Cycling across Kyushu, Japan: 377 miles / 25k ft / 8 days

This is a follow-up to my previous post about starting a solo ride across Japan, south to north: https://www.reddit.com/r/bikepacking/comments/1soyrao/my\_cycling\_route\_across\_japan\_cape\_sata\_to\_cape/

The full trip should take around 10 weeks. Kyushu is the first of the four main islands.

I started at Cape Sata, the southern tip of mainland Japan, and finished this section in Beppu. The Kyushu leg ended up being 377 miles with about 25,000 feet of climbing over 8 riding days. I’m generally trying to structure the trip around roughly 4 days on the bike, then 1 rest day, although weather has already forced some changes.

Getting to the start was its own little project. I took the Shinkansen down from Tokyo toward Kagoshima with the bike packed up, then still had to make my way south to the actual starting point. I had planned the route pretty carefully in advance, but I’ve already had to diverge from it a few times because of heavy rain and spring storm systems moving through Kyushu.

The riding has been much more varied than I expected. Southern Kyushu felt lush, subtropical, and surprisingly remote in places. Miyazaki had excellent food, especially the beef and produce, and a lot of the day-to-day fuel came from konbini meals eaten on curbs, ferry terminals, and random bits of roadside concrete. Farther inland, the route went through Takachiho, over the Aso caldera area, and eventually toward Kurokawa Onsen and Beppu. The hot springs in Oita Prefecture have been a major recovery tool, and this section also included my first ryokan stay of the trip.

A few observations so far: there are a ton of tunnels, the weather has been much more active than I’d hoped, and I’ve been surprised by how few other touring cyclists I’ve seen. So far I’ve only run into four other cycling tourists in the entire country.

If anyone wants to learn more about the route or see the GPX files, I’m wrote a bit about the route itself here: https://open.substack.com/pub/jhallard/p/designing-a-cycling-route-across

Next up: Shikoku!