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CHAPTER TWELVE
"John, it’s a completely different universe up there! But God, driving back from Ono to Kyoto was like being pushed out of heaven and straight down into hell. Then when I rechecked my road maps I found I hadn’t really gone that far at all.”
John nodded as he refilled up my tiny cup with more warm sake. “Sounds like you really had a great trip.”
I sighed. “Yeah, but now I don’t have any free time left to go anywhere else. And just looking at those roadmaps I can see there are so many places I could go to if I had another week off.”
“Believe me, I know the feeling. I’ll tell you what I can do. I can give you a week off without pay in another six weeks or so. Things at the school usually slow down for a while around the beginning of September.”
“Hey that’d be great! Do you think I can go up to Hokkaido in that time?”
John laughed and shook his head. “No way! The car ferry alone will take you two days each way including the time driving your cub up to and down from Maizuru port on the Sea of Japan. I couldn’t go up there until I started getting two week vacations and still had to run my 250 at almost full speed just to get around half of it. Besides by then it’ll start getting pretty cold up there for driving a bike.”
“Then where can I go?”
“You could drive around southern Shikoku in a week. Take the day car ferry from Kobe to Tokushima on your way down there, then take the night ferry back from Matsuyama. Driving your cub along the southern coast you’ll see some beautiful seascapes in place of great mountain scenery. Lots of fishing villages to stay at with great seafood restaurants. And walking along the docks in the late afternoon when many of the fishing boats come back in with their day’s catch is quite an experience. It’ll still be nice and warm down there too, probably even hot.”
“Sounds good. I’ll check it out. But isn’t there someplace I can go to on weekends in the meantime?”
“Ha, you really are hooked, aren’t you! Well, you can give Yogo-ko a try -- that’s Yogo Lake just north of Lake Biwa. You shouldn’t have too much trouble getting there on your cub on a Saturday if you don’t have classes. There’s a nice kokuminshukusha you can stay at overnight -- if you can get a room, that is. Then you can easily get back to your place in Kyoto on Sunday.”
“What’s a kokuminshukusha?”
“A publicly run minshuku. It’s little more expensive than a regular minshuku but much more reliable and comfortable. The problem is everybody else knows that, too.”
"You haven’t scheduled me for any classes this Saturday. I think I will give it a try.”
During the whole week I scoured my Kansai and Chubu area road maps and discovered I’d have to use Route 367 again part of the way and then a few country roads to get to Route 161 that goes along the west shore of Lake Biwa, by far the largest lake in Japan my guidebooks assured me. But I was a pretty confident I wouldn’t get lost on them this time because they seemed to be the only roads I could drive on in their areas. I also studied and tried to memorize as much as I could of my Kyoto City map to make sure I wasn’t going to waste precious time getting lost inside the city again just trying to find Route 367. I could tell by calculating the distance as I traced my route I was going to need all the time I could get to make it to Yogo Lake before evening.
Early Saturday morning I tossed my saddlebags for my luggage over the carrier, kicked the cub to life and putted off. "We’re on our way again, little buddy!”
Be-Beep!
This time I only got lost once on the way to Route 367 and was able to figure out how to get back on the right road without having to ask anyone for directions. Thank God I’d studied that Kyoto City road map.
The traffic on 367 was heavy with tour busses but this time I was expecting them. I Beeeeppp!!!ed at each one as it tried to crowd me off the narrow road but knew they wouldn’t listen. Sanzenin was swamped with tourists, of course, and some loudspeaker was blasting away with the song "Kyoto Ohara Sanzenin," the popular song from the sixties that had probably put Sanzenin on the tourists’ must-do list for Kyoto.
After putting up into the quiet and almost empty road of the mountains beyond and crossing into Shiga Prefecture where the pot-holed paved road degenerated into the bumpy dirt road, I found I could still make much better time on it than I did the first time.
“Hey little buddy, now that I know you can take rough roads, we can go a lot faster!”
Be-Beep!
The two country roads turned out to be prefectural highways that weren’t as bad as I’d feared and paved most of the way. I was able to make it to Route 161 without getting lost once. Route 161 was paved and wound in and out of beach resort towns and small fishing villages with their houses kind of cramped together.
Fishing villages? On a lake in Japan?
Lake Biwa must be pretty big at that. But I could only catch glimpses of it here and there as Route 161 usually set back from the shore when not going through a town or village where the buildings and houses completely blocked my view.
“Look, that’s a minshuku! Seems kind of nice too. If we stay here next time we’ll save ourselves an hour or so in driving time and be right on Lake Biwa itself!”
Be-Beep!
It wasn’t the only one either. “Hey there are lots of places to stay along the shore! I wonder why John didn’t tell me about them.”
Beeep!
I think I learned when I found the large three story “Kokuminshukusha Yogo-ko”. I got there a lot earlier than I expected which was lucky because I found they only had one room left.
“But I didn’t see any cars parked in your parking lot.”
“That’s because all the other rooms were reserved weeks ago,” the middle-aged male clerk at the reception desk explained.
“My friend was right. You must really be popular.”
The clerk merely kept smiling. “However, I’m afraid your room hasn’t been cleaned for tonight yet. It should be ready in about thirty minutes.”
“Hmm. What can I do until it is?”
“You’re perfectly welcome to wait in our lobby. Or you can drive around Yogo Lake. I’m sure your room will be ready by the time you get back.”
“I think I’ll do that. How’s the road?
“It’s rather narrow, but it’s paved most of the way. I'm sure you won’t have any trouble on that small motorcycle of yours. You can leave your luggage here at the reception if you’d like.”
“Thanks.”
“There’s actually a village on this small lake too, little buddy! But this one’s sure no fishing village.”
Beeep!
All the houses had the real thatched roofs or metal replicas of the farming villages that had become so familiar to me on my other trips and were much more spread out than those in the fishing villages and surrounded by rice paddies. The lake itself was quite pretty in a very small way and there was no traffic in either direction except for the few cars on the one very short stretch along the secondary national highway I’d used to get from Route 161 to Yogo Lake.
“It took us less than half an hour to go around the whole lake!” I exclaimed as we putted into the parking lot of the kokuminshukusha that seemed more appropriate for a hotel than a minshuku.
Be-Beep!
Ditto for the reception desk with its smiling clerk. “Your room is ready now, sir. It’s on the third floor. The elevator is over there. The ofuro bath is available until ten o’clock, and the dining room is open from five o’clock till eight for dinner. Enjoy your stay.”
I went over to the elevator and got on.
How many minshukus have an elevator? Or a third floor?
My room had its own genkan entranceway where I took off my shoes, stepped up onto the wooden stoop, put on the slippers that had been laid out there, took one step and slid open the cardboard fusuma wall panel into my room. It was a nice clean spacious six tatami mat room and a window with a view of the lake. And a TV!
When I slipped off my slippers, stepped into the room and turned it on I discovered to my delight it was a color TV. But why the slippers? Only to take one step?
I stepped back into the genkan and found there was a door at right angle to the fusuma. Asumming it was only a storage closet, I opened it.
My God! Luxuries of luxuries! My own private toilet!
Okay, it was the Japanese squat type but so was the one in my own apartment back in Kyoto and my knees had long since gotten over the weeks of sheer agony trying to get used to squatting over one instead of sitting on it.
After I shut the door I noticed the small wash basin in an alcove attached to the wall opposite the fusuma leading into the room itself.
Might be small but it’s got everything I need including a toothbrush! No long metal communal wash basin for me here.
The tiled ofuro bath for men was large enough for ten people at least and so far as I could tell the adjoining one for women was just as large. And I had it all to myself. When I put the cotton yukata robe back on that my room had come supplied with and walked around to the elevator, I saw the first guests just checking in though it was already after five. Apparently other people didn’t like coming early.
After changing back into my clothes I found myself famished from all the driving and country air and decided I’d eat early. I had the large dining room all to myself, too. When the waitress brought me my suimono clear soup and rice, I noticed this evening’s diner menu written out in elegant Japanese scrip on a scroll of paper in front of me. Stuck between the salt and pepper shakers, small porcelain shoyu soy sauce pitcher and other condiments I didn’t recognize was a small plastic menu of extra items I could order for an additional price. I decided I’d wait and see how filling the included dinner was before ordering anything else.
I’m glad I did. By time the waitress brought me my final dish of two slices of nashi Japanese pear for desert, I was stuffed silly from all the previous dishes of quite good food she’d brought me.
I spent the rest of the evening watching the TV that was no larger than my own but this time all my favorite programs were in color. No maid came to lay down my sleeping futon and other bedding so I had to do it myself. But who’s complaining? After all, this place is a type of minshuku.
Breakfast was buffet style which was fine with me. This time I did not have the dining room to myself and I could see through the window that the parking lot was almost filled, though I’d seen some people already checking out as I came out of the elevator. Other people seemed to like to leave early, too.
I walked around the buffet to see what they had. There were eggs but I could tell they were raw from seeing other people breaking them over their rice. I did find something I’d never seen before but looked like slices of some sort of large roll made out of cooked eggs. I put a few slices on my tray plus some small fried fish and a bowl of miso soup.
The egg something or other turned out to be made from eggs all right but mixed with something else. Tofu? Whatever. It wasn’t nearly as good as good as a regular boiled egg but was an adequate substitute anyway and tasted better when I doused it with shoyu. Same for the miso soup in place of coffee. The fish were okay. At any rate after going back for seconds and thirds, the breakfast was certainly filling enough for the fairly long drive back to Kyoto.
“Are there many other kokuminshukushas like this one?” I asked the younger male clerk who must have the morning shift at the reception as I paid my bill.
Smiling exactly like his older colleague, “Here’s a brochure of all the kokuminshukushas in Japan” and handed it to me.
Quickly glancing at it, there seemed to be kokuminshukushas in almost every one of Japan’s 47 prefectures. Deciding I’d read it more carefully after I got back to my apartment, I slipped it into one of the deep inside pockets of my ski vest. “Can I make a reservation next time if I decide to come here again?”
“Of course you can, sir, and most of our guests do. Here’s our business card with our address and phone number. Simply call us and make a reservation. Though each kokuminshukusha has its own policy; to confirm your reservation most, like us, require you to mail us a 1,000 yen deposit in Postal Yubinkawase certified checks made out to this kokuminshukusha which you can easily get at any post office for a nominal fee. The deposit is refundable if you cancel at least one week before your arrival.”
“Well thanks for the info” I said and grabbed my saddlebags. I didn’t like the deposit bit but could understand that sudden cancelations, or worse, no-shows at a place like this would be an expensive waste of all their many preparations.
As we putted out of the now almost empty parking lot, “John was right, little buddy. Kokuminshukushas definitely are a step above regular minshukus. And they’re only twenty or thirty percent more expensive.”
Be-Beep!
I stopped at that minshuku I had spied near our turnoff to the first prefectural road to take us back to Route 367. The room for only one or two people had no private genkan, was only three mats, had no TV, no private toilet and no wash basin.
But it did have a window with a gorgeous view of Lake Biwa, seemed fairly clean, the Okusan proprietress motherly and a no-deposit reservation policy. And the price was fantastic! As we putted out of the teensy parking lot and back onto Route 161 . . . .
“I think we’ll stay here next time, little buddy. That’ll save us money and several hours in driving time and give us much more time to explore Lake Biwa. What do you think?”
Be-Beep!
Submitted: October 21, 2019
© Copyright 2025 Kenneth Wright. All rights reserved.
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Comments
Bill,
Thanks for the encouraging comment. But I hope you're finding this more that just a travelogue. It is also an historical as Japanese roads have greatly improved since the 70s as have the public pensions, etc. I plan to have an explanation as to just how much things have changed as an afterword. Also, as the story progresses, I hope you will find it is more than just about traveling in Japan on a 50cc cub.
Again, thanks for all your comments. I greatly appreciate them.
Ken
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B Douglas Slack
As always, Ken, your stories are entertaining and informative. Tiny little personal travelogues.
Sun, October 27th, 2019 10:14pmBill