Going back to Shodoshima - cycling and Japanese inn

Hello!

Now that Halloween is over, Japan has switched to selling Christmas products and playing Christmas music in many stores. When I first arrived last year, I was surprised at how popular Christmas is here. This is despite it not being a national holiday and only about one percent of Japan's population being Christian.

I am not aware of Japan having a November "Thanksgiving" holiday like America does, so there is not another major holiday that provides a natural buffer before Christmas. Once Halloween is over, here comes Christmas.

I came back last weekend from Shodoshima. This was my second visit to the island within about a month's time. I went hiking there a few weeks ago and decided to try cycling during my next visit. Here is Shodoshima on a map.

I had plans the next few weekends, so I wanted to try to get back to Shodoshima before the weather gets too cold.

This time, I took a ferry from Himeji directly to the island, versus last time when I took a few hour bus ride to a port near Shodoshima and then a one hour ferry to the island. The Himeji ferry takes about two hours and Himeji is about a 45 minute train ride from Kobe, so it took around 3-4 hours total to get to Shodoshima.

On Friday night, I came home from work, packed up my bike and a few small bags and went to Himeji to spend the evening. While in Himeji, I stayed at a "capsule" hotel.

The capsule hotel was actually quite nice and cheap. I think it might have only been around 3,000-4000 yen for a place to sleep ($21-28). Many of the hotel areas are "common," meaning you share them with other hotel guests.

For instance, the bathrooms, showers and luggage storage are all common rooms.

For showers, this just means that there are a few individual shower rooms (fitting one person at a time) per floor - you do not get your own personal shower like you normally would in your own hotel room.

The hotel also had a common lounge area with free drinks. I thought there would be soft drinks here, but the drinks were mainly like coffee and teas.

I took a few pictures of my bed and included it in the photo album below. But if you want to see more photos of the property, this website has a bunch of pictures. The bed capsule includes storage and even a TV.

On Saturday morning, I caught the first ferry off to Shodoshima. I kept my bike unassembled and in a bike bag for the journey. I could have put my bike together and took it fully assembled on the ferry, but it seemed like that would cost me an extra 3000 yen to buy a ticket for my bike. Keeping the bike in the bag saved me money.

Biking on Shodoshima was much more difficult than I expected. There were a lot of ups and downs - it seemed like I would bike down into a small town and then bike back up a hill outside the city. There were many small towns along the way.

Saturday night, I stayed in a traditional Japanese inn. In this inn, you sleep on a futon on the tatami floor. You can see a picture of the room in the photos.

I have stayed a few times in places like this - I feel like I always have to be very careful not to break anything. The doors are always fragile and most everything is built for Japanese height, which is a little shorter than what I am used to.

You also do not wear your shoes in these places. Usually in the entrance, there is a very obvious step up into the inn that indicates that is where you take your shoes off at. I put a photo of what this looks like in the album below. This is not the inn I stayed at, but the idea is similar - you have a lower level at which you enter and then step up to a higher level before which you take off your shoes.

I think normally I would have shared the room with someone else staying at the inn, but due to there only being three people staying there that evening, I had the room to myself while the two other people shared another room.

I cut off about 10 miles from the ride on Saturday, the ups and downs were tiring and I wanted to get to the inn. I also kept Sunday's ride a little shorter so that I could make it to the ferry in time to arrive back to Himeji in the early afternoon.

The ferry ride back happened to coincide with the deciding game of America's major league baseball world series - so they had that playing on all of the TVs.

I will leave it there for this week's update!

Until next time,