We spent our last night on the north coast of Honshu (Japan’s largest island) and camped nearby the fishing village of Hamasaka. It is the low season in Japan, so we had the whole beachfront campsite to ourselves. Next stop was Osaka.
We try to avoid visiting large cities, but with an open invitation from one of the biker friends (we met through a Japanese touring club), it was an opportunity too good to pass up.
Hideki has just returned from a 5 year round the world motorcycle trip on his Honda XR400…

Hideki provided us with plenty of useful touring information (over a bottle of sake), gave us a place to sleep…

… and even fed us some of his delicious home-made Okonomiyaki.

His mum served us a traditional Japanese meal of sushi and sashimi (reserved for special occasions)….

…and on a night out to one of the local watering holes, Kamil even tried a fish eye!!

There was even an opportunity for a quick stop at Osaka airport, where Kamil soaked in the atmosphere and took some good pics of the local air traffic…

Once again, thanks for your hospitality Hideki! We had a great time!!

From Osaka we headed further south into the Wakayama-ken peninsula, with its impressive mountains, pristine forests and rivers. As with most places in Japan, all the roads were paved, so it made for some easy riding. However in true Japanese style, they were extremely narrow at times…

For one of our overnight stops we planned to simply find a quiet (free) campsite by one of the rivers, but just when we were about to set up the tent we noticed a sign indicating we might not be alone, so we decided against it…:)

Many of Japan’s rivers also boast natural hot springs, the hot water bubbling from just underneath the rocks scattered along the banks. This makes for a perfect rest stop after hours of riding…

We also pass some unique cars along the way…

400km further east (and over 8 hours of frustrating riding through endless cities and traffic lights) we now find ourselves at Mt.Fuji.

On our first day we did over 100km, around the lakes of Fuji-san’s base and up to one of it’s base camps (at a height of 2300m). The rest of the way to the summit is a relatively easy 4 hour climb, but we decided to pass on this occasion as waddling behind a couple of hundred elderly Japanese is not our thing