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.
An 86 km round trip from Yoshino-chō - roughly 2 h 01 in the saddle. It goes by way of Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshino Mikumari-jinja, Kitora Mounded Tomb and back through Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshino Mikumari-jinja. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 800 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
Ōminesan-ji is a temple on the summit of Mount Sanjō, one of the peaks of the Ōmine range in the heart of the Kii peninsula, and it holds a special place in Japanese religion. It is a centre of Shugendō, the mountain ascetic tradition that blends Buddhism, Shinto and older mountain worship, and its practitioners, the yamabushi, undergo arduous training on the ridges. The temple is famous for another reason too: the mountain is still closed to women by tradition, one of the last such places in Japan, which has become a subject of ongoing debate.
Read the complete Yoshino and Ômine - Ôminesan-ji write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Yoshino and Ômine - Ôminesan-ji is where the day begins. Next is Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshino Mikumari-jinja.
In early April the mountain at Yoshino turns pink from the bottom up, wave after wave of wild cherry blossom climbing the ridge, and for a few days the whole of central Nara Prefecture seems to hold its breath. The trees are mostly the white mountain cherry known as shiro-yamazakura, planted over many centuries as offerings to Zao Gongen, the fierce mountain deity of the Shugendo tradition, and by tradition thousands of them line the slopes in four zones, lower, middle, upper and inner, so that the bloom moves uphill over about three weeks. Yoshino-jinja and the Mikumari shrine belong to the mountain's older story, a place for water and the pleas of farmers, since the name Mikumari is linked with the dividing of water.
Read the complete Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshino Mikumari-jinja write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshino Mikumari-jinja comes up about 20 km into the recorded legs. Next is Kitora Mounded Tomb.
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.
about 40 km into the recorded legs you reach Kitora Mounded Tomb. Next is back through Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshino Mikumari-jinja.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshino Mikumari-jinja write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshino Mikumari-jinja, late in the day. Next is Yoshino and Ômine - Ôminesan-ji.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Yoshino and Ômine - Ôminesan-ji write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Yoshino and Ômine - Ôminesan-ji. That is the ride.
Yoshino and Ômine - Ôminesan-ji → Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshino Mikumari-jinja is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshino Mikumari-jinja → Kitora Mounded Tomb is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Kitora Mounded Tomb → back through Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshino Mikumari-jinja is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshino Mikumari-jinja → Yoshino and Ômine - Ôminesan-ji is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.