Myogi Mountain and Karuizawa
A 433 km loop
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Why this ride
Leave the city behind and spend the day on roads with texture. 433 km round from Hachiōji - plan on about 8 h 01 of riding. The stops in between: near Miura, Tokyo / Kanto rides and near Mitsukaidō. The climb of the day is near Uenohara.
Roadbook
- Fuel stop near Hachiōji
fuel
Mount Takao stands at the edge of Hachiōji like a patient dog, a green hill of about six hundred metres that Tokyoites climb in their hundreds of thousands. For a rider, it is a start and finish point, a convenient place for fuel, parking and a good bowl of ramen before the mountains begin. The city sits at the foot of the Tama hills, and the climate here is a few degrees cooler than central Tokyo.
Hachiōji has a clear identity. The local ramen is a shoyu broth with chopped onions floating on top, a simple, comforting bowl that sells at counters across the city. The city was an important silk centre, and its merchants traded in bales of silk that travelled to Yokohama along a road still called the Silk Road. In the sixteenth century, the Hōjō clan of Odawara held a castle on a hill here, which fell to Toyotomi Hideyoshi's army in 1590, and the remains of its walls can still be walked. In late November, the avenue of ginkgo trees along the road to Mount Takao turns a brilliant yellow, and the city holds a festival beneath them.
The riding that starts here goes west. Route 20, the old Kōshū Kaidō, climbs past the foot of Mount Takao and through the long Kobotoke tunnel, then continues toward Sagamiko, Ōtsuki and the Chūō corridor. Other roads lead north-west to Ōme and the Okutama valley, or south-west to the Tanzawa foothills. The early morning is the best time, when the city is quiet and the mountains are cool. Sunday traffic is heavy on the way out.
Fuel and food are everywhere. The city has hundreds of stations and restaurants, and the area around Hachiōji station is lively with cafés and small bars. If you finish here at the end of the day, plan to arrive before the evening rush, when the roads back into central Tokyo are slow. A bowl of ramen after a long ride is hard to beat, and the soy broth, rich and salty, is just what a tired rider needs.
- High point near Uenohara
pass
You top out here; the road stops climbing.
- Food stop near Miura
food
At the very tip of the Miura Peninsula, south of Yokosuka, the land ends in low cliffs, rocky shelves, cabbage fields and a fishing harbour that has supplied Tokyo with tuna for generations. Misaki port is the heart of Miura, and that is where you go to eat. The city has around fifty thousand people, but it feels like a coastal country town, with the sea always close and the smell of salt and fish on the wind.
Misaki maguro is the dish. The harbour is lined with restaurants serving tuna in every form, raw on rice in a big bowl, grilled, fried, as sashimi or as rich slices of fatty toro, and the long queues at lunchtime on weekends tell you how famous it is. Miura is also known for its vegetables, especially its big white radishes, the daikon, and its cabbages, grown in fields that stretch right to the edge of the cliffs, with the sea glittering behind them. In winter you will see daikon hanging to dry on frames by farmhouses.
Just across a bridge from the harbour lies Jogashima, a small island with a lighthouse, a park and rocky shores carved into strange shapes by the waves. The walk along the southern cliffs is lovely, with views across the mouth of Tokyo Bay to the Boso peninsula and, on clear days, Mount Fuji to the west and the island of Oshima to the south. Kites, hawks and cormorants ride the wind. The poet Hakushu Kitahara lived here and wrote a famous song about the rain on Jogashima, and there is a monument to him on the island.
The ride down the peninsula follows Route 134 and the coast roads past Hayama, where the imperial family has a seaside villa, and then through hills, tunnels and farmland. Expect traffic on weekends, especially in summer, when beaches like Miura Kaigan fill with Tokyo families. Early morning is the best time, when the light is soft and the roads are quiet, and the wind off the sea can be strong in winter and spring.
Fuel, convenience stores and food are easy to find in Miura and in Yokosuka on the way back. If you only do one thing here, eat a tuna bowl by the harbour, then sit on the rocks on Jogashima and watch the waves come in from the Pacific.
- Tokyo / Kanto rides return
swim
Chiba prefecture is the thumb of land that sticks into the Pacific east of Tokyo, and its southern end is lower, softer and far more rural than most visitors expect, with ridges of forested hills, small rice valleys and a long coast of surf beaches. Katsuura, with twenty-two thousand people, and Ōhara and Kamogawa, both a little further along the coast, are the main towns.
The market at Katsuura has been held on the streets near the harbour since the sixteenth century, and in the early morning stalls sell fish, vegetables, dried goods and pickles, while locals eat the local tantanmen, a spicy sesame-and-chilli noodle soup invented to warm up fishermen. Ōhara is known for its autumn festival, in which men carry heavy portable shrines into the surf, and in the hills nearby, the Yōrō valley offers waterfalls and forest walks. Kamogawa, on the south coast, has a famous aquarium with orcas and dolphins.
For riders, the Bōsō hills are a surprise. The roads are narrow, winding and often empty, with short, steep climbs, hairpins in the cedar woods and sudden views of the sea. The surface is generally good, but leaf litter and damp make shaded corners slippery, and in summer the humidity is intense. The weather here is mild, and the peninsula stays green and warm when Tokyo is cold, with winter camellias and early spring flowers along the coast. Typhoons can bring heavy rain in late summer and autumn, so check the forecast.
Rip currents are a real danger, so swim only where lifeguards are on duty, and be careful of waves. Fuel and food are plentiful along the coast, with seafood the speciality: fresh sashimi, grilled fish and, in a few fishing ports on the southern tip, whale, a local tradition.
The label says Tokyo and Kantō rides, a broad title for what is a rather quiet and little-visited corner. Begin early, take the hill roads, and finish with a bowl of noodles by the sea.
- Photo stop near Mitsukaidō
photo
Mitsukaidō, now part of the city of Jōsō in south-western Ibaraki, lies on the vast, flat Kanto plain north of Tokyo, beside the Kinugawa river. The landscape is one of rice paddies, irrigation channels, farmhouses with windbreak trees and long river embankments, under a big sky. To the north-east, Mount Tsukuba rises alone from the plain, its twin peaks visible from far away, and on clear winter days Mount Fuji can sometimes be seen far to the south-west.
The Kinugawa is usually a placid river, but in September 2015, heavy rains caused its embankment to break in Jōsō, flooding a large part of the city and forcing thousands of people to evacuate. The flood was one of the worst in recent Japanese history, and the embankments have since been rebuilt and strengthened. Riding along them today, it is hard to imagine the water spreading across the plain.
The paddies change with the seasons: flooded and mirror-like in spring, when rice is planted; lush and green in summer; golden in early autumn, before the harvest; and bare and brown in winter. Herons and egrets stalk the fields, and in the evening the croaking of frogs fills the air.
For riders, the plain offers flat, straight roads, with long views and little traffic away from the main routes. The embankment roads along the rivers are often scenic, though some are restricted to cyclists and pedestrians. Fuel and food are available in Jōsō and the surrounding towns. As a photo stop, the paddies with Mount Tsukuba in the background are lovely, especially at sunrise or sunset.
- Scenic stretch near Noda
scenic
Noda is a city in the north-west of Chiba prefecture, between the Edo and Tone rivers, and it smells, faintly, of soy sauce. For more than three centuries, Noda has been one of the main centres of soy sauce brewing in Japan, and it is the home of Kikkoman, whose origins lie in the brewing families of the town. The company's museum offers tours where you can learn about the brewing process and taste the results.
The rivers were the key to Noda's success. The Edo river linked the town with Edo, now Tokyo, and the boats that carried soy sauce down the river to the capital made the brewers rich. The Tone, Japan's largest river by drainage basin, flows to the north, and the land between the rivers is flat and fertile, with fields, woods and residential areas.
The riding around Noda is flat and easy, with roads following the rivers and crossing the plain. The embankments along the Edo river offer long, open views, and the area around the confluence of the rivers, at Sekiyado, has a reconstructed castle tower housing a museum. Traffic can be heavy on the main roads, especially Route 16, the ring road around Tokyo, but the minor roads are quieter.
As a scenic stretch, Noda offers a glimpse of the quieter side of the Kanto plain, with rivers, fields and old breweries. Fuel and food are plentiful. Soy sauce soft-serve ice cream is a local curiosity worth trying.
- Near Kokubunji
finish
Western Tokyo does not look like much from the train, a continuous sprawl of houses and stations, but walk a little and the old landscape shows through. Springs emerge at its foot, feeding small streams like the Nogawa, and some of the paths along them feel almost rural, with bamboo groves, old trees and the sound of running water.
History runs deep here. In the eighth century, Emperor Shōmu ordered a provincial temple, a kokubun-ji, to be built in every province of Japan, and the one for Musashi province stood here, giving the area its name. The foundations of the great temple can still be seen in a park, and a smaller temple continues the tradition nearby. A spring-fed path known as Otakanomichi, meaning the falcon's road because the shoguns once hunted here, leads past a pond and through gardens.
Koganei Park is one of Tokyo's largest, famous for its cherry blossoms in spring and home to the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum, a collection of historic buildings moved from across the city, including farmhouses, shops and a bathhouse. It offers a rare glimpse of the Tokyo that has largely disappeared.
The riding starts once you escape the city. The Okutama ride follows the Tama River west past Ōme into the mountains, where the road winds along gorges to Lake Okutama, a reservoir surrounded by forested peaks. The Myōgi, Karuizawa and Haruna rides go northwest into Gunma, with Mount Myōgi's jagged rocks, the highland resort of Karuizawa and the hairpins up Mount Haruna, made famous by the street-racing manga and anime Initial D. Expect traffic and lights through the suburbs, and use the tolled expressways if time is short.
Fuel, convenience stores and restaurants are everywhere in the area, from ramen shops to family restaurants near the stations. Riding in Tokyo means keeping left, watching for bicycles on the pavements and finding parking, which can be scarce and strictly enforced. In summer the heat and humidity are oppressive, and typhoons can bring heavy rain in late summer and autumn, so spring and late autumn are the most comfortable seasons for riding.
- Back to Myogi Mountain
finish
Hachioji sits where the Tokyo plain finally runs into the hills, a city of well over five hundred thousand people at the foot of the Tama mountains, and the Myogi ride comes back to it as to a front door. In the old days it was a post town on the road to the western provinces, famous for silk, and merchants carried raw silk down the Hachioji road to the ports of Yokohama for export. That trade made the city rich, and the old route is still remembered as the Silk Road of Japan.
The mountain that dominates the skyline is Takao, a modest peak of about six hundred metres with a Buddhist temple, Yakuo-in, on its slopes. The temple is a pilgrimage site and the mountain a favourite weekend hike for Tokyoites, who ride the cable car and eat soba in the shops on the way up. The forest is thick, mixed with cedar, beech and oak, and the Michelin guide once gave Takao three stars, which tells you how many people come.
Hachioji is also a university city and a hub, where the Chuo Expressway, the Ken-O-Do ring route and several national roads meet, so traffic is a feature. Roads out toward Sagamiko and the Kanagawa border climb into forested valleys with decent curves and little commercial traffic, and these are good routes on a weekday morning. Weekend afternoons are crowded with cars heading home, and the evening rush backs up on the main trunk.
The ordinary comforts are all here, with fuel on every main road and cafes, ramen counters and Hachioji's local specialty of ramen with chopped onions on shoyu broth. Spring brings cherry blossom, autumn colours the hills in late November, and summer is humid and loud with cicadas. Winter mornings can bring frost to shaded bends in the mountains, so check conditions. Park and walk the shopping arcades for an hour if there is light left.