of us! As it turned out, this route would go through some geothermal power plant, so they had banned people from entering. However, there were no warning or anything shown on the internet or google map!! The signs also said that there were cameras around. Anybody entering would be reported to police!! We did not want to get into trouble, so we had no choice but to turn around, rode extra miles and lost some time… We told ourselves that we did enjoy the scenery and the ride, so it wasn’t totally a waste.
After 2 night of camping out, we were pretty tired and lack of sleep. Also, it was too hot to sleep without A/C, we decided to book a hotel for the coming night. It was just a regular business hotel, which did not worth mentioned, but after all these, the A/C, warm private shower and soft beds surely felt like heaven!!
That night, we arrived Morioka city of Iwate Prefecture, where hubby heard that it was famous for “Korean cold noodles”, so we found a Korean Barbeque shop called “Sanzenri” which had very good reviews on their cold noodles, and we tried it. Oh, it was indeed the best Korean cold noodles I had ever eaten! The soup of the cold noodles was so tasty that we basically finished it!
Next morning we rode to a beautiful café near our hotel to have breakfast. The café was so modern and elegant inside, and their breakfast set included very color and attractive salad and a little desert. Their fruit drinks/shakes were also very refreshing.
We continued to ride on the sunny hot days, through beautiful green fields under blue sky. It was tiring but also fun. After slowing pedaling till the long uphills, we would slide down the long downhill roads at over 40km/hr without braking, without hesitation, because the roads were so wide and smooth, and there were so few cars around.
From time to time, we would pass by convenience stores, buy our typical ice café latte and enjoyed the strong A/C inside the convenience stores. The convenience stores in Japan are really the best. They always have self-serviced machines selling reasonable-priced (around JPY 200-300) but high-quality coffee. Some bigger convenience stores at remote places even have sitting corners.
At the hottest hours (between 11AM to 3PM), we usually looked for a supermarket, family restaurants or local shopping mall to rest, have lunch, and escape the heat. Again, almost all of them have sitting corners. They are all air-conditioned, some even have electric outlets, WIFI and free lockers.
Next day, we arrived Iwate prefecture. We stayed in a small town and a small family-owned Japanese-style hotel. It was very nice and cheap. We actually prefer Japanese-style room and futon than bed, because we don’t need to worry about the size of bed, there is always enough room to sleep (on the floor). This hotel has clean and soft futon, A/C, free laundry machine and a big manga (cartoon) book collection.
At night, we walked around the town. The town was quite rundown, very showa. There were many restaurants and drinking places, and but many of them were closed due to COVID or summer holidays. In the end, we settled in a good-looking Italian restaurant. The interior decoration was very cozy. Their pizzas were cooked by stone oven. We were surprised that their pizza and roasted beef tasted so good!
Next morning, we found a canteen-style chain restaurant for breakfast, called Hanaya. We love canteen-style restaurants, where you can just pick up whatever main/side dishes that you like at the lobby and pay at the cashier. They are usually very affortable, low price for each dish.
We came to Maesawa city of Iwate, where “Maesawa Beef” is one of the famous brands of Japanese Beef, so even we even visited the Cattle Museum. We wanted to try “Maesawa Beef”, but all the Maesawa Beef restaurants nearby were closed due to either COVID or summer holidays.
We passed by my favorite chain steak restaurants, called “Ikinari Steakhouse”, which provides high-quality steak, freshly cut when you order, at good prices! Their steak is always so thick, juicy and tasty. I also love their special steak sauce. Sadly, they are not doing well and disappearing. I always miss it.
We also stopped by a sake (Japanese rice wine) shop, which produced ice-cream with the side-product rice bran. The rice bran ice-cream tasted surprisingly good, with very rich sweet sake favor!
We visited some ancient temples, but they were actually not so special. However, the whole area was full of tall old trees, very peaceful and buddist, similar to “Hakone”. After visiting the temples, we had lunch at a local soba noodle restaurant, and I ordered Maesawa beef sushi (raw beef as sushi). However, the raw beef sushi did not taste much different from a raw tuna sushi to me…
That night, we stayed at an old hotel near the roadside. It was quite far from city center, but it was quiet. The hotel was a bit old, but it must had been gorgeous during Showa time. The staffs kept the place very clean and neat. We received a coupon from hotel, can only be used in local stores, so that night we walked to a nearby private sushi restaurant for dinner. The sushi restaurant was just a small one for local people, but the owner/cook, his wife and the regular customers were chatting so happily inside, it felt cozy, and the sushi tasted surprisingly good, much better than the normal chain sushi restaurants. It was a little more pricy than the chain restaurants, but we had coupon, so it was a good deal!
Next day, we continued to ride under hot sun. There were more and more traffic and big trucks on the road. It was not as pleasant as riding at the rural areas, where there were only green rice fields and blue sky. However, we had entered Sendai city.
We had never been to Sendai before, though it is only of the big cities in Northeastern Japan. Sendai is famous for “Ox Tongue”, so we decided that we must found somewhere to eat Ox Tongue that night. We stayed in a business hotel near downtown. As soon as we checked in and dropped off our laundry, we headed to the shopping district of Sendai city. Like many big cities in Japan, Sendai has endlessly-long indoor shopping districts, so many restaurants and shops in there. There were even districts with only restaurants, but many of them close early like 9PM, because of COVID restriction maybe?
In the end, we chose an Ox Tongue specialized chain restaurant, called “Rikyu”. We had never heard of it before, but it indeed offered mostly menus with Ox Tongue. We chose mixed favored Ox Tongue barbeque meat and Ox Tongue sausages. They were the best I ever had!
Also, we passed by a tiny Italian restaurant specialized on pizzas. It smelled so good from even outside, and also it offered house red/white wine for only JPY 100/glass, so we had to go in for a pizza. It was really good, even though not cooked by stone oven. I’m surprised there were so many good Italian restaurants (especially pizzas!) that I could find in Tohoku.
We found many interesting vending machines in Tohoku. In Sendai, we even found vending machines selling packaged cooked Ox Tongue meat!
Next morning, we had a brief visit at the nearby coast. The seaside areas used to be busy towns, but extensive areas were damaged by Tsunami during the Great Earthquake in 2011. There was even a school damaged by Tsunami and closed. We wanted to visit this school, but it was too early, we couldn’t enter, so we just took photos from outside. After the Tsunami, a few severely broken houses were still left for exhibition, but most of the areas were cleaned up, and became a park. We rode along the coastline for quite a long time. One side was quiet beaches with strong waves and sea wind, the other side was just park with thick green plants and trees taking over the whole areas. The towns were all gone.
We continued to ride south and came to Miyaki Prefecture. There were endlessly-long straight roads and green fields. It was still sunny and very hot. We learnt from the news that heavy rain had come to Aomori and going south, but we are still ahead of the rain and had strong sun everyday. We passed by a Sunflower park, where there were many cars lining up to the parking lot. We were glad that we were not in car, we could go straight in with our bikes, but we did not want to spend too time there, we just took some photos in front of the sunflower field and left.
We visited Nakahama Elementary School. It was a school severely damaged by Tsunami, but all the teachers and students were saved after spending a night on the roof. It is now used as a Museum to remember the Tsunami.
It was so hot, when we had lunchbreak at family restaurants or supermarkets, we always used alcoholic wet tissues to clean our faces and bodies all over, and then apply more water-resistant sunblock. These days wet tissues and sunblock had become our best friends!
That night we decided to stay at the 24-hour hotspring hotel, there they also have individual rooms, coin laundry and restaurant inside. We could relax, enjoy the hotspring anytime, do laundry, have dinner and breakfast in the restaurant inside. The restaurant inside was surprisingly good, had large and fresh seafood bowl for dinner and great breakfast buffet.
Next day, we came to Fukushima. It was the center area affected by Tsunami, the damaged Fukushima No.1 Nuclear Power Plant was also there. I hoped to see how it became now, but soon we were stopped by a car. It was somebody working on rebuilding the infrastructure, and he said that there would soon be roadblocks, that light vehicles (including bicycles) and walking people cannot enter, because the area was still not clear of radiation yet. He gave us and our bicycles for a ride for about 20km. We were lucky to had met that guy who gave us a ride. Otherwise, we would have to take a much longer route into the mountain, to avoid those roadblocks. Because of the ride, we couldn’t stop by and visit the TEPCO Decommissioning Museum. Please try to visit if you have chance.
We had lunch at a service area, then we saw a map, and found an amazingly great cycling road in Iwaki, along the coastline. It is called “Iwaki seven beach seaside road“, just newly opened in 2021, and it is 53km long, many sections are solely used to cycling and walking, has great views along the road.
We tried to have dinner at a seaside marketplace, but it was closed at 6PM. Then, we stayed at a local guesthouse. There were nothing much in walking distance, and it rained heavily at night, so we just bought dinner & snacks from nearby convenience store, and thankful and stay dry in our guesthouse.
We came to Ibaraki. The roads started to be more crowded, not so much green fields anymore. We chose small towns to stay at, because they are more quiet. We arrived the business hotel in early afternoon, but it was too hot outside, so we did laundry and waited for the sun to go down. When it became cooler, we started to explore the town. There were many restaurants and drink places, but again many of them were closed. We drank at a good-looking German Pub, but we were the only customers there. Then we ate dinner at a cozy Asian restaurant. The decoration was cute, and their curry were quite spicy but tasted good. On our way walking back to hotel, we saw firework from not far away, so we ran back to the hotel, to watch the firework from our hotel room window.
There were not much around, so still too hot outside, so next day we spent most of the time in a big shopping mall, Aeon Town. There were actually many discount stores in there, and summer sale going on, so it was a good place to stay out of heat.
That night, we stayed at another old hotel next to the railway, which had a gorgeous lobby, but quite rundown, must have been built in Showa time. It was not a popular area, so there were very few customers. Our hotel plan included steak dinner, but we were the only customers eating quietly in Showa-looking dining room of the hotel. It was very relaxing though.
Next day, we continued to ride on crowded roads. It was not as fun as riding in the countryside, but I still enjoy riding. We came to Tokyo prefecture. It would be our last night before returning home. We stayed at a nicely-opened beautiful hotel in Chiba. It has many so many facilities, such as working station, gym, hot bath, open lounge, etc. It must have been designed for “staycation”. Since people cannot travel due to COVID, “staycation” becomes popular that people just stay at luxury hotels for vacation.
This hotel was just walking distance from train station, shops and drinking district. We had dinner at a yakitori (chicken barbeque) restaurant, and bought desserts from supermarket.
The last day we passed by Tokyo Station, and we took some photos. The sun was still very burning hot that my skin hurt, so soon we escaped into a local shopping mall, even took a nap at the food court table, until late afternoon. Later, we saw grey clouds, looked like going to rain, so we rushed to ride out. We just made it home 30min. before it rained heavily. It was quite unbelievable that we rode for 12 days and it almost never rained on us, and then it rained heavily as soon as we got home.
This has been our longest bike touring trip so far, over 800km in 12 days. Some hard days we rode over 90km, but there were also some slow days that we only rode 60km or so. We planned to camp along the way the save costs, but everyday was over 30 degree Celsius, sunny and humid, we sweated like hell, it was impossible camp out there in this hot weather, we desperately needed shower, laundry and A/C, so we sent our camping kits home by Courier. It was indeed a good decision, our bikes became so much so lighter!
Although we had heat rash and almost got heatstroke, it was great to travel in Northeast Japan, and saw how it has recovered from the Tsunami. Also, the seafood in Tohoku was much better than I imagined.
WHERE WE STAYED:
Day 1: Ajara Forest Campsite, Owani Town, Aomori
Day 2: Yuze Onsen Station, Kazuno City, Akita
Day 3: Art Hotel Morioka, Morioka City, Iwate
Day 4: Hotel Aoki, Oshu City, Iwate
Day 5: Hotel Grand Plaza Urashima, Kurihara City, Miyagi
Day 6: Hotel Green Selec, Sendai City, Miyagi
Day 7: Business Hotel Takami, Minamisoma City, Fukushima
Day 8: Work Inn Kashikuwa, Iwaki, Nanahakaido
Day 9: Tourist Hotel Hitachi, Hitachi City, Ibaraki
Day 10: Hotel Grand Mariage, Ishioka City, Ibaraki
Day 11: Grand Park Hotel The Luxueux, Minamikashiwa City, Chiba
Distance we rode: 822km
Where we rode (roughly):