Between the north of Shikoku and western Honshu (Japan’s main island) lies the so called Seto Inland Sea, a vast turquoise-blue sea filled with many, many smaller islands. A set of 7 huge bridges was completed in 1999, connecting Onomishi (on Honshu) with Irabari (on Shikoku) via 6 of these islands. Along with the highway over all these bridges, an 80 km cycle-path was constructed and a well working and cheap bicycle rental service put into…
Have I mentioned Hugues so far? He’s a good friend of us, a Frenchy we met in Leeds. And now he lives in Osaka, so part of the idea to come to Japan was based on visiting Hugues. He managed to take one week off for us and we decided to use that time for a road trip to the nearby island of Shikoku. It’s one of the main 4 islands of Japan, so it’s…
Basically we chose this town as it cut our trip from the Fuji to Osaka in two and as we found a nice AirBnB here. We didn’t have any big expectations in Mishima, but discovered two nice temples plus a nice stone path along the town’s river. Also we tried the local specialty: smoked eel on rice. Yum! [Show slideshow]
What would a first time Japan visit be without seeing Fuji-San? Yes, we had to go there, but since the Fuji was still covered with a thick layer of snow at this time of the year, we did not climb it, but chose a one day hike nearby (Mt. Mitutouge) with a nice view on the Fuji-San. And lucky as we were and against the odds the Fuji actually revealed itself in the late afternoon…
We didn’t take much time for Tokyo, 2 days to be exact. It was our introduction to the Japanese culture, in a city that seems so overly interesting for most tourists in Japan. I’m fairly sure that it’s our own fault, because 2 days simply wasn’t enough, but we didn’t really get warm to Japan’s mega metropolis. Too big, too many people, nothing to hold on to. Or maybe the grey weather throughout most of the…