November 22, 2025
Day 81 — Nakatsu to Kusu
We awoke to a glorious, but chilly, late fall day outside of our oddly dystopian/convenient lodgings. The container based hotel maybe lacked aesthetics and human warmth on the exterior, however if someone were to plunk one of these every 80-90 km along our route, with heat-and-eat frozen dinners, all for the price of C$60, we wouldn’t mind.
Most of the previous day was through that interurban low density stuff that just wears on you and offers little reward. At one point I asked Marilee if she remembered what riding in the country was like. In fairly colourful terms she professed she did not. We were due for a better day of riding, in other words. And thankfully this day paid off in spades!
We were heading south to get to Aso-Kuju National Park, which was located in an enormous ancient caldera. Marilee’s relentless internet digging came up with a bike route out of Nakatsu that would take us a bunch of the way: the Maple-Yaba Cycling Road.
It was a bit of a trick to find, as the signage wasn’t great. However find it we did, and it was a splendid ride on a gorgeous fall day. It was a holiday as well (honestly, the Japanese should just give in and go to a 4 day work week) so there were plenty of other cyclists and families on an outing.
The path initially took us to a tunnel carved out of a hillside by a monk over 30 years. The original hillside path over the river was dangerous, and he made it his life’s work to dig through the hillside by hand. Japanese road engineers have been following his lead ever since.
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The pathway took us along some spectacular local scenery — rocky outcrops jutting out of the landscape — breccia, as we were informed by the signage.
The bike path wound its way gradually upriver for a surprisingly long distance, which we were grateful for, first because it paralleled the highway we otherwise would have been on, and second because the scenery was lovely, and made even more lovely by it being a gorgeous fall day with fall colours wherever you looked. Beat the hell out of bumpy sidewalks past big box stores, which we’ve had a bunch of recently. It was a real spirit lifter.
As all good things must, the bike path eventually did end. This left us back on the road with the bulk of the day’s climbing yet to do. It was a bit of a push — 500 m over 20 km then down into Kusu. The road wound its way up into more breccia formations, again awash in fall colours, so it was sweaty but rewarding.
We stopped for groceries in Kusu, at a grocery store that was playing spectacularly awful and very loud popped up versions of Christmas tunes. Then it was a short but steep grind up into the hills outside of town to the campground.
The campground itself had a nice main building with a hip looking little bar/restaurant at it. The price was a bit staggering — our business hotel in Kumatsu is the benchmark for establishing a Venn diagram overlap between camping and hotels, and this campsite was a contributor to the area populated by the now two campgrounds more expensive than that hotel. It did come with a free trip to the onsen on site, however. Plus the sites themselves were very large, and surrounded by a low wooden palisade fence, so you got some proper real estate for your fee, though our little tent looked pretty ridiculous in this big enclosure.
We set up and scuttled off to the onsen. Definitely top ten soak as far as I’m concerned. Had it all to myself, it was rustic but new and tasteful, water was silky hot spring water, and at a temperature that was almost too hot but not quite. Lovely after a sweaty ride, especially as the evening temperature started to dip.
We were just tucking in to our cup ramen back in the safety of our fortified camping compound, when the owner of the campground came up and invited us for some Japanese snacks at the bar. We thought why not, and wolfed down what was left of our dinner and headed over.
We thought this was an invite to all campers to get traffic into the bar to sell drinks, but when we showed up it was clear it was just us. The owner was a middle aged woman (our age exactly as it turned out, which is middle aged if you live to 114). She was hoping to practice English with us. She had studied English for years but found it impossible, and speaking with foreigners made her very nervous because she felt her English was so poor. We had bowls of oden (soup with fish cake and other stewed tidbits), accompanied by wine on the house. We had a fun evening discussing our lives — this was her father’s property, which she had developed into a campground, not what she wanted but… Not sure how much English was learnt, as almost the whole conversation was via Google Translate, but it was a good time. As hard as it was we had to cut off the free vino (I know, I can’t believe it either), as we had to get into the national park the next day, which was another big chunk of climbing.
We tottered off to bed, stars twinkling in the sky, ready for another random day.
Today's ride: 66 km (41 miles)
Total: 4,127 km (2,563 miles)
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