Date

2022-12-17, Saturday

Distance

68.58 km biked (3635.01 km in total)

Before leaving Kitakyushu, we spent a good portion of the morning wandering around the shopping arcades near Kokura Station, hunting for decorative manhole covers. Some featured characters from Galaxy Express 999, the spacefaring manga by Leiji Matsumoto (松本零士, 1938 – 2023) who grew up in this very city. For Kitakyushu, these covers are more than street ornaments — they are proud reminders that the city is a manga stronghold, and home to celebrated artists such as Matsumoto. In fact, this project was launched in 2018 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Kitakyushu Sewerage Bureau by mapping out iconic characters from the beloved series across the city. Out of 9 decorated manholes, we managed to spot 4, but a few others were so elusive that we eventually gave up the chase with a sigh.

By the time we pedaled into Fukuoka, the cold had sunk deep into our bones. Shivering, we made a beeline for a steaming bowl of Ichiran Ramen, the Fukuoka-born chain restaurant that made tonkotsu broth famous. Their specialty is a rich, creamy pork-bone soup paired with thin straight noodles. Eating it, however, is a strange ritual: diners sit in little cubicles separated by wooden dividers, food silently delivered through a bamboo curtain. It felt more like an exam stall than a restaurant — comforting for the stomach, but oddly lonely for the soul. Still, nothing warms frozen fingers like that silky tonkotsu broth.

Outside the restaurant, we bumped into a Chinese family. When they spotted our sign announcing our 'Cross-Japan Bike Tour', the father gave us an enthusiastic thumbs up. He mentioned he had seen another long-distance cyclist a few days earlier on the mountain roads, doing a similar circuit around Japan. We laughed it off — surely no one else would be crazy enough to attempt this in the dead of early winter. At the time, we dismissed his words as a kind of traveller’s tall tale … but little did we know, it was a foreshadowing we would come to remember!