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.
From Kamigyō-ku it runs 163 km to Kamigyō-ku; allow about 3 h 26 of riding. It goes by way of Byodo-in, Nara Palace Site, Fujiwara Palace Site and back through Nara Palace Site. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
30 km on Byodo-in → Nara Palace Site.
Fifteen stones, a rectangle of raked white gravel, and an earthen wall stained by centuries of oil: that is all of Ryoan-ji's famous garden, and it has kept visitors quiet for five hundred years. The stones sit in five groups, set in beds of moss, and the clever thing, which every guidebook mentions and which is still a pleasure to test, is that from any seat on the temple veranda at least one stone is hidden from view. Nobody knows who made it or what it means. People have read tigers crossing the sea, islands in an ocean, mountains above clouds, or simply an exercise in emptiness. The temple belongs to the Rinzai school of Zen and was founded in the middle of the fifteenth century by a powerful warlord, Hosokawa Katsumoto.
Read the complete Ryoan-ji write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ryoan-ji is where the day begins. 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.
Byōdō-in comes up about 23 km into the recorded legs. Next is Nara Palace Site.
For most of the eighth century, Nara was the capital of Japan. The city, then called Heijō-kyō, was laid out on a grid modelled on the Chinese capital Chang'an, and at its northern end stood the imperial palace, Heijō-kyū, a vast compound of halls, offices and gardens. When the court moved away at the end of the century, the palace was abandoned and the land eventually returned to rice fields. Today the Nara Palace Site is a huge open space on the western side of the modern city, part of the UNESCO-listed Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara.
Read the complete Nara Palace Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 53 km into the recorded legs you reach Nara Palace Site. Next is Fujiwara Palace Site.
Before Nara, before Kyoto, there was Fujiwara-kyō. In 694, the Empress Jitō moved the Japanese court to a new capital in the southern part of the Nara basin, the first in Japan to be laid out on a Chinese-style grid of streets, with the imperial palace at its centre. It lasted only sixteen years, until the court moved north to Nara in 710, but it marked a turning point in the history of the Japanese state.
Read the complete Fujiwara Palace Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fujiwara Palace Site, about halfway. Next is back through Nara Palace Site.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Nara Palace Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Nara Palace Site sits at 110 km, about halfway. Next is back through Byodo-in.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Byodo-in write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Byodo-in comes up about 137 km into the recorded legs. Next is Ryoan-ji.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ryoan-ji write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ryoan-ji closes the day.
Ryoan-ji → Byodo-in is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Byōdō-in → Nara Palace Site is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Nara Palace Site → Fujiwara Palace Site is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fujiwara Palace Site → back through Nara Palace Site is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Nara Palace Site → back through Byodo-in is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Byodo-in → Ryoan-ji is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.