Date

2022-12-20, Tuesday

Distance

83.47 km biked (3857.76 km in total)

Morning began with another gift: homemade radish cakes from Caiyin-san, soft and sweet with the richness only winter daikon provides. Then the farewells. Outside her little pharmacy — shelves lined with jars of Chinese traditional medicine — she stood waving as we set off. Her husband, who works at the American naval base in Sasebo’s city centre, had already left for duty, so it was just her sending us on our way. The warmth of her solstice feast still lingered in our stomachs, and the easy conversation in Mandarin still echoed in our minds. We left Kosaza with full bellies, grateful hearts and the rare comfort from this unexpected encounter at Japan’s farthest western edge.

Our first stop was the town centre of Kosaza. At the tourism office, visitors can request an official certificate testifying their arrival at Japan’s westernmost point. We laughed as we picked it up: twice in Hokkaido we had ignored similar certificates, deeming them unimportant scraps of paper. What mattered was the journey itself, not official stamps of proof. Still, this time we accepted one, amused at the formality — and at how bureaucratically neat Japan likes to make even its extremities.

From there we pedaled into Sasebo, a city of slopes and narrow backstreets. Houses clung to the hillsides, stacked almost precariously one atop another, while down by the waterfront stood colossal cranes and gantries for shipbuilding. From the alley where we paused to catch our breath, the scene below was striking: not small fishing boats, but hulking vessels and warships, a reminder that Sasebo is less a fishing harbour and more a naval city.

Leaving Sasebo behind, the road carrying us toward the Sotome region, a land once home to Japan's 'hidden Christians', bent inland. We found ourselves climbing through hills, one after another, past scattered clusters of houses clinging to mountain ridges. Here the density of life thinned; quiet mountain villages dotted the route. After several climbs, the road wound back to the coast, threading across bridges that leapt from inlet to inlet, peninsula to peninsula. Each crossing revealed new layers of ridges fading into the distance, the terrain rugged and unrelenting.

Then came the climb — not just a hill, but a long, grinding ascent that seemed to rise forever. The road wound up through winter woods. Each turn revealed another ramp rising steeper still. Our panniers dragged behind us like anchors, and even standing on the pedals, progress was slow, agonising. My legs burned, lungs heaved, and sweat froze almost as soon as it formed under the cutting wind. Somewhere near the summit, silence pressed in, broken only by the rasp of our breathing and the squeak of chains straining under effort.

By the time we reached the seaside again, night had already fallen. The coastal road was a rollercoaster of ridges, a relentless series of short ascents and plunges. The ocean was just beside us, yet shrouded in darkness, invisible but palpably near. That unseen presence lent a thriller’s tension to our ride: we knew the sea was there, crashing and heaving, but could only sense it by the damp wind in our faces.

Finally, exhausted, we reached the roadside station at Higashishitsu, Sotome. It stood beside the Endo Shusaku Literary Museum, which we planned to visit the following morning. My travel companion was too tired to wait for the tent to be set up and fell asleep almost instantly on the bench inside the station, while I busied myself with photos and scribbling notes for the diary in the light. Inside the station, I picked up pamphlets about the 'Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki Region.' To my surprise, I learned they had been inscribed as an UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2018 — recognition of centuries of quiet resilience and faith lived in secrecy along these remote coasts.

Here fate played its hand again: who should we bump into but Tora-san — the third time! Every farewell seemed final, and yet somehow our routes kept converging in Nagasaki prefecture for no less than 4 times in the end. We joked that perhaps the god(s) of travel had bound our itineraries together!

The full take — 19 more photographs from this day