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The original was posted on /r/japantravel by /u/TurkeyDinner on 2024-11-25 00:42:46+00:00.

The Shimanami Kaido is a popular bicycle route in Japan that runs around 72km (45 miles), crossing 6 islands between Onimichi on Honshu and Imabari on Shikoku. I did the Shimanami Kaido a month ago, and wanted to share some useful information on planning for it to make it easier for others to plan. I benefited from others sharing their experiences in this forum, so wanted to give back. Numbered footnotes are used; they appear in square brackets.

Some context: I did this trip with a partner. We are from the USA and were willing to spend a bit more money for a more comfortable trip. By using takuhaibin to ship our luggage to our post-SK lodging, we carried only toiletries, sundries, one change of clothes, and drinks during our ride.

We departed from Imabari on a Thursday in October 2024, and did the SK over two days, spending a night in lodging midway through the route.

Why did you decide to do the SK when you did?

When I first started planning this trip, I wanted to try to keep our plans flexible by only booking lodging a couple of days before a favorable weather forecast. However, the inventories of rooms at lodging I was considering were disappearing even before we even departed for Japan. So I booked lodging more than a week before we planned to do the SK, hoping that the weather forecast would change from a 60% of rain.

Once we were in Japan, the weather forecast for the target days changed every day, going from rainy to sunny to cloudy with showers. Worse yet, there was often a wide disagreement about the forecast across different services. I thus would say unless you have flexibility to book lodging (and perhaps a bicycle rental) one or two days before, you cannot rely on weather forecasts, you’re just going to have to hope you get lucky.

We lucked out. Our days were dry, and had a significant amount of cloud cover, making our ride quite pleasant. But had we started two days earlier or two days later, we would have gotten very wet.

Why start from Imabari?

Onimichi appears to be the more common starting point. We started from Imabari because: 

1. The longer ascents along the SK are nearer Imabari, and we wanted to get them out of the way earlier. You can get an idea of what to expect in elevation changes by seeing Cyclo No Ie [1]'s elevation map (found just under the heading, “Is there a lot of slope?”).
2. The winds are more likely to be in your favor if you head toward Onimichi, per Cyclo No Ie (found in the section “Should I start from Onomichi or Imabari?”).
3. Onimichi was a more convenient destination to continue on our trip. Since it is on Honshu, you can get to a lot of places of interest relatively quickly after finishing. After finishing, we took a train to Osaka. We wouldn’t have tried that if we had finished in Imabari.
4. Going from Hiroshima to Imabari was feasible in a reasonable about of time (< 5 hours). If you plan to do the SK and plan to visit Hiroshima, you might appreciate my post about going from Hiroshima to Matsuyama to Imabari.

From where in Imabari should I rent a bike?

Cyclo No Ie’s webpage [1] ably answers this question. They list five services in Imabari. The most convenient services are the public service and Giant Store Imabari, as both of them allow you pick up a bike in Imabari and return it in Onimichi.

The public service is by far the most convenient for renters. They are open every day of the week (ignoring holidays). They have 9 locations across the SK, including one right by the JR Imabari Station and one a short walk from the JR Onimichi Station. They also have a wide variety of bikes, including two types with electrical assistance: the battery-assist (aka pedal-assist) bike and an e-bike. The former gives your pedaling a boost, while the latter propels you without pedaling.

Notes on the Shimanami Japan public bike rental service

• It isn’t consistent on the name it uses in English. The website says the organization is called “Shimanami Japan” and calls the service “Shimanami Rental Cycle”. Signs at their locations say “Shimanami Rental Bike”. Its paperwork says “Shinanami Rent-a-Cycle”.
• Its website does a so-so job promoting the SK. I found a lot more useful information in blogs and on Reddit.
• Website updates are irregular. They had an announcement posted on 2024-04-03 stating that starting 2024-07-01 you could rent battery-assist bikes for more than one day and would be able to drop off e-bikes at any of their 10 locations. However, the corresponding parts of their website were not updated to reflect those changes at the time.
• You can indeed rent the battery-assist bikes for more than one day.
• Its website could make it more obvious about how to a reserve a bike from it. On its website, click on the dark pink floating modal button, featuring a bicycle drawing and the words, “Bicycle Reservation” or just click this link to go there directly. Only human-powered bikes can be reserved. Powered bikes are first-come, first-served.
• They will provide assistance for bicycle malfunctions from 09:00 to 17:00. For situations that the public service cannot or will not handle, I suggest you keep the phone number for Wakka [2]'s cycling support handy.
• There are two locations in Imabari. One is right by the JR train station (#10 aka the i.i.imbari! Cycle Station). The other (#9 aka the Chuo Rental location aka Sunrise Itoyama) is near the Imabari foot of the Kurushima Kaikyō Bridge. #10 has only human-powered bikes, #9 also offers powered bikes. It is roughly a 15-minute drive from the JR Station but is not served well by public transportation. It costs roughly 2,600 yen to take a taxi there from the station. If you want to attempt to get to #9 using public transportation, read my Hiroshima to Matusyama to Imabari post. Since we wanted to use a battery-assist bike, we took a taxi there. The taxi driver did not recognize “Sunrise Itoyama”, but recognized where we wanted to go after I shared the location via my maps app on my phone.

What was it like to use the battery-assist bike from the public service?

• Here’s apicture of the battery-assist bike. It is best described as a mamachari, with elevated handlebars, a basket in front, and a rack on the rear.
• The battery assist is simple to use. One power button and one light button. Hold the power button for a few seconds to turn on, and tap the power button to cycle among three levels of assistance. The battery appears to regenerate on downhills.
• The service offers battery swaps at their midway locations #s 4, 5, and 6, on the islands of Onishima and Ikuchiima.
• I was conservative with its use at first, because I was concerned about using up the battery, only turning it on whenever an incline started to challenge me. However, I arrived from Imabari to their Omishima location (#6) with more than 50% of the battery left. They swapped out the battery. The next day, being much less conservative in its use, I arrived at their Onimichi location with more than 60% of the battery left. So if you’re doing the SK over two days, you very likely can leave on the battery assist your entire ride without fear of using up the battery.
• The battery assist was very helpful with the longest/steepest climbs, making them much less of a chore. We took the popular detour to go up to the Kirosan Observatory on Oshima, which is the highest point on the SK islands and we cycled up until the last half-kilometer. Using this bike is kind of like a cheat code. It allowed us to focus on what we wanted to do, instead of how we felt while doing it.
• Before the trip, I bought a mount (KOM Cycling CM06) so I could record video on a GoPro. The handlebar was too thin to use the mount. I realized on the second day of our trip that I could wrap a bunch of Band-Aids around the handlebar to make a thicker area and successfully used the mount.
• As many people advise when riding the SK, padded bicycle shorts will save your undercarriage. This is true for the battery-assist bike. I used this advice, and only experienced modest discomfort toward the end of a day’s ride.

This post has gotten a bit long, so I’ll end here and write another post, about the route we took from Imabari to Onimichi and useful tips to know along the way.

Footnotes

[1] Along with providing an informative website about the SK, Cyclo No Ie offers lodging just steps away from the JR train station in Imabari. They also sell a [detailed map of the Shimanami Ka…

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