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.
1011 km from Yokosuka to Tokyo, about 17 h 23 of riding. It goes by way of Scenic stretch near Ōtsuki, near Yoshii and Kashima-shi. Atami is the high point. It tops out at about 1,100 m. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did. Water arrives beside the road and stays for 21 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
Yokosuka occupies much of the Miura Peninsula, south of Yokohama, and it has been a naval town since the 1860s, when the Tokugawa shogunate built a shipyard here with French help. Today it is home to the US Navy's Seventh Fleet and a major Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force base, and the mix of cultures gives the town a distinctive feel. Dobuita Street, near the base, is full of bars and shops, and Yokosuka navy curry is a local speciality.
Read the complete Fuel stop near Yokosuka write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Boso Peninsula Pacific Sweep is where the day begins. Next is Boso Peninsula Pacific Sweep high point.
Atami is a hot-spring resort on the eastern coast of the Izu Peninsula, a town that climbs the hillside above Sagami Bay in a tumble of hotels, apartment blocks and narrow streets. It has been a place of rest for centuries, and the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu is said to have visited for the waters. Today the town is quite easy to reach from Tokyo, with a bullet train stopping here, which makes it a favourite weekend escape, and it still has a faintly retro seaside air, with old inns, souvenir shops and steaming vents.
Read the complete Atami write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
You top out here; the road stops climbing. Next is Scenic stretch near Ōtsuki.
Ōtsuki sits in a deep, narrow valley in the mountains of eastern Yamanashi, where the old Kōshū Kaidō highway from Edo to Kōfu meets the road south towards Mount Fuji and the Fuji Five Lakes. The Katsura river runs through the valley, and steep, forested mountains rise on every side, giving the town a closed-in, mountain feel despite being only about an hour from western Tokyo.
Read the complete Scenic stretch near Ōtsuki write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
146 km in you reach Scenic stretch near Ōtsuki. Next is Photo stop near Yoshii.
One of the oldest written stones in Japan stands near Yoshii. The Tago stele, carved in the early eighth century to commemorate the creation of a new district, is part of a group of three ancient monuments in the area that were added to UNESCO's Memory of the World register in 2017. It is a modest stone under a protective roof, but its age and significance give pause in a landscape of fields and low hills.
Read the complete Photo stop near Yoshii write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Photo stop near Yoshii, early in the day. Next is Tokyo / Kanto rides return.
Kashima's great shrine claims to be one of the oldest in Japan, and its deity, Takemikazuchi, is a god of thunder and swords. A stone in the shrine forest, the kaname-ishi, is said to pin down the head of a giant catfish beneath the earth whose thrashing causes earthquakes. Only a small rounded top shows above ground; legend says that no amount of digging has ever reached its bottom. The forest around the shrine, with tall cedars, deer and a spring-fed pond, is a cool, dark refuge on a summer day.
Read the complete Kashima-shi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Tokyo / Kanto rides return sits at 291 km, about halfway. Next is Food stop near Kashima-shi.
Kashima's great shrine claims to be one of the oldest in Japan, and its deity, Takemikazuchi, is a god of thunder and swords. A stone in the shrine forest, the kaname-ishi, is said to pin down the head of a giant catfish beneath the earth whose thrashing causes earthquakes. Only a small rounded top shows above ground; legend says that no amount of digging has ever reached its bottom. The forest around the shrine, with tall cedars, deer and a spring-fed pond, is a cool, dark refuge on a summer day.
Read the complete Kashima-shi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Food stop near Kashima-shi is where this day stops to eat. Next is Boso Peninsula Pacific Sweep checkpoint 8.
Studio Ghibli's Pom Poko tells the story of raccoon dogs fighting the bulldozers that turned the Tama hills into a new town in the 1960s and 1970s, and this finish lies right in that landscape, between Inagi, Chōfu and Tama. The hills are now covered with apartment blocks, roads and shopping centres, but pockets of woodland and farmland survive, and the Tama River runs through the valley below.
Read the complete Near Chōfu write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Boso Peninsula Pacific Sweep checkpoint 8 closes the day. Next is Back to Boso.
The Tokyo Bay ferry is the secret of this point. It carries motorcycles, and it is the pleasant way to link the two peninsulas, since the alternative is a long drive around the head of the bay or the tunnel and bridge of the Aqua-Line.
Read the complete Boso write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Finish at Back to Boso. That is the ride. Next is Tokyo bay.
Ten metres above sea level on Tokyo's own shoreline, this stop sits on land that did not exist four centuries ago. Since the Edo period the city has pushed out into the bay, one reclamation at a time, and the districts around Ota, Shinagawa and the Haneda approach are largely built on that fill. From here the waterfront is a quarter hour away, and the water smells of salt, diesel and wet concrete.
Read the complete Tokyo bay exit write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The day opens at Tokyo bay. Next is Yokohama.
Yokohama is where modern Japan met the outside world. After the arrival of Commodore Perry's black ships in 1853 and the treaty signed here the following year, the little fishing village of Yokohama was chosen as a treaty port, and when it opened in 1859 foreigners settled on the Bluff and traders built warehouses along the waterfront. Today it is Japan's second-largest city, with more than three and a half million people, and the old brick warehouses by the harbour, now shops and restaurants, stand next to the high towers of Minato Mirai.
Read the complete Yokohama fuel gate write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Yokohama is the fuel stop for this leg. Next is Kamakura coffee return.
Kamakura is a small town with the weight of a capital, because for about a century and a half, from the end of the twelfth century, it was the seat of the shoguns. Minamoto no Yoritomo founded the military government here in the 1180s, far from the imperial court at Kyoto, and the city was chosen for its natural defences: hills on three sides and the sea on the fourth, with narrow passes cut through the rock as the only land entrances. Those passes, the Kiridoshi, can still be seen, and they are part of what gives the town its enclosed, intimate feel.
Read the complete Kamakura coffee return write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
A break here. Next is Hayama coastal road.
Hayama is a small town on the sea with a reputation for being quietly rich. For more than a century, Hayama has been a retreat for Tokyo's elite, and the imperial family still has a villa on the shore, a simple wooden house in a pine grove, guarded and not open to visitors. Thirty thousand people live here, and the coast road runs straight through the middle of the town, along the cliffs and beaches, with yachts in the harbour and pines clinging to rocks.
Read the complete Hayama coastal road write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hayama coastal road, late in the day at 10 m. Next is Jogashima water stop.
Jogashima is an island at the very southern tip of the Miura peninsula, joined to the mainland by a short bridge, and the end of the road in a literal sense. A narrow lane drops through fields of cabbage and radish and a scatter of fishing houses, passes the small town of Misaki, and crosses the bridge to a rocky islet with a lighthouse, a headland path and a view of the open Pacific. On a clear day, the low shape of Izu Oshima appears on the horizon, and freighters slide across the mouth of Tokyo Bay below.
Read the complete Jogashima water stop write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Jogashima water stop sits at 873 km, late in the day. Next is Back to Tokyo bay.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Tokyo bay exit write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Finish at Back to Tokyo bay. That is the ride.
Fuel stop near Yokosuka → Atami is 85 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Scenic stretch near Ōtsuki → Photo stop near Yoshii is 79 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Photo stop near Yoshii → Kashima-shi is 198 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Food stop near Kashima-shi → Near Chōfu is 143 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Back to Boso → Tokyo bay exit is 57 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Tokyo bay exit → Yokohama fuel gate is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Yokohama fuel gate → Kamakura coffee return is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Kamakura coffee return → Hayama coastal road is 8 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hayama coastal road → Jogashima water stop is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Jogashima water stop → Back to Tokyo bay exit is 71 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.