CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
253 km from Kashihara-shi to Kashihara-shi, about 4 h 41 of riding. On the way it passes Tôshôdai-ji, Hanzei-tenno-ryo Kofun, Byodo-in and back through Hanzei-tenno-ryo Kofun. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Kitora is a small, round burial mound on a hillside in Asuka, the cradle of the Japanese state, south of Nara. From the outside, it looks like a grassy hump, unremarkable. Inside, when researchers inserted a fibre-optic camera in 1983, they found a stone chamber painted with some of the most extraordinary images in Japanese art: the four guardian animals of the cardinal directions, the black tortoise-snake of the north, the blue dragon of the east, the white tiger of the west and the red phoenix of the south, along with figures of the twelve zodiac animals with human bodies, and on the ceiling an astronomical chart showing the constellations, one of the oldest such star charts in the world. The tomb dates from the late seventh or early eighth century, and its occupant remains unknown. To preserve them, the paintings were removed from the walls and restored, and some are displayed at the Shijin no Yakata, a museum built next to the tomb.
Read the complete Kitora Mounded Tomb write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Kitora Mounded Tomb is where the day begins. Next is Tôshôdai-ji.
Toshodai-ji exists because a blind monk would not give up. Ganjin, a Chinese master of Buddhist law, was invited to Japan in the eighth century to teach proper monastic ordination, and he tried to cross the sea five times, defeated by storms, pirates and official obstruction, until he went blind. On the sixth attempt, in 753, he arrived in Japan, and in 759 he founded this temple in Nara. His own ordination hall still stands in the grounds, and a dry-lacquer statue of him, said to be a faithful likeness, is kept at the temple and shown only occasionally.
Read the complete Tôshôdai-ji write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Tôshôdai-ji comes up about 30 km into the recorded legs. Next is Hanzei-tenno-ryo Kofun.
The Mozu kofun are strange. In the middle of modern Sakai, a heavy industrial and residential city south of Osaka, rise huge forested mounds surrounded by water-filled moats, some of them shaped like a keyhole, and these are the tombs of the rulers of Japan from the fifth century. Hanzei's tomb is one of the smaller ones in the group, though still well over a hundred metres long, and it is easily reached because the moat path runs around it. The giant of the group, attributed to Emperor Nintoku, is nearly five hundred metres long and one of the largest tombs in the world by area.
Read the complete Hanzei-tenno-ryo Kofun write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 69 km into the recorded legs you reach Hanzei-tenno-ryo Kofun. Next is Byodo-in.
Take a ten-yen coin out of your pocket in Japan and you are holding a picture of this place. The Phoenix Hall of the Byōdō-in in Uji, with its wings stretching out on either side of a central hall and bronze phoenixes on the roof, is one of the most famous buildings in the country. It was built in 1053 by Fujiwara no Yorimichi, a member of the most powerful aristocratic family of the Heian period, who converted his father's villa into a Buddhist temple. Its reflection in the pond in front was meant to evoke the Pure Land paradise of the Amida Buddha.
Read the complete Byodo-in write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Byodo-in, about halfway. Next is back through Hanzei-tenno-ryo Kofun.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hanzei-tenno-ryo Kofun write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Hanzei-tenno-ryo Kofun sits at 179 km, about halfway. Next is back through Tôshôdai-ji.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Tôshôdai-ji write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Tôshôdai-ji comes up about 220 km into the recorded legs. Next is Kitora Mounded Tomb.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Kitora Mounded Tomb write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Kitora Mounded Tomb closes the day.
Kitora Mounded Tomb → Tôshôdai-ji is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Tôshôdai-ji → Hanzei-tenno-ryo Kofun is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hanzei-tenno-ryo Kofun → Byodo-in is 56 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Byōdō-in → back through Hanzei-tenno-ryo Kofun is 57 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Hanzei-tenno-ryo Kofun → back through Tôshôdai-ji is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Tôshôdai-ji → Kitora Mounded Tomb is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.