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• Day 7 – Takanabe to Nobeoka
• Distance: 84.4km
• Ascent / descent: 681m / 671m
• Weather: sunny and warm 
• Accommodation: Nobeoka Hotel, ¥4,860

I must admit I’m not enjoying cycling along the busy Route 10, although Strava does try and take me off the main road onto smaller roads wherever possible (and this is interesting cycling between rice fields, green tea hedges and farming areas). In fact, I saw what I think was a ferret? It was running between the green tea hedges…

Cycling past irises, fields and greenhouses

Rows of green tea

Green tea

Freshly planted rice fields

Old petrol station

I’d met a man yesterday at Miyazaki-jingu shrine who had told me to make sure I visited Mimitsu (the name means beautiful port), so when I saw the sign, I rode downhill off the track to reach the village and it was definitely worth seeing. The port is supposedly where the mythical first Emperor of Japan, Jimmu, set sail from to reach land (supposedly Wakayama) where he then travelled through to finally set up his court in Yamato (present-day Nara). This is believed to have occurred 2,000 years ago. Some stone paving remains from the Edo and Meiji periods as do the houses and it was very quiet as I left my bike and walked around the few streets.

Hyuga City History and Folk Museum, Mimitsu

Letterboxes in Mimitsu

Traditional Edo and Meiji period houses of Mimitsu, Miyazaki

Ishitatami stone paving and traditional Edo and Meiji period houses of Mimitsu, Miyazaki

A Shinto torii gate within the small hollow of a tree

A large kusunoki (camphor) tree

A memorial to Emperor Jimmu, long believed to have departed from this bay by ship to reach Yamato (Nara) where he established rule as the first Emperor of Japan

A Meiji or possibly Showa-era building

Houses of Mimitsu

I passed two michi no eki’s and had lunch of gyu-don (beef on rice) at the second one, called Michi-no-eki Hyuga.

Lunch of gyudon (beef on rice) with a clear soup and radish at the Michi-no-eki Hyuga

Great beaches in Miyazaki

On another recommendation (this time from a staff member at Cycle Base Asahi in Miyazaki yesterday), I made an 8km detour to reach Cape Hyuga and an area called Umagase which has the largest columnar rocks in Japan, as well as a sea cross (the sea has created a cross-like structure and your wishes can come true here), as well as a lighthouse and walking trail. Again, it was definitely worth the detour.

On my way to Umagase on a recommendation by the staff from Asahi Cycle Base

The sea cross

A kite – more common than seagulls in Japan!

A kite

Ring the bell at the sea cross and make a wish

Cape Hyuga and Umagase info board

Hebesu monaca icecream – I’d never heard of or tasted hebesu and it was delicious and similar to lime

Umagase – ‘the largest columnar rocks in Japan’

Cape Hyuga lighthouse

The forecast didn’t look good overnight again with a storm heading my way so I decided to head to Nobeoka and find a cheap hotel and try to use the wifi to plan out the next week or so – do I stay in Kyushu and ride to the very north or do I take the ferry from Usuki to Shikoku?

I arrived into Nobeoka after sunset and stoped at a 7-11 to use the wifi to see where all the hotels were on google maps. The problem with 7-11 wifi was that as most of the hotel phone numbers weren’t listed on google, when I tried to access their websites I was denied. So this meant I needed to go and visit EVERY hotel in the city to see if they had a room available. This turned out to be much harder and longer than expected and only the last hotel in the city, called Nobeoka Hotel (at now 9:30pm) had a room (I must admit I was so tired and after trying 11 hotels, I had shed a few tears). The hotel even let me bring my bike inside into a room downstairs but the only drawback was that the cigarette smoke smell in my room was so bad that it stung my eyes and hung like a cloud in the room! I opened the window and put the AC on full to try and move the air around, to no avail. At least I had a bed. But I was now so tired the last thing I wanted to do was spend hours planning out a route!

JB7 – elevation profile from Garmin connect

JB7 – google map from Garmin Connect