Pt. 3 Biking from Kanazawa (金沢) to Matsumoto (松本) 🚲 Japan Cycling, Touring Ishikawa & Nagano By Bike

Pt. 3 Biking from Kanazawa (金沢) to Matsumoto (松本) 🚲 Japan Cycling, Touring Ishikawa & Nagano By Bike

We’re waking up today in Matsumoto on the 5th day of our summer break bike trip, and it’s a rest day! We’re taking a break from cycling to enjoy some Matsumoto highlights. The name Matsumoto 松本 literally means “base of the pine tree” or “place of the pine”.

It’s a city of almost 250,000 people in Nagano Prefecture, and often seen as a hotspot for hikers seeking a gateway to the north alps. This castle was what I was most excited about seeing since it is one of Japan’s 12 remaining original castles.

The black painted, wooden keep dates from 1595 and is what gives Matsumoto Castle its nickname “Karasujo” or Crow Castle. The brooding, somber color was designed to sow fear in the hearts of any approaching attacker. Unlike Gujo’s castle from earlier in the trip, Matsumoto’s is built on flat land

Which meant it was a nice relaxed walk from our guesthouse to its gates. We arrived shortly after they opened and didn’t need to wait in line. However, by the time we were leaving the sign at the entrance said to expect an hour long wait!

The castle itself takes around 50 minutes to tour. The “moon viewing” room was probably our favorite. We’re having a nice little rest day in Matsumoto We just saw the castle, and now we’re walking to one of the wells, because Matsumoto is known for it’s water.

As we walked we got to drink from many of Matsumoto’s springs, since there are dozens of natural spring water wells throughout the city. We got some coffee and headed to the bike shop CLAMP to pick up a hand pump for any future flat tires.

The shop was in a cool old converted Kura, or storehouse. We spotted some signs of Obon while walking around, which is a summer holiday to honor one’s deceased ancestors. The cucumber horse and eggplant cow represent shouryouma, or spirit horses,

To help ancestors go back and forth between this world and the next. We finished our walk with some ice cream back on Nawate street. Luckily the hardest decision of the day was what flavor to get. This one looks really good. Also this one.

Ok I ended up getting the dried persimmon, the hoshigaki And Zeb got this really fancy salted honey I don’t remember the name. It’s very tasty. The next day we were up before the sun for our Queen Stage.

A “Queen Stage ” in cycling is what you call the hardest day of a multi-day stage race like the Tour de France. Today, we would be going 93 miles (or 150 km) with 10,000 feet of climbing (about 3000m). Ok we’re starting Day 5, it’s the biggest day

I’ll be good *laughs nervously* ha ha As we left the city, Zeb got a small puncture in his tire but luckily it looked like the tubeless fluid was doing its job and starting to seal the hole before too much air escaped.

To leave Matsumoto we took roads that we had driven before, since its one of the only reliable routes to get over the mountains from Nagano to Gifu. There are a lot of tunnels and quite a bit of traffic, but overall it’s not bad if you’re ok riding in traffic.

Originally we had planned to take the Norikura Skyline which is Japan’s highest road, and is closed to traffic but open to pedestrians and bikes However, after reading google reviews from recently, Zeb discovered that it had been closed due a landslide.

The website states that there’s “no plans to reopen in 2023”, but maybe in the future it will be open again. If you’re watching this in the future, let me know in the comments if it reopened again.

This climb is wild, I just got howled at by a bunch of monkeys. The mountain we passed over is called Akandana yama along Route 158. The neighboring Mount Yake is an active volcano and popular hiking destination,

And in many areas along the road you can smell the sulfur and see the steam from the hot water. There’s a tunnel that cuts under the mountain, but unfortunately it’s closed to pedestrians and cyclists. So we had to go up and over. Would be nice

Just before the tunnel route 158 cuts to the right and climbs along a series of over 14 numbered curves. All the switchbacks looked intimidating on the map, but it was a fairly gentle climb with an easy grade and at the time, a lot of monkeys. Kinda scary, but very cool. Wow!

Now we can eat some snacks, and go downhill. Ahh. Feels great There was a great view at the top when we passed into Gifu Prefecture. After this we would have one more climb before the long descent to Takayama. This is the second climb of the day.

And it’s a really pretty wooded area. because most cars go through the tunnels, there’s not really very many cars on the road. It’s really nice. At the top of the second climb we passed the Norikura Skyline on the Gifu side

And we could already see heavy machinery and construction workers at the entrance, so it was probably good that we decided to take our detour. After descending down towards Takayama we rejoined some roads from Day 1 which took us through Hida. 25 miles to go, we’re so close!

From there we went up Route 360 to the Amou Pass. This stretch of the trip was the only poor weather we encountered along the whole week. It was pouring rain for our final 2800 foot climb,

But that was kind of a blessing in disguise since otherwise we would have been in direct sun during the hottest part of the day. I think this is the top Wow! Maybe on a sunny day in the future we can see the view from here

We’ve ridden to Shirakawago before on previous trips, but this was the first time coming up and over from this side on Route 360. Even though it was the middle of August, by the time we reached the guesthouse, we were really excited about a hot shower. We made it!

We stayed at the same guesthouse as last year, and luckily the owner let us check in early and get dry! After showering we enjoyed the guesthouse’s pantry where all the snacks were only 150 yen.

While flipping through this book featuring cafes, I actually found the one we visited on the first day of our trip! dinner time There aren’t too many restaurants open in Shirakawago after 3pm. But we decided on a local yakiniku place to try this region’s famous “Hida Beef”,

We both found to be worth the price even though we’re not big meat eaters usually. The final day was thankfully a pretty straightforward one. Here we go So it’s 6am now, so we slept in for an extra hour

Our route followed a lot of what we rode before, but we cut out the more “adventurous” bits to get home more quickly. First, we started our morning with an early lap around the historic section of Shirakawa-go village If you live in Shirakawa-go, you must have to get up early

Because it was probably only 6:30 in the morning when the town’s speakers kicked to life and started blaring good morning messages. They started playing rajio taisō, or radio exercises, which are warm-up calisthenics that started in the 1920s,

And they’re still sometimes played in the mornings at school PE classes, workplaces, and apparently in rural towns. So that’s what you’ll hear now: All warmed up, we were ready to get out of town and officially start our final day of riding.

We took road 156, which parallels the Tokai Hokuriku expressway and goes through a couple tunnels. As we followed the Sho river valley, we passed through Suganuma & Ainokura villages in Gokayama, which are similar to Shirakawa-go with their Gassho-zukuri buildings.

On our previous ride we didn’t get to stop to see these two, so it was nice to have some new scenery. wow, it’s so cute Unfortunately this time of the year also came with swarms of biting flies

Which were much less pleasant, but kept us from staying too long in one place. We just have one more climb left, to Yuwaku Onsen and it feels really good to be back so close to home We climbed over the Tori dam before descending down into Kanazawa and passing through Yuwaku Onsen.

We’re in Ishikawa! From there, everything was very familiar and we joined the Asanogawa bike path to take us home along the river. This was my biggest week of biking and it was such a confidence boost to finish a trip that intimidated me.

I have a lot of really nice memories from this bike trip Thanks for watching!

This is the final part on our 夏休み (summer break) cycling trip from Kanazawa (金沢) in Ishikawa Prefecture to Matsumoto (松本) in Nagano Prefecture and back again. It was 430 miles (692km) and 33,192 ft (10,117m) total over one week.

This part is about our rest day in Matsumoto, and the final two days of riding – including our longest day to get to Shirakawa-go, over 10,000 feet of climbing in 93 miles! We also get to see Matsumoto Castle (松本城), one of only 12 remaining original castles in Japan.

2:42 – skip to here if you want to get straight to the biking content 🙂
8:16 – start of the final day

🎙️ Want to keep up with the rest of our adventures? We have a podcast! : https://www.ramblingramsbothams.com

Day 6: Matsumoto (松本) to Shirakawa-go (白川郷)
93 miles (150km) + 10,000’ elevation 
Ride and Route info: https://www.strava.com/activities/9663888382

Day 7: Shirakawa-go (白川郷) to Kanazawa (金沢)
54 miles (87km) + 5,000’ elevation 
https://www.strava.com/activities/9669827548

More info about Matsumoto: https://visitmatsumoto.com/en/
Matsumoto Castle: https://www.matsumoto-castle.jp/eng
More info about Shirakawa-go: https://www.vill.shirakawa.lg.jp/en/
More info about Gokayama: https://gokayama-info.jp/en/sightseeingspots/gokayama.php

More videos about Japan Cycling here:
Riding from Kanazawa to Shirakawa-go: https://youtu.be/f-j3oMr7LEE
Kanazawa cherry blossom tour on a mamachari bike: https://youtu.be/Xjn89S64iXE
Biking the Highlands of Japan in Nagano: https://youtu.be/gdDsRhyQUPo?si=laJ0etHK0QaQKRdB
Noto Peninsula Cycling Tour: https://youtu.be/AtgQuM1PLaI

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