A Ride Story about the 'Sturgis' of Japan by Jeremy Sanderson!

THERE IS ANOTHER POST BY THE SAME AUTHOR JUST BELOW THIS ONE; WITH LOTS OF PHOTOS.

The following is an account of my recent epic motorcycle journey around Kyushu, the southern island of Japan. The ensuing folly should only be undertaken by trained professionals with high pain thresholds and who have scant regard for their personal safety or public decency. Essential equipment: One large and well seasoned Harley Davidson Motorcycle (1584 CCs thereof), one hernia belt and one pair of ear plugs. (Loud pipes save lives – but damage hearing!).

The trip was a great voyage of deep spiritual refreshment and acute lumbar pain, but my riding buddy Akira has had some chiropractic training, so he helped me stretch out every morning and keep in reasonable shape. There were a couple of times I was in so much pain I couldn't get off my bike without doing stretching exercises to free up my back - they don't tell you about that in the Harley Davidson service manual! They should come with a warning label saying 'CAUTION! This is the world's most enjoyable motorcycle. Limit your riding pleasure to 12 hours a day or paralysis may set in and you may have to get the ear-to-ear grin on your face removed by surgery. Harley Davidson Motor Corp accepts no liability for excessive enjoyment of our product!'

The trip was a great way for me to really get back in touch with why I came to Japan in the first place, and it was my first real good look at Kyushu. I finally found the kind of scenery I've been missing since I left the UK. The mountains and alpine pastures high up in central Kyushu were stunning, the air crystal clean and the food and water delicious. It was a really refreshing and soul cleansing experience. We rode 2300Km and had two 12 hour ferry journeys in 6 days. The final day's ride was from Osaka ferry terminal back to Tokyo, 15 hours and about 400 miles through relentless rain the whole way. We had barely a drop of rain for the whole of the rest of the trip though, except when we rode up above the cloud line in central Kyushu to the top of Mount Aso, which used to be Japan's highest mountain until a volcanic eruption blew the top off it about 200 years ago. All in all it was an amazing trip with too many good moments to recount. (The on-sens were great too. That's the great thing about touring in Japan, there's always a nice hot bath waiting for you somewhere!).

We set off on the first day at 04:00 from Tokyo and rode nearly 400 miles to Kobe to catch the evening ferry to Kita Kyushu (The Northern end of Kyushu), arriving at the ferry terminal at around 16:00. The overnight ferry was quite comfortable as we had private berths booked with a nice comfortable bed. There was even a big on-sen style bath on the ferry, which was very nice. The next morning we arrived in kyushu at about 07:30 and set off on the ride down to Kumamoto on the West coast of Kyushu, where we turned east and headed up into the mountains. The road wound on for several hours, climbing high up into the clouds and eventually taking us to the caldera at the summit of Mount Aso, a live volcano with smoke and steam belching out and mixing with the clouds. The scenery and views on the way up were fantastic, reminding me a lot of a trip through parts of the Yorkshire Dales, or the road up through Northumberland and over the tops to the Scottish border. We then headed down the other side of the Aso mountain range and several hours later arrived in Beppu, a medium sized tourist resort on the East coast. It had the feeling of a Japanese Scarborough, and we stayed in an hotel that looked shabby and unprepossessing from the outside, but surprised us with really first class service, delicious food and an excellent on-sen bath to soak away our aches from the day's ride.

The next day we headed north and rode up to the top end of Kyushu and crossed the Kanmon straits, the narrow channel of sea running between Kyushu and Honshu. We rode on for another two hours into the center of Yamaguchi prefecture and the site of the Vibes rally, and annual gathering of Harley Davidson riders and enthusiasts from all over Japan. Approximately 5000 bikes and around 10,000 people attend and it's held in a different part of Japan each year, so it's an annual pilgrimage for die-hard bikers from all over Japan. It's a truly spectacular gathering of the most beautiful gleaming machinery and grubbiest humanity (self included!) Japan has to offer. We got there in the early afternoon, pitched our tents and spent the rest of the day admiring bikes and browsing the many stalls selling all manner of paraphernalia guaranteed to tease and entice the discerning motorcyclist. By around 9:00pm my legs were tired and my wallet decidedly thinner so I hit the sack. The next morning my riding buddy Akira told me the people in the tent next to ours had been up partying until 03:00 but I didn't hear any of it, I slept like a baby. 3 days of hard riding starting to catch up on me.

We broke camp and headed out at about 11:00 the next morning, heading back to the Kanmon Kaikyo - the straits between Honshu and Kyushu, where we stopped for coffee, junk food and photos. We then headed south again into the heart of Kyushu and went way up into the central mountain range, again near mount Aso, and aimed for a beautiful area in the heart of the range called Kuju, in Oita Prefecture, where we were to spend the night. The final two hours of the night was a hair raising adventure through tight twisting mountain roads in pitch darkness. In October night falls at around 5:00 pm in this part of Japan, and we finally arrived at our lodgings at around 7:30pm. Amid the inky blackness that one only experiences deep in wilderness territory we arrived at the Kuju Highlands Resort, a log cabin style hotel, onsen and camp site complex. We had a log cabin cottage booked, and they were packed with visitors which was good as we got bumped up into a higher grade room as someone else needed our original one. The evening meal, which was included, was a royal feast of locally farmed barbeque steak, chicken, fresh veggies and all manner of other delicious things. The on-sen was a volcanic spring rich in ferrous mineral deposits that took my back pain away and left my skin feeling like silk. It was a strange feeling being in this little Shangri-La in the mountains yet having no clue about what the surrounding countryside looked like, having arrived in pitch darkness. The next morning as dawn broke we awoke to a stunning view through the picture window in our room, of mountain tops poking up above the clouds lingering in the valley down below us. We had truly found a little piece of Japanese heaven, courtesy of Messrs Harley and Davidson!

After another dip in the mineral springs and a sumptuous breakfast of fresh local produce and milk from Japanese cows that had clearly only ever eaten the sweetest grass, bathed in hot springs, been educated in the tea ceremony in a temple in Kyoto and spent their lives reading novels by Natsume Soseki and Shiga Naoya, we headed out on the bikes for one of the most beautiful rides of my life. Weaving through high mountain pasture roads, past dairy farms and hay fields gradually down through the foot hills we eventually left Oita Prefecture and crossed into Miyazaki prefecture, the Japanese Riviera on the south east coast of Kyushu. Warmed by the waters of the South Pacific Miyazaki is famous for it's beautiful sea coast, palm trees, Pacific Island resort ambiance and the most interesting and entertaining Prefectural Governor in Japan. Until recently he was a famous television personality and comedian, he ran for Governor of the nearly bankrupt Prefecture of Miyazaki as an outsider and won in a landslide vote. He promptly fired all the corrupt officials who had been taking bribes and hiding money, opened up the prefectural government building to the public and set about advertising Miyazaki prefecture like his life depended on it. A year later it is the top tourist destination in Japan outside of Tokyo and it has a thriving economy. We arrived in Miyazaki city in the mid afternoon, rode on through the city and out the other side up to a stretch of coast line called the Pheonix Line, for it's rows of beautiful Pheonix palms along the roadsides. The views along the coast were beautiful, and a fitting close to our last day of touring before the grueling trip back to Tokyo.

After a quick visit to the local Harley Davidson store to buy a Harley Davidson Miyazaki T shirt we got to the ferry terminal at around 5:00pm, checked in, boarded, enjoyed another great hot bath on the boat and readied ourselves for a much needed evening meal in the ships canteen. By the time we were changed and ready for dinner however the ship had set sail, launching into one of the choppiest seas of the year. My buddy Akira, who had earlier told me with great authority that "you don't need sea sickness pills on Japanese ferries, the ride is smooth as silk" came knocking on my cabin door saying "Jerry....have you got any of those pills to spare?". I gave him my last pill, having taken mine earlier, and while he went off to nurse a queasy stomach I tucked into a hearty dinner, then hit the sack at about 8:30 pm. The ship bucked and tossed around like a fairground ride in the rough seas, but my pills did their job, and with the thrumming of the ships engines and motion of the ship I told myself I was lying in a huge massage chair, which is exactly what it felt like, and drifted off to a deep and peaceful sleep.

We arrived at Osaka ferry terminal at dawn on the sixth day of our trip. Disembarked on our bikes and immediately donned our waterproofs. The end of our trip brought the rain, and we had a 15 hour slog through sheet rain all the way back to Tokyo. October is the end of one of the budget cycles for the local councils in Japan, and all along the Tomei expressway between Nagoya and Tokyo, a stretch of about 200 miles, local authorities were digging up the motorway carrying out unnecessary repairs in order to use up money so they could claim more government grants the following year. The result was that around 200 miles of our 400 mile final journey was solid traffic jams. The highlight of our trip home was being caught cruising down the emergency lane to avoid the traffic jams.

We were pulled over by the motorway police, given spot fines and got a couple of points on our licenses. By then I really didn't mind. I had been riding through solid rain for 10 hours and I got to sit in the back of a nice warm dry police car while the officer processed us two bedraggled villains. The policemen were really very nice and one of them was actually thinking of buying a Harley Davidson. I really can't remember when I've enjoyed being fined 35 pounds quite as much! The rest of the ride home was uneventful except for one point when fatigue suddenly hit me about 13 hours into the ride. My vision went blurry and I lost my sense of balance completely. I got semi hypnotized by the rain drips on my visor and the truck brake lights in front of me. Luckily we were moving very slowly in a traffic queue at the time (OK maybe the road works were a good thing after all!) I pulled over into the emergency lane, cleared my eyes and shook my head around a bit, then slowly headed up the on ramp for a motorway service area that was only a quarter of a mile ahead. We took a long break, got some hot food and dried out a bit, then headed out on the last two hour ride back into Tokyo. The final couple of miles on the Tokyo urban expressway was terrifying. Narrow as it is, with frequent right angle bends, with steel expansion strips in the road surface every few hundred yards, that are like ice in the wet. Huge trucks driven by retarded blind psychotic killers came charging up behind my bike sitting two feet off my rear fender trying to push me to ride around the treacherous bends faster. I kept telling myself, "you've just ridden 2300 Km, don't screw it up in the last 10 minutes of the journey!". So, shaking, wet and exhausted I finally made it off the freeway and arrived home at 11:30 pm to a sleeping baby daughter and a very very relieved wife who wanted to talk to me until 01:00 am! It was the trip of a lifetime and I still can't get the stupid grin off my face. Can't wait 'till next time!

Well, cheers for now. I'm off to get a back massage!

Jeremy M Sanderson
President. Sanderson Icon Ltd.