Trip 2 - Day 9 - Oogi Onsen to Yufuin

Lucas and I woke in Oogi onsen, refreshed and ready to explore the awesome riding opportunities between Oogi and Yufuin - our next onsen destination.

Oogi Onsen - traditional and simple.

Outside it was quite cloudy and the wind seemed to be gusting. Richard bowed out, opting to have an easy rest day given the relatively short distance to Yufuin as the crow flies. Our plan was to spend 5 hours riding as many of the good roads in the area as we could, strung end-2-end. You can see the route laid out below.

Our rambling route for today

The roads were taken, yet again from Warren Mallet's Motorcycle Paradise blog and promised some amazing riding. For those in the know, the roads included routes 674, 212, 28,  27, 367, 210, 40, 621, 11, 442, 669 and 30. Richard can rattle off the special names for each of these roads but I'm completely ignorant. All I know is that there are some black ones and some blue ones in this group. Good enough? ;). I do know that route 11 is the Yamanami Highway. So not completely ignorant then.

Before we left our nice hostess produced some Onigiri for us that she had prepared herself. It was a very nice gesture and we dutifully scoffed them before climbing on.

Onigiri from our lovely hostess.

By the time we were on the bikes the sky had cleared. There was still a crisp breeze, but it was slight and the morning promised amazing weather. The breeze was stiff and chill, and whilst the blue sky blazed, I needed all the vents in my jacket and pants closed to keep warm.

Soon the sun got up higher in the sky and the day turned hot. The jacket vents were opened again and, as usual, the riding and the scenery were amazing. I know, I say the same thing every day, but the thing is - Japan really is a motorcycle paradise.

Japanese niceness

Motorcycle paradise.

More Japanese niceness.

About 3pm the weather came in as we rode route 40 up to the pass between Mt Mimata and Mt Kuoiwa. Clouds literally rolled around and over the peaks as we motored towards them, and the wind picked up considerably. A light rain started, and although it was only slight, the temperature dropped to 13 degrees as we reached the pass.

And, ... the clouds come rolling in.

I threw on my rain gear and we sped towards the finish line. We got a little wet in the end, but nothing really compared to day 1. My rain outers got some drops but nothing permeated to my riding suit underneath (phew).

Our onsen hotel in Yufuin

Ensconsed in our onsen hotel we had a so-so dinner (yes it even happens some times in Japan) and then retired to the rotenburo to soak away our cares. The rotenburo was large with a nice mountain view. Cares were indeed duly soaked away.

All ready for a soaking.