Well, I wanted to see more of rural Japan so I headed to the bicyle rental shop outside the station at tiny Bizen-Ichinomiya, and headed out on the 15 kilometre Kibi Plain Bicycle Route. It was worth every rotation of the pedals on my undersized, one-speed bike, and went something like this: Quaint road, shrine, canal, rice fields, rice fields, rice fields with a white crane, getting lost, getting redirected by and then having a photo op with a farming couple bundling rice stalks by hand and hanging them to dry, cemetery, temple, rice fields, rice fields, temple complex, rice fields, freeway underpass, getting lost, backtracking, rice fields, quaint hamlet, rice fields, rice fields, horseback riding corral, canal, rice fields with red-headed heron, rice fields with no herons, patch of violets, rice fields, peach orchard, convent with five-storey pagoda, rice fields, town, getting lost, finding the station anyway, then returning my bicycle at a rental shop at Souja train station where they apparently have a reciprocal arrangement with the first cycle shop.
Idyllic bucolicity and pastoralness; a day well spent.
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2 comments:
It looks like you've uncovered the secret to a great adventure: getting turned around a few times! That and a dizzying number of rice fields ;).
rice for dinner?
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