When we woke up and got ready to depart, our kitty neighbor knew it was his/her time to shine. Immediately, the meows started ringing out, as if they felt they deserved the food we were going to give them for being quiet most of the night. The evening before, we decided to call our cat friend Bob, for lack of inspiration. Bob decided to meow from a small distance whilst we packed our bags, but approached more and more. He didn’t really trust us yet, but seemed to not actively dislike us anymore. We fed him some rice ball with tuna and some seaweed crisps. It seems that was sufficient to show him we were friendly, as afterwards he stretched out, flopped on his back and started nuzzling our legs. After we were done packing up, we gave him some more food and departed for Cape Sata, only 8km removed from where we spent the night.
This 8km journey was short, but quite tough and mountainous. We were glad that we arrived within an hour at the point where we left our bikes and headed to the official Cape Sata Observatory on foot. We had to go through a tunnel and up and down some stairs (passing by a quite nice looking shrine as well, see the photos below) before finally reaching the official starting point of our south to north journey. We thoroughly enjoyed the beautiful (somewhat rainy) views without anyone else present. We took some pictures and marveled at the fact that there was basically only ocean as far as the eye could see. Now the real journey would start, we were excited!
A bit strange was to continue our journey, we first had to return to Kagoshima where we departed from two days ago. From there we would cycle to Kumamoto, further on to Beppu to then leave Kyushu by boat to Shikoku. About 30km from Cape Sata is Minamiosumi, the site of our earlier hotel/onsen debacle. From there a ferry leaves to Ibusuki on the other side of Kagoshima bay. The weather wasn’t great, so we weren’t sure whether the ferry would be in operation, nor whether we would be able to catch the next ferry to Kagoshima. We were lucky to arrive just in time to catch the first ferry! Whilst cycling towards the ferry departure, the crew on board gestured for us to board and park our bikes, which they secured with ropes. We hurriedly went to the office next to the boat to buy our tickets and ran back to get on the boat ourselves, handing the tickets we’d bought 10 seconds earlier in the office to the crew on board. We made it with about 1 minute to spare. This ferry would take about 40 minutes, so in that time we checked how to get to the departure terminal of the next ferry to Kagoshima. We’d seen that the next ferry departed from another harbor in Ibusuki than the one we would be arriving in with the ferry we were currently on. This meant we had to cycle about 7km to get to the other ferry.
Once we arrived in Ibusuki, we wanted to quickly cycle towards the other harbor, as it was later in the day and we weren’t sure whether another ferry would be departing later that evening. When we arrived at what we thought was the correct place, we couldn’t find a soul. What looked like the departure terminal for a ferry, looked a bit run down and not in use anymore. There was a small shack there, which looked like it was closed. We were looking around (probably looking quite clueless) when a Japanese man stuck his head out of a window on the side of the building and asked (in Japanese): “Where are you headed?”. When we answered we were looking for the boat to Kagoshima, he gestured to another door in the shack, went inside and closed the window to emerge from the door. The man told us there was going to be one last boat to Kagoshima at 5:30 (it was about 4:30 at that point). We would have to put our bicycles back into our bike bags though (we thanked our stars that we had these now). Robin went inside to get the tickets sorted and I started operation “break down bike and put in bag” (it’s not too much effort, and yet super annoying to do). About 15 minutes before departure, we were ready to go.
The ferry ride to Kagoshima was very pleasant, taking (again) about 40 minutes to cross a distance about 5 times that of the previous ferry. This ferry was a so-called hydro-foil or jet-foil type, which means that the boat only makes contact with the water through a few “foils” that make the boat rise up out of the water a few meters when at speed. This meant we barely noticed the waves whilst we had some food and drink in our downtime. And all of a sudden we were back in Kagoshima! We wanted to do a bit of a wash and clean ourselves as well from the last three days cycling, so we had booked a hotel. The hotel in question was completely unmanned, we checked in through a tablet on the wall and because it was unmanned, once again just parked our bikes in our room. Not really how it’s done, but we didn’t really want to bother with bringing our bikes to the station to park them there.
After a relaxing day in Kagoshima, we departed towards Kumamoto, our first stop being Isa, a city about 68 kilometers away. We met a lot of friendly people along the way, which was a welcome distraction, as the last 20 kilometers we had pretty tough headwinds.
After departing Kagoshima and approaching Aira, we were getting ready to head into the mountains, when we were greeted by a friendly older woman who asked us to stop for a bit. She introduced herself as Kiyoko Tsuru (つるきよこ) and told us she was just on her way home from some friends. Although she would have loved to offer us some tea, she had another appointment to go to. We also had places to be, so we told her we really didn’t mind. Kiyoko shared with us that recently she had had some misfortune and had been feeling a bit sad since then. She assured us there was nothing we could do for her and we didn’t want to pry into the details. She appreciated talking with us and asked us to write a short message for her in a notebook she had with her. She also wanted to give us something, but she didn’t have anything with her to give us, except for a 1000 yen note in her wallet. We didn’t really want to accept money from her, but she was insistent. She told us she really wanted us to have it, if only so she herself would feel good about giving it to us. She also told us we should contact our parents often, so they wouldn’t worry about us. We promised we would and reluctantly accepted the money. The local mailman also shortly stopped by to talk with the four of us, as he was an acquaintance of Kiyoko’s. After a bit, we departed, saying our goodbyes to Kiyoko and her friend.
The rest of the way to Isa was quite hilly and the wind really picked up, eventually reaching gusts of about 55km/hr. This meant our journey was a bit slower than we had hoped. When we were nearly over the most mountainous terrain, a white car stopped at the side of the road. A lady stepped out and asked us to wait for a minute. We thought maybe we had lost something that was on our bikes, but she got out a plastic bag with tea, cookies and other assorted snacks from her car and pressed it into our hands. She warned us to protect ourselves from the sun and heat, despite the heavy winds. We thanked her profusely and bound the bag of food to our bikes to enjoy later, after which we continued. A few hundred meters later, we realized that we didn’t see her car pass us and there were no exits in between. That meant she had handed us the food and turned around. Maybe she had seen us cycling somewhere before and had followed us just to hand us some food, before continuing on her own way. So thoughtful! The tea was still cool and she had given us two pairs of all the snacks!!
We arrived in Isa at around 4:30. 10 km off from our destination, we stopped at a Family Mart (a convenience store), where we drank some coffee to warm up from the cold wind. Outside we saw the grass and trees sway heavily in the wind, which didn’t make the prospect of going out there for the last bit very attractive. We still had to though, but the last few kilometers went quite slow due to the headwinds in the shallow valley we were now in. Once arrived in Isa, we bought some dinner at the supermarket and pitched our tent in a small local park (next to a wall so we wouldn’t be bothered by the wind too much) out of the way so as not to bother anyone. Despite the challenges of the day, we really enjoyed the kindness of the people we met today. At around 9:30 we fell asleep, ready to start the journey the next day at 6:30.
