We finished this two-week bike tour with a real highlight: after a three-hour bus ride from the little fishing village of Ainan we arrived at the southern end of the Shimanami Kaido, a series of stunning bridges that connect Shikoku to the main island of Honshu across six islands in the Seto Inland Sea. At just under 45 miles the trip could be done relatively easily in a single day but our route took us around a the islands, rather than just straight across them, so we took two days for the journey.

Good planning, it turns out, as the first day had decidedly imperfect weather; a light rain fell pretty much all day. Not enough to make the riding miserable, but not the sort of thing you’d really choose. The forecast for day two on the bridges, though, was pretty good so we figured we’d at least have one nice day of riding.

As it turned out, riding in the light rain had a beauty of its own. Again, not something you’d choose but all the gray and overcast and gloom was, in its own way, beautiful. And then for day two on the bridges we did pretty well; not exactly bright blue sunshine but certainly dry.

The bridges were just amazing. One of them, the Kurushima Kaikyo Bridge, is nearly two-and-a-half miles long, allegedly the longest suspension bridge in the world. Another, the Tatara Bridge, is one of the world’s longest cable-stayed bridges. Opened in 1999, they were all built with bicycles explicitly in mind so there were dedicated bike lanes, completely isolated from the motorized traffic. The bridges were plenty high – have to let ships through, and all that – but the ramps were graded pretty modestly so getting up there wasn’t too big a chore. Once you made it up though, well, there’s just something about being so far above the sea and the islands below. Every time we’d make the climb up another ramp to the start of a bridge and see the world below us I’d break out into another big smile even when it was raining and I was cold and wet. The views, the sense of being on top of it all, was just too much fun.

And then, ultimately, it was over. Natalia had measured each of our rides on her Runtastic iPhone app and calculated that altogether we’d ridden something over 500 miles, not bad for a little under two weeks of riding. In fact, we’re both really pretty beat; that’s a lot of work we put in to finish the ride.

Along with great rides along rivers and the bridges and sometimes amazing meals, the real highlight was all the fun people we met. From my experience it’s pretty unusual to get this many strangers together and not have at least a couple that you learn you want to avoid at pretty much any cost. I’m remembering the judge we biked with in Italy who was just a Hillary-hater; not someone I enjoyed very much. But this group was a lot of fun, good riders but lots of laughs along the way. Meeting people is a big reason Mark & I do these organized bike tours and this was a solid win for us.

Finally, it’s always fun to observe some of the quirks of a place. One that appears to be idiosyncratic to Shikoku, or at least we’ve never experienced it anywhere else, is the bean bag pillows they use. We can get used to futons on the floor when we’re staying at some traditional Japanese place even if they’re not as comfortable as you’d like. But lots of the places we stayed had small pillows filled with dried beans. Seriously. Not sure why they haven’t discovered feathers or whatever modern pillows are made from, but the Heavenly Beds at the Westin in Kyoto where we’re headed next are sounding awfully good now.

One aspect of biking in Japan we’re really going to miss are the onsens – the hot springs and baths – after a long ride. I’ve mentioned them before but they deserve one more shout out. What a great way to relax after a long, tough ride: a thorough cleaning and then a long soak maybe with pools of multiple temperatures, maybe outside in the cool air. Of course, they have their own quirks, too. Japanese have a pretty different attitude about nudity than we Westerners do. In one of the onsens we visited a little girl, maybe four years old, was there with her father, running around between the various pools in the men’s bath just as butt-naked as all the men were; apparently Mark and I were the only ones who thought that was unusual. I just don’t imagine that happening in a locker room in the U.S. That was the same onsen where a woman was cleaning the men’s bath area, again with no one giving it a second thought. Probably a healthy approach but … unusual.

So now it’s goodbye to Grasshopper and all the great people we biked with. It was a great ride, notwithstanding a few little lapses and problems. From here we’re slowing down in Kyoto for five nights before catching a long flight to Paris. All that after we rest up, though, because all that biking is tiring!

We’ve been on this trip for over a week now and I still haven’t said much about Shikoku. Shikoku is the smallest and least populated of Japan’s four major islands (Hokkaido, Honshu, and Kyushu are the other three). Shikoku’s primary claim to fame is the 88 Temple Pilgrimage, a 750-mile route that connects 88 temples. As the full pilgrimage takes anywhere from 30 to 60 days to complete most people these days do it mostly by bus or even bike, but some still do it on foot. You see them walking with conical hats, distinctive white over-shirts, and walking sticks. The one temple we passed on day 10 (#38) is over 60 miles from nearest temple, so the walkers have gone a great distance to get here.

And, while I’m filling in the blanks with things I will want to remember 20 years from now when I go back and read this again, I should say a bit about the 11 riders and four guides we’re traveling with. Who are these people?

• Rob & Allison, a Canberra couple who claim that while Canberra is obviously not a great tourist destination it is a wonderful place to live. We agree fully with their estimation of Canberra’s tourist appeal but we’ll have to take them at their word about the city as a place to live.
• Jackie & Peter, Auckland dentists and almost inhuman bikers. While the rest of us are struggling to get up these long hills Peter will ride to the top and then go back down just to do it again.
• Christine & Judith, a really cute German couple living in Switzerland.
• Ruth, a Sydney judge who asks a lot of questions.
• Ethyl, semi-retired Broadway conductor and all around interesting woman who has spent literally decades biking all over the world.
• Dean, a retired IBM employee and third-generation Japanese-American with long-lost roots in Shikoku.
• Natalia & Luba, childhood Russian friends. Luba is an investment banker in London while Natalia is still in Moscow.
• Alan, our lead guide, an Aussie living now in Cambodia. He’s filling in for an injured Grasshopper tour guide who’s supposed to be leading this tour and finding the long rides almost as challenging as us amateurs do.
• Issy, our Japanese driver and occasional biker. Limited English but always big with a smile, which is helpful when you’re dying going up a hill.
• Tatts, another Japanese guide, pretty much the nicest guy in the group.
• Tom, a young 20-something French bicycle racer – a serious racer – living in Japan with his Japanese girlfriend.

They’re all well traveled, adventurous, and strong bikers. Which is a good thing, because we’re doing some serious (and exhausting) rides.

Day 9: We started by driving up to a tiny village and learning about and making Washi paper. Washi is the traditional Japanese paper that you’ve probably seen at some point, but the traditional ways are disappearing. There is a Dutch guy, though, married to a local Japanese woman, whose life’s mission is to maintain and restore those traditional methods of creating Washi paper. His process starts with the bark from a mulberry bush and involves lots of boiling and washing and separating of fibers and pounding and washing some more. We went through just a little of that process and then, well, made our own paper that included lots of little local flowers and petals and leaves. As I write this it is supposedly drying in his studio and will be mailed to our last stop on the trip. I’m not the artistic type, but lots of the small sheets seemed as though they’d be beautiful when finished. We’ll see.

Then we had a gorgeous ride on a warm sunny day along a beautiful river. The problem was that we started so late after the Washi paper experience; we’d have been much happier to ride in the morning and do the paper thing in the afternoon.

Day 10: This was a long ride, another 60 miles or so, but lots of it was gradually downhill to the coast. Then we went along the coast to the southern tip of Shikoku in more up-and-down terrain.

We’re finding two big drawbacks on this Grasshopper tour relative to other bike tours we’ve done. First, the rides are just too long. On the 10 days we’re riding after that first mini-ride in Kyoto, we’re averaging about 50 miles per day, with two days over 60 miles. That’s a lot of riding and a lot of time on the bike. With Zephyr (the company we’ve used in Europe) there are always three options, a short, medium, and long ride. And even then the long ride is rarely over 50 miles. These days are a lot longer and we’re getting tired.

The bigger frustration, is that there is a sense that we should all stay together for most of the ride, or at least regroup every five to 10 miles. That means we’re waiting around too much and riding in clumps instead of off by our blissful selves. Mark and I both love riding on our own with no one to watch and nothing to see except the scenery. Instead we’re nearly always clumped with other riders, trying desperately to stay out of each other’s way. And there is a safety issue: when we’re clumped up, with several of us just itching to pick up the pace a bit, if one goes down a bunch will go down. We have Garmin GPS devises on our bikes with the route marked, and someone goes ahead of us in the van marking turns in chalk on the street. We really don’t need to be altogether like this all the time; I’m inclined not to do another Grasshopper tour if they’re all like this.

Still, the ride again today was a pretty nice ride. The river was beautiful and the rest of the scenery great, too. The weather was mostly nice, though near the end it was seriously threatening to rain. One highlight was the onsen in the hotel at the end of our ride. It turns out you never know what you’re going to get at an onsen; it might be just a single indoor tub, sort of a shallow swimming pool filled with hot water, or it could be multiple pools with different temperatures including both indoor and outdoor spaces. This one had something particularly wonderful: an outdoor pool – with nice hot water, of course – overlooking the ocean. Just an incredible place to rest and soak after a long day’s ride.

And then another nine- or 10-course meal at the hotel with every imaginable preparation of fish and all sorts of other stuff. After the meal on day three at the Buddhist monastery when we just didn’t have enough food I was worried about the standard that was being set. I needn’t have worried: since then dinners at least (not always lunches) have been extraordinary.

Finally, Day 11. Another nearly 60-mile day, more riding along the coast this time to a really tiny little fishing village. The weather wasn’t quite so cooperative today. We delayed our hotel departure by maybe 45 minutes as it was raining pretty hard. Alan, the lead guide, was watching the radar and it seemed as though it would pass. It wouldn’t; apparently a big cloud was just sitting over the hotel. Finally he said OK, enough delay. If you want to ride in the van that’s fine. It looks as though we’ll ride out of the rain in maybe 10 minutes and after that it shouldn’t be too bad. Sure enough, that worked. For a while. After lunch we got caught in a huge downpour, getting off our bikes under awnings and eaves as quickly as we could. Even then, though, the rain eventually eased and we sort of dried out over the rest of the ride.

And rain or no rain, we’ve continued to eat really well. Our hotel was pretty modest – OK, distinctly modest – but you wouldn’t expect more than that in such a small village. There wasn’t room for all of us in the ryokan they’d intended, so five of us lucky duckies stayed at a separate place just up the hill a bit. They were both modest, both what would be two-star hotels in Europe, but ours had more than just a single bathroom for the whole group, so that was a step up. And we had a resident kitty, though the owners insist on putting her out when guests are staying. Still, she was around, and that was almost good enough.

In this mid-period of the 14-day ride we’re having fun: some good rides, getting to know and enjoy the other 11 riders and four guides, and a very welcome rest day in Kochi, Shikoku’s major city. Here are the highlights.

Day 6 was the longest day yet, over 65 miles this time, and that after a 60-mile ride the day before. By the end we were all – or at least nearly all – exhausted. And it wasn’t even a particularly great ride. It was mostly along the Pacific coast, on the southwestern part of the island, and I was expecting to be wowed by beautiful views of the ocean. Instead the day was a dull gray – overcast and cool the whole day – and so the ocean just wasn’t that pretty. And instead of riding in cute little Japanese villages, it was mostly just riding on a relatively major roadway with not much to look at.

One highlight was a fun lunch at some café sort of thing in a little town midway on our ride. I say “café sort of thing” because they didn’t actually make our food; the guides had picked up bento boxes full of Japanese goodies and that’s what we ate. But at the end they brought out this great home-made apple cake for dessert that was a delight and then it got even better. The middle-aged couple who ran the place than sat down at an electric guitar and the electric keyboards and entertained us with a few golden oldies. That’s the sort of unexpected treat you don’t get just bicycling on your own!

Finally, after a very long day of riding, we stopped in a parking lot, loaded the bikes onto the vans (to be clear, the guides loaded the bikes onto the vans) and were driven the last 30 minutes or so into Kochi. We had dinner as a group that night in a little place that specializes in bonito, a local fish related to mackerel and tuna. The strange thing is that nearly all of us ordered the house specialty, bonito made in various ways. So they brought the few plates for people who ordered the other stuff and then, after a long wait, one plate of the house specialty. Somehow they figured that the 14 of us expecting the regular plate had ordered one to share. Among 14 people! And it wasn’t a translation issue; two of the guides are native Japanese. Ultimately it took well over an hour – close to 90 minutes – to get the food out to us. You’d think that with a reservation for 17 people they would know we would want something approaching 17 servings.

Day 7: A rest day in Kochi, and we needed it. These are long rides for just about everyone – a number of people have never done a single 60-mile ride, much less two back-to-back – and we were all beat. So we had a day off to do what we wanted. For us it was laundry – yay! – a fun lunch, a long walk, and a really fun dinner. In other words, it was mostly about food.

Here’s the thing about Kochi: there were seemingly dozens of incredibly cute little bars and restaurants within two or three blocks of our hotel. We could have stayed here for a few days exploring all that Kochi has to offer, but had to make do with just the one night on our own.

First off was finding a place for a pre-dinner cocktail. The night before we’d had a drink at a little bar called Boston Café right behind our hotel, with a Red Sox logo and everything. Lonely Planet even described it as being run by an American ex-pat, but we found nothing remotely American, to say nothing of Bostonian about it, not so much as even an English menu. So we scratched that one off the list. After a fair amount of poking around and exploring options, our first stop for dinner was Francois, a little bar with a Japanese bartender who made great drinks. Given the French name I started with a pastis, and felt as though I were in Paris. Then we realized he had lots of various bitters and asked about a Manhattan. Sure enough in just a few minutes we had these perfect little cocktails in front of us. Boston Café was a bust, but Francois was the real deal.

Then it was off to find a place to eat. The first stop didn’t work so well. There was no English menu, but we’ve gotten used to that; we figure out a way to make it work. What it did have, though, was two slightly inebriated (or perhaps more than slightly) young women eating there who practically screeched with excitement about having two Americans in for dinner. One of them just came up and started pointing at the menu yelling “Fish!” or “Chicken!” or whatever in a super annoying, loud, unpleasant way. She meant well and the guy behind the counter was trying to rein her in, but I finally turned to Mark and just said “We need to get out of here.”

The next stop, though, was perfect. A little bar for eating, really really friendly locals helping us figure out the menu, great food, and to top it off learning that one of the older women serving us had been, in her youth, a beautiful geisha. Kind of a perfect night.

Day 8: After just one day off, I was expecting that the next morning I would still be sore and exhausted. To my surprise I woke up pretty fresh, ready to ride again. And it’s a good thing I was fresh. This was about 55 miles, long but not horrible. But there were three big hills packed into those 55 miles and they were tough. The ride itself, though, was one of the most beautiful I’ve ever done. Lots of it through forests, along rivers, through small villages, sometimes on tiny roads that seemed made more for bikes than cars. The weather was nice, we were rested, and it was pretty good. The only down side was at the end when, after a long downhill run into the town we were staying at, we discovered that we had to ride up maybe three kilometers to our hotel. After those three big hills even a small one at the end was not what you wanted to see.

Once we got to the hotel, though, it may have been worth it. It’s a remote, isolated inn, with great views of the hills and trees and all that. And it has a gorgeous onsen (the local hot springs all over Japan) for soaking after a long ride. This one had a big hot pool for soaking; some smaller, cooler pools for relaxing; a sulfuric pool for getting your mineral fix; a small, freezing dipping pool to cool off in; and – the best – a great little outdoor pool to sit in the 50-something temperatures and watch the wind in the trees. That was just about perfect.

And if that wasn’t perfect, dinner was. We were the only guests at the inn and had the place to ourselves for one of those seven- or eight-course kaisekai dinner with every kind of imaginable Japanese dish: an appetizer with several components, sashimi, grilled amego fish, simmered mackerel, seared bonito, blackfish tempura, sauté pork, rice, soup, pickles, fruit, and a small piece of cake.

So there you have it: a great ride, beautiful scenery, relaxing onsen, and a fabulous meal. It doesn’t get much better.