Japan (Lonely Planet, 11th Edition) - Chris Rowthorn [648]
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BICYCLE
Japan is a good country for bicycle touring and several thousand cyclists, both Japanese and foreign, traverse the country every year. Favourite bike touring areas include Kyūshū, Shikoku, the Japan Alps (if you like steep hills!), Noto-hantō and Hokkaidō.
There’s no point in fighting your way out of big cities by bicycle. Put your bike on the train or bus and get out to the country before you start pedalling. To take a bicycle on a train you may need to use a bicycle carrying bag, available from good bicycle shops.
Click here for information on road maps of Japan. In addition to the maps mentioned in that section, a useful series of maps is the Touring Mapple (Shobunsha) series, which is aimed at motorcyclists, but is also very useful for cyclists.
For more information on cycling in Japan, you can check out the excellent website of KANcycling (www.kancyc ling.com).
Guided Bicycle Tours
For information about guided bicycle tours in Kyoto, Click here. There is talk of a similar service being offered in Tokyo in the future – a web search should turn up the operator once it’s up and running.
Hire
You will find bicycle rental shops outside the train or bus stations in most of Japan’s popular tourist areas, as well as near the ferry piers on many of the country’s smaller islands. Typical charges are around ¥200/1000 per hour/day. Kyoto, for example, is ideally suited to bicycle exploration and there are plenty of cheap hire shops to choose from.
Note that the bicycles for rent are not usually performance vehicles. More commonly they’re what the Japanese call mama chari (literally ‘mama’s bicycles’): one- or three-speed shopping bikes that are murder on hills of any size. They’re also usually too small for anyone over 180cm in height.
Many youth hostels also have bicycles to rent – there’s a symbol identifying them in the Japan Youth Hostel Handbook. ‘Cycling terminals’ found in various locations around the country also rent out bicycles. For more on cycling terminals, Click here.
Purchase
In Japan, prices for used bikes range from a few thousand yen for an old shopping bike to several tens of thousands of yen for good mountain and road bikes. New bikes range anywhere from about ¥10,000 for a shopping bike to ¥100,000 for a flash mountain or road bike.
Touring cycles are available in Japan but prices tend to be significantly higher than you’d pay back home. If you’re tall, you may not find any suitably sized bikes in stock. One solution for tall riders, or anyone who wants to save money, is to buy a used bike; in Tokyo, check the English-language publications and in Kansai check Kansai Time Out.
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BOAT
Japan is an island nation and there are a great many ferry services both between islands and between ports on the same island. Ferries can be an excellent way of getting from one place to another and for seeing parts of Japan you might otherwise miss. Taking a ferry between Osaka (Honshū) and Beppu (Kyūshū), for example, is a good way of getting to Kyūshū and – if you choose the right departure time – seeing some of the Inland Sea (Seto-nai-kai; Click here) on the way. Likewise, the ferry run up and down the Izu-shotō Click here can be incredibly scenic.
The routes vary widely, from two-hour services between adjacent islands to 1½-day trips in what are in fact small ocean liners. The cheapest fares on the longer trips are in tatami-mat rooms where you simply unroll your futon on the floor and hope, if the ship is crowded, that your fellow passengers aren’t too intent on knocking back the booze all night. In this basic class, fares are usually lower than equivalent land travel, but there are also more expensive private cabins. Bicycles can be brought along and most ferries also carry cars and motorcycles.
Information on ferry routes, schedules and fares is found in the JR Jikokuhyō Click