Cycling the Shimanami Kaido Route

Editor’s Note: Our guest argonaut cycled the Shimanami Kaido Route, which stretches for 160 kilometers across 6 islands in Japan. He used a GoPro Hero 4 with a head mount and a tripod to film his adventure. It makes us want to do it, too. Jacob also has a lot of other fun adventures in the links below.

The Digital Nomad

I am Jacob Laukaitis, a 21-year-old digital nomad, who’s already been to more than 30 countries in the last 2 years. I enjoy capturing moments from my travels and share them with the world. Here’s my newest one – 160km long bike ride across 6 islands in Japan.

The route that I took is called Shimanami Kaido. It connects the Honshu and Shikoku islands through 6 smaller islands. The smaller islands are connected with massive bridges. The roads are well developed and make riding a bike a breeze. The islands themselves don’t really have special sights or points of interest for tourists but the ride itself was wonderful.

As you can see from the video, the islands are connected with massive bridges. Every time I would have to cross a bridge, I would ride up a steep hill for about 2 kilometers, then cross it and cycle down to the coastline.

The cycling paths are amazing, perfectly suited for bike rides. Speaking of safety, I don’t think there’s a single place in Japan that’s not safe which makes the ride even more enjoyable.

One of the most interesting things I saw along the way must be the massive dinosaur popping out of nowhere. It was quite an unexpected sigh, but an enjoyable one. Another interesting thing I noticed during this adventure was that there were dozens of old people cycling along the path. And the bridges!

It took me 2 full days to finish this route. I was cycling around 8-10 hours a day (stops included).

The planning process for this trip was quite easy. I didn’t use any specific tools or websites, just google some random things like “where to rent a bicycle”, “how to get from Hiroshima to Shimanami Kaido” and so on.

The main reason why I decided to take this route was that I heard it’s one of the most interesting things to do in Japan and I simply could not resist not doing it. My main takeaway from this trip is that you need to get a good bicycle! The one that I rented did not contribute to the trip being pleasant, far from it actually.