Friday October 3, 2025

Another short day today due to shortage and expense of hotels in Kyoto. We are staying in Otsu and tomorrow we will take the train into Kyoto tomorrow for a day of being tourists.

As I waited for Ralf to check-out from the hotel a road cyclist passed. He noticed our bikes and turned around for a chat. I noticed that he had a bandage on his leg and arm and asked if he was o.k. Yes, he had hit something on the road and the bike wobbled and he went over the handlebars. Fortunately he was wearing a helmet, a lot of Japanese cyclists do not wear helmets. He said his bike was slightly damaged, a scrape on the gear shifters. We compared bikes, his was carbon fibre and ours are aluminum. What a difference in weight. He lifted his bike and then handed it to me, so light. he didn’t want to lift mine, especially as it was already loaded with panniers. I admired his DuraAce gear set and he liked our Brooks saddles. We wished each other safe journey and he was away on his skinny, tyred light bike.

Another nice day on the Biwaichi. We left our hotel and Garmin took us on a very nice bike path back to the Biwaichi. We kept trying to get a photo of cranes or grey herons.

This area has a lot of rice fields and other vegetables, cabbage, onions etc. I was surprised to see that they still burn the stubble after harvesting the rice.

Stubble burning

We stopped at a small harbour and took some great photos of the lake. When we came back up the little road, the gate had been locked. What the …. I managed to lift the chain and get my bike underneath it. Ralf found a path on the other side and wheeled his bike on the grassy path. Clever bugger.

The first 25 kilometres were really nice cycling along the Lake. The road was busy at times, but not too noisy. We saw a lot of road cyclists today and wondered if they were doing the route in one day – 200 kms. You could take the fast route, which had you cycling on the road with a painted blue line and paonted blue arrows for protection. Or take the cycle path, with a raised curb between you and traffic.

We stopped at Moriyama. This is the official start/end of the Biwaichi cycle route.

Not even close Ralf – I almost made it, I have to do more Yoga.

As we made the turn to head towards the bridge to cross to the other side we saw the ugliest building. I am sure it was very nice when it was first built.

We had decided to cross to the other side of the lake as on the map there appeared to be more to see. Oops error, we were no longer on our nice bike path we were on the road with all the traffic. Crossing the bridge was interesting, a narrow raised bike path.

This is also a major fishing area. We had to see a giant crab.

Of course we got to our hotel early. I went to check-in at 1:00 and asked if it was possible to check-in early, fingers crossed. Of course not, check-in is at 3:00. I asked if we could sit in the lobby and wait. I knew I could type up the blog and get the photos ready.

Ralf could check out hotels and the route. We had half decided to go to Nara after Kyoto, although it wasn’t on the original plan there was a nice walk that I thought would be interesting. Ralf found a reasonably priced hotel and booked it for two nights. The confirmation indicated that although we were staying two nights, we would have to vacate the room between 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. as it may be used by other guests. Oh No, we had booked a Japanese Love Motel. We were able to cancel straight away.

At 2:30 we were able to get into our room. From the smallest to the largest room. It is expensive and a little tired, but the train station is just outside our window. We will get an early train into Kyoto, spend the day seeing as much as we can and then back to the hotel.

We have booked a hotel in Osaka for two nights on Monday & Tuesday. It is the same chain of hotels that we stayed at in Nagoya, an apartment.