CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. 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.
A 303 km round trip from Yoshino-chō - roughly 5 h 10 in the saddle. It goes by way of Kitora Mounded Tomb, Tôshôdai-ji, Hanzei-tenno-ryo Kofun and Yakushi-ji. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 800 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
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 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.
Kitora Mounded Tomb comes up 37 km in. 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.
73 km in you reach Tôshôdai-ji. 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.
Hanzei-tenno-ryo Kofun, about halfway. Next is Yakushi-ji.
Yakushi-ji is one of the great temples of Nara, the capital of Japan in the eighth century. It was founded by Emperor Tenmu in the late seventh century, praying for the recovery of his ill empress, and moved to its present site when the capital moved to Nara in 710. Dedicated to Yakushi Nyorai, the Buddha of healing, it is part of the UNESCO-listed Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara. The East Pagoda, which has stood since the eighth century, is one of the few surviving buildings from that era, and its layered roofs, with smaller roofs between each storey, create a rhythm described by one admirer as frozen music.
Read the complete Yakushi-ji write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Yakushi-ji sits at 147 km, 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 comes up 183 km in. 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.
220 km in you reach back through Tôshôdai-ji. Next is back through 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.
back through Kitora Mounded Tomb, 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.
The route ends here after 303 km.
Yoshino and Ômine - Ôminesan-ji → Kitora Mounded Tomb is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Kitora Mounded Tomb → Tôshôdai-ji is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Tôshôdai-ji → Hanzei-tenno-ryo Kofun is 40 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hanzei-tenno-ryo Kofun → Yakushi-ji is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Yakushi-ji → back through Hanzei-tenno-ryo Kofun is 39 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 40 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Tôshôdai-ji → back through Kitora Mounded Tomb is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Kitora Mounded Tomb → Yoshino and Ômine - Ôminesan-ji is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.