Our first tour with our new bikes is a coast-to-coast route across Japan. During Golden Week, we’re travelling from the Pacific Ocean in Fukushima Prefecture to the Sea of Japan in Niigata Prefecture.

Our route is shown on the map below.

From Koriyama we travel to Date, where we’re staying overnight at a friend’s house. We then head east, camping at Marumori, and touching the Pacific at Shinchi. The main part of the trip is a journey west, roughly along the path of national route 113. We’ll climb up towards Shiroishi, then past the lake at Shichikashuku, camping nearby. We travel onto the plain of Yonezawa, and head back up into the hills of Oguni. We end the coast to coast section by following the river down to Murakami on the Sea of Japan. We have a few options at that point, depending how we feel.

Golden Week is the main spring holiday period in Japan. Four public holidays fall in seven days, and so many people here use this time to travel. With the help of a couple of leave days, we have nine full days away from work. We’ll set off on Saturday 27th, and we’re back at the office on Tuesday 7th. Our other dates are flexible. Depending on the time we have left, and how well our legs have coped with the climbs of Miyagi and Yamagata, we might extend our trip south to Sado Island, or north up the Sea of Japan coastline.

This is our first fully-loaded self-supported multi-day tour. Gulp! Well, maybe no need to gulp – we’ve done plenty of backpacking in the past, and some light touring, so we’re not totally green. This tour will be a new challenge for us both, but I think it’s one we can handle.

We’ll write up our tour in full for this site, but if you’re desperate to follow our progress, keep an eye on our Crazy Guy On A Bike journal here. (link to follow)