Night Ride

Left Hagi City at around 7am in the morning today. The previous night, Yoneda-san advised me to take the shorter prefectural road #13 to Tsuwano instead of the longer national highway #9. That proved to be very good advice as it saved me a lot of time and suffering...hahaha.... You see, the route between Hagi and Tsuwano was divided by a mountain. If I were to take the longer route, it would have just meant an extra hour or two spent climbing the mountain with my overweight bike!

Taking one last look at Hagi City before I left for Tsuwano

Shortcut to the town of Tsuwano

I managed to make it to Tsuwano rather early at around 2pm. Referring to my Lonely Planet Japan, I checked into Wakasagi-no-Yado Minshuku. It cost 4,500yen per night but as you can see below, it was a very spacious tatami room with comfortable futons and even my own television. The owners were a very friendly Japanese couple who did their best to make me comfortable.

My tatami room in Wakasagi-no-Yado Minshuku

The town of Tsuwano is a very small one with a population of 6,500. Its primary industry is tourism as visitors from all over Japan come to see Tsuwano castle and Taikodani Inari Shrine. The moat around Tsuwano castle is famous for its Koi. Apparently, in the Shogun era, samurai in Tsuwano castle bred Koi in the moats as emergency food in case they were besieged by their enemies. Anyways, that expected siege never came, so the Koi were never eaten and nowadays there`s supposed to be thousands of Koi in the moats!

There`s also an observatory in nearby Nichihara which is about 10km away from Tsuwano. I wanted to take a look, so since the observatory only opens at night, I decided to take a short nap before starting my sightseeing.

Unfortunately, by the time I woke up it was already 6pm and fast getting dark! The castle was rather far away so I had to give that a miss. Instead, I headed for Taikodani Inari Shrine which was 5 minutes walk from my accomodation. Taikodani Inari Shrine is a large shrine built on the side of the mountain. From the entrance, I had to take a 2 minute hike up a couple flights of steps to reach the actual shrine.

Entrance to Taikodani Inari Shrine

The steps up to the actual shrine

Climbing to the shrine, it gave me a panaromic view of Tsuwano town which was built parallel along the Tsuwano river. After the shrine, it was almost dark, so I grabbed a quick discount bento at the nearby supermarket and started by ride to Nichihara Observatory. Before I left, the owners of the minshuku which I was staying at tried to dissuade me from going and offered to give me a lift there and back, but I stubbornly refused. This was a decision that I I stubbornly refused. This was a decision that I regretted about an hour later!

Initially, the ride towards Nichihara on national highway #9 was rather easy. It was downhill most of the way and the air was cool. The only thing was that it was getting rather dark and there were quite a lot of large trucks passing by the area. Luckily, I had all my lights on so visibility wasn`t that much of a problem.. YET...

As I entered the town of Nichihara, it was totally dark! Being a small town in the countryside, Nichihara did not have much street lighting. Using my Cateye front lamp, I was somehow able to spot the signs pointing towards the Nichihara Observatory. The problem came when I reached the beginning of the road to the observatory. It was completely dark and isolated!

Being an observatory, it was located at the top of a mountain, whereas I was in the town at the foot of the mountain. So, now I had to climb up the narrow isolated mountain road in total darkness! To make matters worse, the temperature had suddenly fallen from 21 degrees celsius when I left Tsuwano to 8 degrees celsius by the time I had reached Nichihara. Totally regretted not heeding the owners advice! hahahaha....

Oh well, since I was there already I had no choice but to proceed right? So I slowly made my way up the mountain. It was 3km to the observatory but the slope was so steep that I kept going in zigzags! By the time I reached the top 30 mins later, I had made up my mind - I shall succumb to the owners` offer and call him to pick me up on the way back! lol...

Reaching the observatory, there were only 2 visitors that night - Myself and another lady who had driven up. As a result, this meant that we had the telescope all to ourselves. The resident astrologist had the huge telescope hooked up to his computer, so we could practically view any constellation or planet we wanted! haha.. he even gave us a running commentary about the stars that we were looking at, but unfortunately, my Japanese astrological vocabulary is very limited so I couldn`t understand half of what he was saying! hahahaha....

All　in all, despite the gruelling ride up the mountain to the observatory, the wonderful starscapes that I managed to catch with the Nichihara telescope made it all worthwhile! Next time, I`ll think twice before riding up a mountain at night in total darkness though!