Shiminami Kaido 14th Anniversary Getaway

I am so glad that I married Jake 14 years ago. Our life is much different than we expected, but I have loved the adventures. We have 5 amazing kids and so many adventures ahead of us as well. Being seperated for 4 months this year has proved to me that I prefer doing things with Jake by my side. So this year we had an opportunity to go on a bike trip together sans kids, and we jumped on it. It has been since our 10 year anniversary when we did a little couples trip together, so this was a trip. A big thank you to our babysitter Naomi for keeping our kiddos happy and safe while we were gone. Shiminami Kaido is a bike path connecting Honshu to Shikoku via six small islands on the Seto Inland Sea. It is a lovely oasis of citrus groves, beaches, and forest. It was a cool place to experience a new side of Japan.

On Day 1 we caught the Shinkansen down to Onomichi. We arrived around 3 and decided to skip a taxi to our hotel and just walk. When we got there we decided to head out and explore Onomichi. We had no expectations as we had researched the Shiminai Kaido trail and nothing else. To our happy delight we found quite the beautiful temple walk to explore. At first we had just looked up one temple, Jinko-Ji, that we wanted to visit before dinner. It was lovely and secluded an peaceful. While there we realized that there was a whole old temple walk that connected several temples. The path was a narrow pedestrian path through the hillside of Onomichi with quaint houses and of course old temples.

We continued along the path until we reached Senkoji, the highest and most adventurous temple of the afternoon. We took a quick look at the first area of the temple and continued up until we realized there was a rock climbing section of the temple...and yes how better to feel peaceful than to be perched a top a huge boulder on top of a hilside and beable to see for miles. It was definately my favorite part of the walk. We eventually came down and explored the rest of the temple, which even included a temple for lovers. So perfect for our anniversary trip. We ended the evening at Nao sushi, which had the best sushi I've had in all our time in Japan. They had no menu and we just ate what the sushi master (not sure of their real title) suggested. After we found some lemon cakes for dinner, as there were many lemon desserts around.

The next morning we started our adventure by visiting a delicious bakery for breakfast and eating them by the ocean. To my surprise we saw lots of jellyfish floating around in the water.

We rented road bikes and then we headed out on the trail. The weather was sunny and perfect and we had 70 km of trail ahead of us that day. We found a dinosaur we knew our kids would have loved and we made crossed several suspension bridges. We passed lots and lots of citrus groves and enjoyed the delicious smells. Our first big stop was at Dolce for citrus gelato. It was AMAZING.

Our next stop wasn't too far up the road. It was Kosanji, a colorful temple with beautiful grounds. We spent an hour or so wandering the grounds and even exploring the cave on the site. Included in the ticket was the Hill of Hope a massive white granite "garden on the hill. It was quite the unique spot and we had a lot of fun exploring both the ancient temple and mogern granite art.

Continuing on we stopped at sunset beach for lunch and spent some time enjoying the beach. Jake even found a friend to grab a drink with.

We continued on our bike ride, traversed a few more bridges and made another ice cream break (yes, two in a day but we needed all those calories). Along the way we found a cool spot in the ocen where there were thousands of fish at the surface flowing along an ocean current. I've never seen so many fish in one place. The last bridge we crossed was by far the longest and we were getting so exhausted that we were just ready to get off our bikes. After the bridge it was a painful 5 km to the center of Imabari. I was pretty hangry and exhausted (probably could have done a bit more training for this), but Jake kept me calm and we made it all the way to Imabari Kokusai Hotel. It was big and fancy and we definately felt under-dressed in our biking clothes.

We grabbed a quick dinner in a little izakaya. Then we walked over to see the Imabari Castle. In the twilight it was gorgeous. We ended the night soaking in the hotel onsen and fell asleep fast.

In the morning we made a change of plans. I didn't think that I could handle doing the same 70 km back. So we opted to take a ferry lift to a new island. Yuge was the first island we explored. It was very remote and we saw only one or two other bikers on that island. In fact at one point we took a wrong turn, found the cutest baby wild boar and a private beach we had all to ourselves. When we found our way again, we did a little hike to Kujiyama observatory on top of the island and we were rewarded with stunning views of the Seto Inland Sea.

We biked the bridge over to Sashima. We still had a lot of biking ahead of us so we quickly biked through Sashima and Ikina.

We then caught a short ferry to Innoshima. We grabbed lunch at an interesting Indian-Japanese fusion restaurant. Then we biked back to our original path to get us back to Mukaishima. Once on Mukaishima we diverged from the main path to find our small hostel hotel. It was so remote, which made all the beaches and views feel like our own speacial oasis. There were lots of shells and sea glass to find. There were alos LOTS of jelly fish that had washed up. It was so remote that there were no food options (without a decent bike ride) for dinner and we were hungry. Luckily our hostel owner had a supply of cup noodles for purchase, so we settled on that and enjoyed the ocean views from our room.

The next morning we headed out on the trail to find some breakfast...since we had no food options near us. Before breakfast we grabbed a old fashioned bottled soda. The cream soda was delicious, but my lemon soda was nothing special, although the bottle was so cool. The soda shop even had a bird nest full of chicks in it. It made for some fun entertainment as the chicks went wild every time the parent birds flew near. Breakfast was a quick stop at a little bakery.

After catching the last ferry to Onomichi we explored some last temples along the old temple trail on bike. Then we returned our bikes and did some souvenir shopping along the shopping street in Onomichi. Then we grabbed a delicious dumpling lunch and walked back to the Shinkansen station. On our way we saw a ferrari, which Jake was excited about.

Really had an amazing time with my best friend. Glad we could do this challenging bake trip together, we saw some really remote and beautiful parts of Japan, and especially loved all the citrus groves.