The Motorcycle Diaries part III

-- Over To the Fourth Country --

Golden Week is here again and our dromomaniac motorcycling tendency along with it. This year we have decided to have a crack at Muroto Misaki in Kochi prefecture on the island of Shikoku, the smallest of the four main islands in the Japanese archipelago. The ‘fourth country’ is a liberal translation of the name Shikoku. I spent the first two and a half years of my married life on Shikoku, but that was in Matsuyama in Ehime Prefecture at the western end of the island. Kochi Prefecture straddles the southern portion with its gorgeous sweep of Tosa Wan and the capes at each end of it, Ashizuri Misaki to the west and Muroto Misaki to the east. When we lived there, Shikoku was not connected by bridge to the main island of Honshu and there were no expressways so a 360 cc twin-cylinder two-stroke van with a top-end of 65 kph was quite adequate transport.

How times change. In the short space of a quarter-century three bridge systems have been built linking Honshu and Shikoku and once over there, a choice of three expressways awaits the intrepid road user.
Our journey begins at 8:15 on April 29th, a national holiday celebrating the late Showa Emperor’s birthday. It used to be known as ‘Green Day’ for some reason and the plans to resurrect the former name were a topic of bitter debate for some time in the National Diet. Something about reference to the Pacific War, it seems.…
This year it is a Sunday so ‘Showa Day’ is actually the following day, given as a holiday in lieu to make up the ‘Golden Week’.
The weather is warm and bright and we are swiftly down to Tarumi Junction and its masses of grey concrete which make up the approach routes to the Akashi Straits Bridge. With its centre span of 1991 meters this is currently the world’s largest suspension bridge and it certainly feels like it as we accelerate up the ramp and feel a fairly stiff crosswind blowing up out of the Inland Sea.


Due to the high toll fee, I don’t normally use the bridge unless it is to show it off to someone who has never seen it, and then only to the first service station/exit at Iwaya. However, we have our sights further afield this year and go straight on past, down the two-lane blacktop at a steady hundred and ten kph. Black Mariah is turning over at about 4000 rpm at this speed and she feels relaxed, with plenty of poke in reserve if necessary. We have spectacular views of Osaka Wan on our left and then as the highway cuts across to the west of Awaji island, equally spectacular views of the azure Seito Naikai, dotted with little fishing vessels. As we approach the mountainous southern end of Awaji, I notice four or five large wind turbines in rotation, making use of the almost constant airstream.

Before we know it we are off Awaji and crossing the Naruto Bridge onto Shikoku and Tokushima Prefecture and before very much longer we have paid our tolls at Naruto Interchange and have pulled up at a Lawsons combini for some caffeine nourishment. I feel a twinge of pain in my back and shoulders and realize that sustained high-speed riding on an un-faired ‘naked’ motorcycle involves considerable physical input. The canned coffee goes down well and we go outside to check the machines. Readers of this blog will recall that last year, our first stop came along with the realization that Akira’s Yamaha had an intermittent fuel leak which was not a welcome development at that stage. No such trouble this year as since that time, the machine has undergone major overhaul work, involving a rebore and head skim/valve grind, carburettor purge and fitting of an industrial-strength oil-cooler in engineer’s blue. The two bikes draw admiring glances from jealous car-drivers. They are _cool_ I must admit...


Then it is off into fairly heavy traffic on a four-lane road leading into and through the city of Tokushima. There is no margin for error as buses, trucks taxis and private cars jockey for position, switching lanes at will. Fortunately, our way to the south on Route 55 is well sign-posted and requires no right or left turns as it proceeds directly through the heart of the city. We are soon across the Katsuura River and the traffic thins considerably as the landscape changes, from commercial outlets and fast-food joints to flooded rice paddies with sparse green shoots of transplanted rice poking through the muddy water like whiskers on a teenage chin. Sometimes we pass a farmer hard at work on his rice transplanter machine, a most weird-looking tractor-like device with high ground clearance and skinny cast wheels, laden with trays of rice shoots. Also, flying proudly from many farmhouse buildings are the gorgeous koi-nobori, the carp streamers which indicate that there are children in the household. Always good to see, these bits of eye-candy form an essential part of the Japanese springtime experience.


As we approach the town of A-Nan I notice three immense, towering, tripod smokestacks and wonder what kind of facility they serve. The road takes a sharp detour to go around the industrial estate and it turns out that they are part of a power generation plant, all battleship-grey steel and dark brown ceramic insulators. There is no smoke emanating today, but the whole place has a sinister cast to it and I am pleased to be away from it as the land begins to rise.

We have picked up a travelling companion clad in natty leathers, riding a very smart Honda CB400 tricked out in streetfighter style. We have fun dicing it with each other through a series of ascending curves and then down the other side through the small town of Mi-Nami to follow a single-track railway to the town of Mu-Gi. The lad on the Honda takes his leave of us here with a cheery wave and we do not see him again.
Now I can smell the sea, or rather the Pacific Ocean, and we soon catch sight of it as the road hugs the coast winding past a series of spectacular inlets, with basaltic grey sandy beaches. It is a lovely road for motorcycles and I begin to feel a deep sense of relaxation and oneness with the universe.

I am rather harshly reminded that relaxing on two wheels is never a good idea, when one of my bêtes noires -- a farmer in a small white pick-up, suddenly pulls out in front of me, gabbling into a mobile and puffing on a gasper, true to form. He gets a sustained blast on the klaxon and rude signs with the fingers as I overtake, but continues on his way oblivious as we enter Kochi Prefecture, tossing the fag-end out in the slipstream for good measure. What a prat...

From here down to the cape the road is blissfully quiet with very little traffic, apart from the odd bus or like-minded motorcyclist. I begin to see signs written in katakana phonetic script advertising something called hoe-ru uotchingu and wonder what on earth it can be. Then I see a water spout a few hundred yards offshore followed by a grey-black humped shape and finally the tail fluke of a surfacing whale. Whale-watching for tourists has now replaced killing them for food and profit in this area. Kochi was at the centre of the Japan whaling industry until the IWC moratorium a quarter-century ago. There have recently been calls from some sources to re-establish commercial whaling as there is evidence that some species like the minke have recovered their numbers sufficiently to sustain it. These calls are countered by shrill opposition which to my mind is more based on emotion than logic. The reality is that when whale meat was seen as a cheap and invaluable source of protein in the post-war decade, Japan was a country impoverished by its reckless charge into the Pacific War and its aftermath. Times have changed and no mistake. A whole generation has grown up never knowing the taste of whale meat. Japan can afford to import anything it wants nowadays. I have tried whale meat just once and was not impressed with its oily texture. I am pretty sure that any attempt to re-establish commercial whaling as a going concern will be doomed to failure, on the grounds that there is no market for the meat, apart from as dog-food which would be disgraceful. No-one in their right mind would choose oily whale over juicy Australian or US beef.
I am tempted to stop and watch the whale myself but the cetacean is moving away from the coast and is soon lost from view.

We round the final bend and a sign announces our arrival at destination. I insist on a photo as proof.


There is but one place to eat, so we go in there and enjoy spaghetti bolognese which is not bad. After repast we take a walk on the rocky shore. Akira comments that the scenery is exactly the same as on the other side of the Pacific in California. I decide to estimate where old Hernando must have sat in Panama to inspire the words of John Keats.

Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific - and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise -
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Afterwards, we remount and set off on the return journey. We have been studying the map and it looks like Route 193 will provide an interesting detour on the way back to Tokushima. This involves retracing our path as far as Awakainan, where the farmer nearly got me, and then turning left up the valley of the Umibe river.

At first this seems like a great idea, for about half an hour we are haring along a deserted winding country road with a great surface and gorgeous mountain and mixed-deciduous forest views. However this soon comes to an end and the road narrows to almost a single track with passing places. It also begins to wend up wards through dense cedars and the available light is cut down sharply. We keep going,onward and upward with a short 10 km detour to take a look at a famous waterfall, the Todoroki Taki. Unfortunately there is hardly any water in it, making the experience feel a bit like the pub with no beer. By the time we get down from the mountain my shoulders and biceps are aching from the effort of controlling the Kawasaki at low speeds along narrow roads strewn with fallen rocks and my nerves are shot through with the terror of wobbling past sheer drops with no guard rail. We have been at it for about 105 minutes but have only covered about 50 km as the crow flies. Madness...

At the first hint of civilisation I locate a vending machine and quench my raging thirst. Akira says he’d like to do it again sometime...

If I wasn’t so tired I’d have a good mind to laughingly fell him with a right cross...

The next leg of the journey is considerably easier, along the winding course of the Naka River in valleys of deep green. There is not much water in it though, and a considerable amount of silt deposits. In a few places hydraulic excavators made by the company that employs us both are at work in attempts to dig out the watercourse. Maybe they are going to dump the silt in the sea, where it really belongs. We soon see the reason for all this -- a dam. This is a problem which is becoming more and more evident each passing year. There is only one river in all of Japan which does not have a single dam along its course, which is a real shame. That fortunate water course is the Shimanto-gawa in southern Kochi Prefecture. I’d like to see it some day but there has been no time this trip. The state of the other rivers is no dam good at all...

At dusk we pull off the road in the township of Uragawa, to have dinner at a roadhouse. This comes in the form of miso-ramen and deep-fried kara-age chicken and has never been so welcome. Hunger is definitely the best seasoning of all, and no mistake.

After retracing our course through the neon-bright city of Tokushima and back over the bridges along the expressway to ‘our’ island, I bid goodbye to Akira. As I pull up outside our house at 21:15, I check the odometer. 13 hours and 570 kilometers is a new single day record for me--and it feels like it. It surely does...

Epilogue:
Newcastle United are slouching to a miserable mediocre mid-table position in the Premier League, looking likely to finish with a record low points total for the club. The end of the season 2006 – 7 can’t come quickly enough for me. At least there will be derby games with the Mackems next season as Sunderland are guaranteed promotion either as Championship champions or runners-up. All I can do is pray for more scoreboards like this...