In this mid-period of the 14-day ride we’re having fun: some good rides, getting to know and enjoy the other 11 riders and four guides, and a very welcome rest day in Kochi, Shikoku’s major city. Here are the highlights.

Day 6 was the longest day yet, over 65 miles this time, and that after a 60-mile ride the day before. By the end we were all – or at least nearly all – exhausted. And it wasn’t even a particularly great ride. It was mostly along the Pacific coast, on the southwestern part of the island, and I was expecting to be wowed by beautiful views of the ocean. Instead the day was a dull gray – overcast and cool the whole day – and so the ocean just wasn’t that pretty. And instead of riding in cute little Japanese villages, it was mostly just riding on a relatively major roadway with not much to look at.

One highlight was a fun lunch at some café sort of thing in a little town midway on our ride. I say “café sort of thing” because they didn’t actually make our food; the guides had picked up bento boxes full of Japanese goodies and that’s what we ate. But at the end they brought out this great home-made apple cake for dessert that was a delight and then it got even better. The middle-aged couple who ran the place than sat down at an electric guitar and the electric keyboards and entertained us with a few golden oldies. That’s the sort of unexpected treat you don’t get just bicycling on your own!

Finally, after a very long day of riding, we stopped in a parking lot, loaded the bikes onto the vans (to be clear, the guides loaded the bikes onto the vans) and were driven the last 30 minutes or so into Kochi. We had dinner as a group that night in a little place that specializes in bonito, a local fish related to mackerel and tuna. The strange thing is that nearly all of us ordered the house specialty, bonito made in various ways. So they brought the few plates for people who ordered the other stuff and then, after a long wait, one plate of the house specialty. Somehow they figured that the 14 of us expecting the regular plate had ordered one to share. Among 14 people! And it wasn’t a translation issue; two of the guides are native Japanese. Ultimately it took well over an hour – close to 90 minutes – to get the food out to us. You’d think that with a reservation for 17 people they would know we would want something approaching 17 servings.

Day 7: A rest day in Kochi, and we needed it. These are long rides for just about everyone – a number of people have never done a single 60-mile ride, much less two back-to-back – and we were all beat. So we had a day off to do what we wanted. For us it was laundry – yay! – a fun lunch, a long walk, and a really fun dinner. In other words, it was mostly about food.

Here’s the thing about Kochi: there were seemingly dozens of incredibly cute little bars and restaurants within two or three blocks of our hotel. We could have stayed here for a few days exploring all that Kochi has to offer, but had to make do with just the one night on our own.

First off was finding a place for a pre-dinner cocktail. The night before we’d had a drink at a little bar called Boston Café right behind our hotel, with a Red Sox logo and everything. Lonely Planet even described it as being run by an American ex-pat, but we found nothing remotely American, to say nothing of Bostonian about it, not so much as even an English menu. So we scratched that one off the list. After a fair amount of poking around and exploring options, our first stop for dinner was Francois, a little bar with a Japanese bartender who made great drinks. Given the French name I started with a pastis, and felt as though I were in Paris. Then we realized he had lots of various bitters and asked about a Manhattan. Sure enough in just a few minutes we had these perfect little cocktails in front of us. Boston Café was a bust, but Francois was the real deal.

Then it was off to find a place to eat. The first stop didn’t work so well. There was no English menu, but we’ve gotten used to that; we figure out a way to make it work. What it did have, though, was two slightly inebriated (or perhaps more than slightly) young women eating there who practically screeched with excitement about having two Americans in for dinner. One of them just came up and started pointing at the menu yelling “Fish!” or “Chicken!” or whatever in a super annoying, loud, unpleasant way. She meant well and the guy behind the counter was trying to rein her in, but I finally turned to Mark and just said “We need to get out of here.”

The next stop, though, was perfect. A little bar for eating, really really friendly locals helping us figure out the menu, great food, and to top it off learning that one of the older women serving us had been, in her youth, a beautiful geisha. Kind of a perfect night.

Day 8: After just one day off, I was expecting that the next morning I would still be sore and exhausted. To my surprise I woke up pretty fresh, ready to ride again. And it’s a good thing I was fresh. This was about 55 miles, long but not horrible. But there were three big hills packed into those 55 miles and they were tough. The ride itself, though, was one of the most beautiful I’ve ever done. Lots of it through forests, along rivers, through small villages, sometimes on tiny roads that seemed made more for bikes than cars. The weather was nice, we were rested, and it was pretty good. The only down side was at the end when, after a long downhill run into the town we were staying at, we discovered that we had to ride up maybe three kilometers to our hotel. After those three big hills even a small one at the end was not what you wanted to see.

Once we got to the hotel, though, it may have been worth it. It’s a remote, isolated inn, with great views of the hills and trees and all that. And it has a gorgeous onsen (the local hot springs all over Japan) for soaking after a long ride. This one had a big hot pool for soaking; some smaller, cooler pools for relaxing; a sulfuric pool for getting your mineral fix; a small, freezing dipping pool to cool off in; and – the best – a great little outdoor pool to sit in the 50-something temperatures and watch the wind in the trees. That was just about perfect.

And if that wasn’t perfect, dinner was. We were the only guests at the inn and had the place to ourselves for one of those seven- or eight-course kaisekai dinner with every kind of imaginable Japanese dish: an appetizer with several components, sashimi, grilled amego fish, simmered mackerel, seared bonito, blackfish tempura, sauté pork, rice, soup, pickles, fruit, and a small piece of cake.

So there you have it: a great ride, beautiful scenery, relaxing onsen, and a fabulous meal. It doesn’t get much better.

We spent four days in Nagoya, the original home of Toyota and Japan’s third largest city. There are some interesting things to see and do in Nagoya, but to be honest the city is a surprisingly unattractive place, just a mess of big, uninteresting buildings. To a degree that’s not entirely surprising, as he city was largely wiped out during the bombing raids of 1945. But even things that the Japanese typically do so well, like beautiful parks, weren’t that nice.

Still, there were some interesting sights. High on the list was Nagoya Castle and Hommaru Palace, dating originally from the early 17th century and for 200 years one of the most important castles in Japan. The castle and palace were both destroyed in the bombing raids of 1945, but the castle was rebuilt in the 1950s and the palace has largely been rebuilt; it is expected to be completed next year.

There was also both an unexpected gem and a huge disappointment. The gem was a museum and craft center from Noritake, Japan’s leading ceramics company for the last 100 years. The description in Lonely Planet didn’t sound particularly interesting but on our last day we weren’t leaving until a mid-afternoon train, so in the morning we walked down there. Who knew Japanese porcelain could be so interesting?

For instance, I learned that “bone china” has that name because it has (or at least had) actual bones in it? Chinese porcelain has an ingredient that is not available in Europe – or wasn’t in the 18th century – but some smart Englishman figured out that cattle bones would substitute and thus bone china was created. The china made by Noritake in Nagoya was exported, primarily to the U.S., and the museum section had a nice collection of the various designs throughout the 20th century. It was fun looking at the different pieces and seeing how time-specific they were. The 1981 design practically screamed Nancy Reagan. The 1965 version was slightly psychedelic. The 1927 pieces had a ragtime feel to them. I’ve just never appreciated porcelain and china collections before walking through this small museum.

The big bust was the Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Wait, a Boston MFA here in Nagoya? We used to have a membership at the MFA! And yes, there’s a partnership between the two museums, so off we headed. The Nagoya version includes Japanese art but also has pieces from Boston’s permanent collection. How fun, we thought. Until we got there, paid our admission fee, and discovered that there was no Boston collection. The half of the museum dedicated to Boston was closed. As I learned afterward reading the fine print on the website, there are two exhibits a year from Boston, each lasting for five months. But for two months a year the exhibits are in transition and apparently we hit the wrong period.

Still, there was a Japanese section and you would think that it was a Nagoya/Boston collaboration that there would be some attempt to make the Japanese exhibit accessible to non-Japanese speakers. Right? Wrong. Not a word of the Japanese exhibit was in English. We learned at the very end that the exhibit was some wood-block art, and Mark even figured out that one section kind of showed you how the wood blocks created this art but by then I was so annoyed by something that advertises itself as a Boston Museum of Fine Arts collaboration that 1) had nothing from Boston and 2) had nothing in English that I just left.

The other big highlight was a beautiful five-mile Magome-Tsumago hike a bit outside of Nagoya. The day trip consisted of a bus to a town outside of Magome, a hike of maybe a mile to the start of the official hike, a gorgeous walk through tiny towns and waterfall and forests and farmland, and then another two miles to a train station to take us back to Nagoya. To our surprise and delight the two-mile addition at the end of the “official” hike was the prettiest part of the whole trail with more flowering trees and cute buildings than on the rest of the trail. So that was a delight. And since we got an early start on the day we were still back in Nagoya in time for a late lunch!

Now, as we complete our first two weeks in Japan (we’ve been here before, but the first two weeks on this adventure), some observations about Japan.

• They work really hard here. When I would leave the hotel at 6:00 AM to go for a run, there were lots and lots of suit-clad Japanese already hustling into and out of the train station for their to get to their jobs. And when we’d come back to the hotel at 10:15 PM, there were lots and lots of suit-clad Japanese finally heading home after work. Obviously they were not necessarily the same people, but still, people are starting early and working late here.

• The whole surgical mask thing here is bizarre. Lots of Japanese – not a majority, but a lot of them – wear surgical masks. Enough that if you Google “Why do Japanese w” the first item that pops up is “Why do Japanese wear surgical masks”. There is a tiny and in truth insignificant legitimate justification: if you’re sick and don’t want to spread your germs (but still want to work) you wear it to protect others. In fact, there are not that many sick Japanese. They may believe the surgical masks protect them from the germs of others (they don’t really), but really it’s almost a fashion thing. They wear them because others wear them. The most amusing thing is to see people – and you see it a lot – wearing the surgical mask pulled down so they can smoke. Yeah, that’s the road to health!

• Speaking of smoking, we saw it in Nagoya, Tokyo, and other places in Japan. Smoking is banned on the sidewalks; big signs saying no smoking. In restaurants, though, you can find yourself right next to a whole bunch of smokers. My assumption is that the sidewalk bans aren’t about health or second-hand smoke or anything like that: it’s just that they don’t want cigarette butts. You can smoke all you want in a restaurant, but God forbid you would toss a cigarette butt on the street.

• And what’s with the challenges in finding deodorant here? Again, apparently it’s a thing; if you Google it, you’ll find we’re not the only ones who can’t figure out where to buy deodorant. I’m not sure what’s going on, but all the international brands that we find all over the world just don’t exist here. Maybe they bathe so much in the onsens and so on that they just don’t need to use it. Strange.

And finally, one last observation from our time in Japan. Some day we’re probably going to have a home again. Don’t know when, but some day. And when that day comes we’re going to need a lot of storage space for Japanese dishes and sake sets. They’re all so cool and beautiful and we’ll need a lot of them. Some day.

From here it’s a quick train ride to Kyoto where we’re joining a Grasshopper Adventure group for a two-week bike trip, mostly on Shikoku Island, the smallest of the four major Japanese islands. There will be a lot of one-night stops and we’ll have a lot less free time than usual so I don’t know how much I’ll be writing here. We will be taking pictures though, so there will be some history of what we’ve done.