Justin-Klein.com – Life of a Traveling Programmer

Enjoying some fresh air over Matsuyama, Shikoku

I always like to end the semester with a bang. To some, this might mean many consecutive days of drinking and partying. After all, what better way to forget all of that hard-earned knowledge for which you spent so many of your precious hours studying away in the local library/Starbuck’s?

Wait. I do like to celebrate that way. But that’s not what I’m talking about.

What I’m talking about is yet another international vacation…the last before my fourteen months of living in Asia draws to an end.

A car zooms over the bridge in Arashiyama lit up for a wintertime festival.

This time it will be…(spins globe and stops it with index finger)…Korea!

Actually, plans for a trip to Korea have been in the works for some time now, I just didn’t want to mention it until it became official. Now that it is, here’s a snapshot of what my next month will look like:
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A beggar in front of Tokushima Station

I woke up later than I had hoped on the third morning of my big bike trip across Japan. Like the previous day in Kobe, the ride’s tolls on my body were more than apparent. Only this time, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to continue. When I got out of bed my left knee immediately collapsed, and I almost smashed my head on the bunk across the room. I had a huge rash on my upper thigh from the seat that made it painful even to sit in a chair. A few minutes of playing with Google Earth showed that I had covered roughly 220km in the last two days, many of them through some very steep mountains. I think the riding portion of my trip has to come to an end.

Is that anything like Pizza the Hut?

I took a few minutes to compose myself and looked around the room; the first thing I noticed, to be honest, were the electrical outlets. I love staying in hostels – aside from the low price tag, they’re great for making friends and exchanging stories with other experienced travelers. But several problems plague me time and time again. One of them is electrical sockets. Hostel rooms usually have four or more beds, but only one or two outlets. Having just come off of the road, everyone has a camera, cell phone or laptop that they need charged. It quickly turns into a fight for socket time. But not here! This four-bed room had eighteen outlets. It’s a winner in my book.
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A map of my continued route. This more precise plot showed that my actual path from Kyoto to Tarumi (Kobe) covered 106km, not 95km as I thought before.

I awoke at 7am in my hostel just outside of Kobe. After briefly examining the extent to which I had damaged my body by riding there from Kyoto on a run-down shopping bike, I got out my small map book and studied it one last time. The only logical thing to do at this point would be to start the long ride home.

A bus stop on the small rural island of Awaji

But if you look at the map above, you will notice the island of Awaji to my immediate South. I could see the magnificent 6km suspension bridge connecting its Northern end to Honshu, Japan’s main island, right from my room’s window. The similar bridge connecting its other end to the Southern island of Shikoku was the very bridge from which I observed the Naruto Whirlpools during my Mega Trip this summer. I estimated the distance across the island to be 110km, almost exactly as far as I had come from Kyoto to Kobe.

Should I do it? Should I try to ride my bicycle to Shikoku?
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