Day 55 — Nara to Gojo - Tom and Marilee Retire to the Road

October 27, 2025

Day 55 — Nara to Gojo

Marilee here.

Our day of doing nothing had worked — we felt fresh and energized this morning after a full day of relaxing. Plus, our do-nothing day had been grey and drizzly, and today was bright and sunny, so we felt like it was all meant to be.

But we were both feeling just a wee bit bad about passing through first Kyoto and now Nara without visiting a single temple. Yes, we’d had a good dose of what both towns had to offer in the way of tourist sites eight years ago when we visited Japan with our kids — but surely they were worth a second look?Were we cheating ourselves out of a great experience simply through a fear of crowds? Well, what to do, what to do.

Then, by chance, I saw a notice about a temple complex outside of Nara that had the world’s oldest wooden building. That sounded worth seeing! We had a fairly undemanding day of cycling ahead of us: just over 50km to the town of Gojo, along a continuation of the riverside bike path that took us from Kyoto to Nara. Could we work in a visit to this temple? Further investigation revealed that in fact it was basically right on our route. We were decided.

Komoot worked its usual magic, taking us out of town by a network of back lanes and alleys until we intersected with the Keinawa cycle path. It even had us riding along pathways through community allotment gardens — the routes it devises are pretty astonishing and we certainly wouldn’t find these roads on our own. As we rode along this morning I was thinking to myself that I’m going to start using Komoot at home — who knows, maybe it will find me a shortcut to the grocery store through someone’s backyard.

Before long we spotted a pagoda in the distance. It seemed too soon to be Horyuji Temple, our goal for the morning, but we pulled off the road to investigate. Sure enough, it was a smaller temple, Hokiji. The temple itself didn’t seem to be open, but there were fields of flowers all around it with a number of people strolling and taking photos in the morning sunshine.

So we joined in.

This was just a warm-up temple: Hokiji, a three-storey pagoda near the Horyuji site.

Fields of flowers surrounding the temple.

The temple gates were closed, so we just admired from afar.

Just up the road from Hokiji, the cycle path led us to another temple. Was this it? No, wrong again. It was Horinji, a small pagoda and temple built in the early 6th century, which survived until 1944 — when it was struck by lightning on July 21 and burned to the ground in two hours. Really, with everything else going on in 1944, that seems like very bad luck. So the pagoda and temple standing today are postwar reconstructions, built apparently at great sacrifice by the local community, but the ancient statuary was saved from the fire and can still be viewed inside.

Quickly trying to absorb some of the history of this temple.

Back on the bikes, and just a few kms later we pulled up outside another temple gates, pretty sure that we’d found the right one this time. We left the bikes leaning against the wall and wandered through the gates to have a look.

And whoa! We were totally unprepared for the scale and grandeur of this temple! The grounds are huge, with massive avenues leading from the gates to the various temple precincts, and quadrangles of imposing buildings and pagodas. And on this October morning, it was very lightly attended — certainly in comparison to the circus happening back at the Nara deer park.

There were lots of school groups chattering away, but very few other tourists.

Approaching the central gate to the main temple precinct.

Goju-no-to: the oldest five-storied pagoda in Japan, built sometime between the mid 6th century and the early 8th century.

The Kondo, or main hall, also built in the 6th century. Inside we viewed ancient wooden statues from the same period, miraculously surviving through the centuries.

The Great Lecture Hall. Slightly less ancient — the original burnt down in 925, and this is the replacement, built in 990 AD.

The oldest clay guardian deities in Japan, 8th century.

Still looking mighty fierce, after all these years.

Looking down on the roofs of the main temple precinct.

A round hall (actually, octagonal) — built in the 8th century.

It was great to be able to explore without the crowds!

Back to the bikes! We spent a lot longer here than we’d anticipated.

It was several hours later that we returned to the bikes — relieved to see them still patiently waiting against the wall. A bit overwhelmed by everything we’d just seen, we pedaled off to complete the day’s ride.

As I mentioned at the outset, we had a fairly short and easy day, so even though we’d spent hours in Horyuji we weren’t too worried about making it to our destination for the day. And here’s another shocker: we were going to camp. Yes, camp with a tent and everything. We weren’t dragging these bags of equipment through the hills of Japan just for fun, we were actually going to use them again. Seriously, it had been way too long since we’d camped, either the weather or the geography had been against us for the last couple of weeks, but there was no rain in the forecast and Google maps was telling us there was a campground just up the road.

This postwar housing in the city of Gojo was quite a contrast to the temple architecture.

There’s supposed to be a campground around here somewhere.

We left the flat, well-signed riverside cycle path outside Gojo, heading up into the hills to find our campground for the night. A certain amount of bashing along one lane forest roads ensued before we arrived at the site, which turned out to be deserted — no campers, no onsite manager. But the bathrooms were open, lighted and heated, and the water was running. So we set up, grandly, in an undercover deck area that was clearly meant for group camping, cooked ourselves some dinner and went to bed with the sun.

We were awakened a couple of times in the night by an animal nosing around — the first time we shone lights around to try to see what it was, the second time Tom just bellowed and pounded the deck, scaring it off. No evidence in the morning, nothing chewed or disturbed, but it was a little unnerving to have an animal outside the tent in a pretty isolated situation. But waking up to sunshine and the sound of the river was pretty great. Another day ahead!

Today's ride: 53 km (33 miles)
Total: 2,819 km (1,751 miles)

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