#滋賀県

I’ve been trying to write this blog for years now. The pictures weren’t so great because priority was given to the act of cycling so I somehow never finished the entry. In fact, it’s been almost three years now since I’ve undertaken the bizarre adventure of cycling around lake Biwa on my mamachari bycicle　ママチャリ. A mamachari is quite unsuited for traveling long distances. In fact, it’s designed for short distances inside urban areas, equiped with a basket to store groceries or stuff like that. It has no gear-shift either. That’s why japanese friends are always a bit astonished when I tell the story of how I went around Japans biggest lake in one day on such a bycicle. The whole trip from my apartment in Yamashina 山科区 is about 190km. Three years ago I made the following map after finishing the cruise on July 22nd 2012 :

As always when cycling in Japan, I prepared next to nothing. I originally planned to do the trip in two days, with an overnight-stay at an internet café in or around Nagahama 長浜市 at the eastern shore. I printed some maps at a local convienience store roughly marking the course suggested by google maps, because back then I did not have a smartphone. I took off at exactly 4:00am at my dorm room.

There was one thing I made sure of buying before departure: a battery backlight. There is no legal need to have one in Japan, but I won’t go on a longer trip on not illuminated roads without such a light. It’s just too dangerous. The first thing I did was getting something to eat at Nakau なか卯, so I munched a beef bowl 牛丼　and some nice Karaage 唐揚げ. After that I left Kyôto prefecture 京都府 heading for the neighbouring Shiga prefecture 滋賀県. That’s 10 minutes by bycicle so nothing too exciting yet, but once you cross the border to Shiga you have to climb some mountains to get to Ôtsu 大津市, the capital city of Shiga prefecture and the point where I started my round trip. Around 4:45am I arrived at the lake.

Because I used to live in Yamashina, a rather detached district of Kyôto that is as close to lake Biwa as to the center of Kyôto itself, I’ve been to the lake and to Ôtsu quite a few times. I left Ôtsu as dawn was breaking, wondering how far I may get today.

Shortly after leaving Ôtsu, one encounters a rather strange village. It’s called Ogoto Onsen おごと温泉 and apparently it has been some kind of paradise for dirty business in the 80s. I just leave you with the impressions from the outside, for I did not dare to enter it, concerning the security guys walking around everywhere.

The area has some nice nature, too. However, in general the west side of lake Biwa is a terrible place to cycle. There is just one main road between the lake and the mountains and it tends to get terribly crowded and noisy in some areas. And bycicles are still a rare sight on roads in Japan. Especially if it’s a mamachari.

As i made my way up north I decided to have breakfast at one of lake Biwas more known beaches. Yes, there are actually quite a few nice places where you can go swimming. I arrived at Ômi-Maiko 近江舞子around 6:50am, ready to eat all my choclate pains au chocolat I bought the day before. As there are plenty of vending machines 自動販売機 on the way I did not even bother go bring water or juice. You never really leave civilization around lake Biwa except for a tiny part on the northern tip. More and more clouds appeared and I was just waiting for the rain to pour down on me.

Fortunately, that did not happen. The further I cycled, the more sun I got and when I passed Shirahige shrine 白髭神社, a shrine with a gate 鳥居 in the water similar to Itsukushima shrine 厳島神社 in Hiroshima prefecture (yet much smaller), the clouds were almost gone.

I was on the road for 3,5 hours now. Clouds reappeared and I arrived at Makino area. Around 9am I made another brief break at Makino beach. Before my departure I checked out a camping place there on the web for a possible sleepover but I was way faster than expected. I was now approaching the nothern part of the lake, one that according to experiences on the web was the hardest part of the whole tour.

Just had to include the Obama joke!

Well, the web was right. I had to climb some minor mountains - something that is not as easy as it sounds without a gear shift - and go through some nasty, noise and stinking tunnels that were clearly not built for bycicles to pass through. Before the tunnels I bought some ice cream at the Makino Ossakatôge service area 道の駅マキノ追坂峠 and in between the valleys I had some great views of the very rural northern part of lake Biwa.

The view from the service area is great, by the way. The tunnels aren’t.

If this isn’t feeling like Satoyama 里山, nothing is.

This part was rather pleasent.

The “house-tunnel” was especially weired. Anyway, after passing Shiotsu 塩津I arrived on the northeastern shore of the lake that has some nice swamp-like areas and a lot of birds and other animals to see. It was now around 11:30 and the weather got really good. It was also the end of July, so it got hot, too.

I arrived at Nagahama 長浜市 eat 12:30pm not really knowing what to do now. I originally planned to stay the night at an internet café at Nagahama but I arrived way before schedule. Additionally, I’ve already been to Nagahama two times and knew all the sights. So I decided to have lunch at the rebuilt castle 長浜城 and… to go on and see how far I can get.

The next few hours passed quickly. I left Nagahama behind me, went through Hikone 彦根市 (once again I’ve already been there and seen the sights, so I just went through) and somehow got a bit lost in the rice fields of Moriyama 守山市. I was so focused on cycling, that I took almost no pictures.

Around 16:00 I arrived in Kusatsu 草津市 and I now realized that I could already see Ôtsu on the other shore. The familiar shape of Mt. Hiei 比叡山 appeared and the Great Biwa Bridge 琵琶湖大橋was not far away. That was when I decided to give it a go and make the return trip to Kyôto on the same day. No way I would pay for an overnight stay with home in sight.

This is the Biwako Ôhashi and the creepy ferris wheel I featured in an earlier entry.

The prince hotel of Ôtsu (the big tower in the middle) was now in full sight. Oh yeah and I got burned a bit. The weather was going full-summer. I still liked it, although I had to stop more often at the occasional convinience store to buy ice-cream. I was on the road for 12 hours now, but with the sillhouette of Ôtsu in plain sight, I could not stop anymore. But let me show you a selfie of the sun-burned sweat-drenched but extremely happy foreigner that hit the road in Kusatsu that day.

I arrived at Ôtsus “Würzburg-Haus” at 17:30 and this was the last picture I took that day. Ôtsu and the german city of Würzburg are sister-cities, so they built a german restaurant on the lakeside. I never went in there, but it is quite a sight from the outside. I arrived at my dormitory around 18:00 and don’t remember anything from there on.

All in all it took me around 14 hours to cover roughly 190km. Looking back at it today, I still can’t believe I did this with a mamachari. It sounds like such an awful idea to me now. But it surely was on of the trips in Japan that left the biggest impression on me. I still love lake Biwa and Shiga prefecture in general and I want to redo the tour with my girl one day. Maybe on better bycicles and with more stops, but anyway.

That’s the story of how I did the famous 琵琶湖一周 in one day. On a Mamachari.