WHERE WE GO

For a small country, there's a lot to see and do in Japan. Its also very seasonal which means weather dictates where and when you should travel. From the outset, we wanted to get away from the crowded cities and busy highways. The focus is on traveling on the quiet rural roads along the coast and through the mountains. These roads suit our small engine bikes and are far more interesting than the high speed toll roads. At lower speeds you will have time to take in the views and notice the myriad weird and wonderful things that are mostly undiscovered by the average tourist on a bus in Kyoto.

As we are based in the Kansai region, we focus on 10 day road trips in South Western Japan. Shikoku is a motorcyclists Mecca with thousands of Kms of twisty mountain roads with very little traffic. Kyushu is more varied with beautiful beaches, volcanoes, big cities and more fantastic roads. Honshu is where most of the population lives so is more urban but still offers some great riding. The best times are May/June and September/October. Hokkaido in the North is really only viable in July and August. Its a great option to escape the summer heat in Southern Japan but the season is short up there and the distances are longer. 

Because of these factors the itinerary's vary according to the seasons. Our model is to publish a route well in advance and to then seek expressions of interest. 

Using our original trip in October 2023 as an example, we started off in Osaka and spent the next 4 days driving along the Sea of Japan coast. This route wound up through the mountains of Hyogo up to the sand dunes at Tottori and on to Matsue finishing up at the Kanmon strait on the inland sea. From there it was through the tunnel under the strait and and an easy days ride to the big city of Fukuoka. Day 6 saw us ride the sunset road and cross the mounains to Sasebo, a US navy base town. Ikkeshima was the highlight of this trip and we spent the whole day on the island and spent the next day resting at the hotel as the rain moved in. Nagaski to Kumamoto took one day and involved a ferry ride and set us up for the short run to the top of Mt.Aso volcano. Our pitstop that night was in the bustling city of Oita. A 2 hour ferry ride took us to shikkou where we spent the next 2 days in the valleys and mountains visiting the Nagoro scarecrow village before catching another ferry to the finish line in Wakayma. All up it was 14 days on the road. 

We will publish our route, anticipated dates and the costs on our instgram page as well as here and will note the level of interest. Once we receive enough expressions of interest we will confirm the trip.