Will be heading for next bike tour in Japan next week.

12 days of riding and a few days doing the obligatory tourist stuff after the tour.

Flying in to KIX Kansai airport and picking up a Honda ADV150 scooter.

Will update trip report when possible.

Looking forward to your Japan trip report…

__________________
In the end everything will be fine. If its not fine its not the end....

Yep me too, enjoy it

Wayne

__________________
The Balkans
https://new.horizonsunlimited.com/poi_entity/8417

Thanks mates.

Will do!

I'll update the trip report soon.

Just busy with the new bike which is a cheap Yamaha XMAX 250.

Overall route:

Starting from Osaka to:
Hashimoto
Tanabe
Nabari
Nagahama
Fukuchiyama
Tsuyama
Mihara
Matsue
Uradome, Tottori
Fukuchiyama
Osaka

Bike: Honda ADV150 scooter with top box.
Supposed to have heated grips but the bike I used did not have the heated grips which I dearly wished I had later on!

Total distance: almost 2,000kms
Date: departed home BKI on 24th October, layover at CAN Guangzhou, China for a night. Arrived KIX Kansai on 25th October.
Started bike tour on 26th October and returned bike on 7th November 2024. 12 days of touring on the little Honda ADV150.
Left Osaka on 11th November and layover at CAN Guangzhou again. Arrived home BKI on 12th November 2024.

I was in logistics in my previous life so I like to plan and have a route of my intended overnight stay, POI's I would like to visit, accommodation for the night.

I save all my routes in Google maps and then email it to myself prior to flying to KIX Kansai Osaka. Every evening I retrieve the emails with my next day's route.

I tick avoid highways and tolls so that I can take the back roads. It's a longer ride to my destination but I wanted to ride slow to "smell the roses". I am also averse to large crowds.

I have always wanted to visit Hiroshima for it's historical significance in WW2 as I am into military history. But I was cautioned that Hiroshima would be crowded so I did not go to Hiroshima city itself which is a pity.
My objective was to see the countryside of Japan in smaller cities and enjoy the food, culture and ride.

I was stationed in Moriguchi city, Osaka for about 2 to 3 weeks about 30 odd years ago so this trip to Osaka will bring back fond memories of my youth.

24th October

Flight on time from BKI Kota Kinabalu to CAN Guangzhou airport.
Flew on CZ Airline (China Southern Air) and it's actually decent.
The airline said it would provide free accommodation for the layover on a twin sharing basis.

Why refuse free accommodation even though it is twin sharing? It's only for a few hours and good for a shower, meal and some sleep. LOL

Arrived the hotel around midnight and the hotel offered me a room by myself which was perfect! I think they wanted to avoid the hassle of communicating with me via translator as I don't speak Mandarin.
Had some fried noodles just outside the hotel.

Hotel room at Guangzhou.
Very spacious room.

25th October

Early morning pickup by the shuttle bus at 0600 back to the airport.
Airport is about 15 minutes only.
Flight to KIX Kansai was on time.

Clearing immigration experience: a female officer asked how long I was staying in Japan and I said about 3 weeks. She then asked why I indicated 30 days on the online digital form. I actually chose 30 days as it was the default when I filled in the form online around 6 weeks prior. She wasn't happy about that but I stayed cool and said my son filled it in for me. She looked at my passport again to check my year of birth I guess and saw that I was an old bastard so she stamped my passport.
Make sure you fill in the form exactly with the number of days you will be staying in Japan!

Had some anxiety when my checked bag did not show up at the luggage carousel. But finally it did. Sigh of relief when I saw my bag.

Walked to the Kansai airport train station and found the machine to print my train ticket which I had pre-purchased from Klook for the Haruka Express Limited which goes direct to my stop at Shin Osaka station without changing trains. It's slightly more expensive than using the other trains but it's worth it for the convenience of not changing trains. Try changing trains when you have a wheeled bag of 20kgs, a helmet bag, a carry on duffel bag and using your mobile phone with directions on where to go at the same time!

Upon arrival at Shin Osaka station had some difficulty finding my way out of the train station. Found an English speaking information counter and it was then easy to find my way out.

Used Google maps to walk to my hotel which is about 10 minutes from Shin Osaka station. There were some stairs I had to carry the wheeled bag up and I was wearing my new boots the Forma Terra Evo low. As the boots were new it wasn't comfortable walking around.

Had a nice Japanese beef rice dinner at Yoshinoya followed by some sandwiches at the ubiquitous Family Mart.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshinoya

Retired back early to the hotel to re-pack my bags and riding gear.

I use a wheeled bag for all my clothes/gear and inside I have a Enduristan Tornado 51L when I fly.
I hand carry a smaller waterproof duffle bag on the plane which has my riding jacket and pants and laptop/kindle etc. I remove all the armour so that it is easy to fold the gear. I also have a helmet bag I hand carry. Helmet is a trusty modular HJC RPHA90.

I will then transfer the contents of the wheeled bag to the Enduristan Tornado and duffel bag for touring and leave the wheeled bag at the bike rental shop to be picked up later when I return the bike.
I use ROK straps to secure the 2 bags to the bike and bring my own Quadlock phone mount. I have a Xiaomi phone for navigation which has offline maps downloaded for the country/region I am at.

Normally I just have 1 SIM card on my other phone but bought 2 SIM cards so that even the navigation phone would be able to have data and get updated road conditions. I used Docomo and Softbank mobile networks.

Leaving CAN Guangzhou airport





KIX Kansai airport







Dinner Osaka - Yoshinoya

Good mate, looking forward to the next instalments

Wayne

__________________
The Balkans
https://new.horizonsunlimited.com/poi_entity/8417

26th October

Checked out of R&B Hotel around 0900 and walked to Shin Osaka station and then took the train to Senrioka station. From Senrioka station walked 15 minutes to EZ Moto Kansai.
Left my 2 waterproof bags at the hotel together with the boots.

I wore my running shoes and brought the wheeled bag together with my helmet bag. The wheeled bag was actually empty as I will leave the bag at the bike rental shop.
Once paperwork etc was sorted out I installed the Quadlock mirror mount and then rode back to the hotel which was about 30 minutes away.

The hotel has it's own parking lot so there was space for me to park the bike at the car park and then set up the ROK straps and mounted the 2 bags. Rain gear, portable tyre inflator, tyre repair kit, WP rain gloves, laptop goes to the topbox.

Departed from R&B Hotel around 1130 hrs. Ride to Hashimoto is about 3 hours and Osaka has lots of traffic. Lane filtering is allowed in Japan but I don't see many bikers doing it so I chose not to filter in traffic. With the numerous traffic lights and traffic it also allowed me to view Osaka city in it's hustle and bustle.

Arrived Hashimoto around 1500 hrs and checked in to the hotel. The check in time is 1600hrs but the old man allowed me to check in early.
Went for a late lunch around 1600 hrs.

Check in time in Japan is late, ranging from 1400 to 1700hrs and check out time is 1000 hrs the next morning.

Accommodation in Japan is expensive per se when compared to countries in SEA (South East Asia) and I noticed that the prices rocket up if I wanted to book accommodation the next day.

So, what I did was I booked all my accommodation all the way until I departed Osaka and chose hotels with free cancellation.
That meant my schedule was rather rigid and I had some overlapping hotel bookings on certain days.
Making use of the free cancellation feature of which some hotels allowed up to 1 day before check in and others 3 days before check in allowed me some degree of flexibility for my rest day which I had not decided yet and also in case of rain where I would skip 1 overnight stop at a city.
And I actually did have to skip 1 city due to the rainy weather forecast.
My strategy worked fine and I saved money on the accommodations.
My budget in Japan was no more than 7100Yen or USD$48 per night.

As a side note, I am from Sabah, Malaysia a developing country. USD$48 might be low for folks from Europe or US but it is high especially that I am now retired.

I use Google maps to check out the city I want to stay at and then filter out the hotels by price. I then use Google maps link for the shortlisted hotels to go to the OTA's. I find that this also saves some money.
If I were to go to the OTA's website and then search for the said same hotel it would actually cost more.
I played around using a VPN on my research so that my IP address would be seen as coming from another country.

I used OTA such as Booking, Agoda primarily and a few with Trip.com and Expedia.
And I also discovered that Agoda's exchange rates were unreasonably high. Booking, Trip.com and Expedia were reasonable with their exchange rates. On the average I discovered Agoda charged around 6.5 to 9% extra with their currency conversion.
I am not sure if this is unique to Japan only.
For my upcoming trip to Vietnam in February 2025 I am using Booking.com as my primary and Agoda will be my secondary choice and I factor in Agoda's extra charges if I do decide to book my accommodation with Agoda.

Sidenote - I have always viewed Agoda's reviews as suspicious and trust Booking.com's reviews more.

Osaka to Hashimoto

At R&B Hotel Shin Osaka car park after setting up the bike and ready to go.


Sandwich, Hashimoto.
That was all they had as it was late already.


Hotel 46, Hashimoto




Dinner, Hashimoto
I was still hungry as the sandwiches I had weren't filling.

27October

Hashimoto to Tanabe

ATD 0945, ATA 1400 hrs.
Ride time: 4 hours 15 minutes

Pleasant weather and route was nice & scenic. Lots of tunnel cut through the mountains. Light traffic and temperature was 21 to 26 C.