Tourism to Japan has grown significantly, but this bike trip is definitely on the road less traveled! If you’re looking for a more active holiday and want to see Japan behind the scenes and away from the crowds, you MUST add this to your list! Also, if you love lemons, this is to die for. Lemons galore!

Below I outline my experience biking Setonaikai National Park over 2 days, including tourist sites beforehand in Onomichi and afterwards in Matsuyama.

Note: If you don’t have international data, I highly recommend downloading an e-sim before your trip! While many of the huts have wifi, it’s good to have service in case of emergencies or to ensure your map loads. I use Airalo for my e-sims, which is affordable and is easy to download. Make sure your phone is e-sim compatible!

Check out my video of my experience biking, and read below for more details!

The Route

Japan does an amazing job outlining biking options for tourists. Check out their tourist guide website, and more importantly, their more detailed brochure that outlines every stop you can make on the route.

You’ll see that you can easily extend the route to explore other islands, or even stay an extra night if you are interested!

Map from the tourist guide website with route options

The route that I took was:

Day 1: Onomichi to Setoda (21 miles, 1,500ft elevation gain), 2hr 20min of riding

Day 2: Setoda to Imabari (33.5 miles, 2,000ft elevation gain), 3hr 10min of riding

My 2-day route, red day 1 and blue day 2 (nights in Onomichi, Setoda, and Matsuyama)

How to get to Onomichi & Logistics

From Kyoto, I took the bullet train straight to Onomichi. It took 1.5 hours and cost $60. The bullet train is awesome, but you’ll find it’s pretty expensive and there’s no way to get a discount (even if you book in advance!). The best thing to do is just grab a ticket day of or a day in advance if you have luggage.

Once in Onomichi, you’ll need to do a few things before your bike trip:

Rent a bike. You can decide between an e-bike or a normal bike. I rented a normal bike while my friend rented an e-bike. I will say that the “normal” bikes are great when it’s flat, but they really struggle to go up hills. There’s 3 gears, and many of the hills that we went up to the viewpoints were really steep. So if you’re not an experienced biker, I recommend getting an e-bike and making your life easier! The bike companies do 1-way rentals, so you don’t have to worry about transportation. I rented my bike from HERE for $40/day.
Ship your luggage. One awesome thing about Japan is the hotels have a luggage shipment option so you don’t need to worry about how to move things around! We worked with our hotel (Hotel Cycle - highly recommend!) to ship our bags directly to Matsuyama, which we would get 2-3 days later. The cost of shipping bags was ~$15/bag, but depends on how large the bag is.

I carried a 15L backpack that had a change of clothes, some toiletries, and water / snacks. I sent everything else onward to my final destination to make biking easier.

This area of Japan is famous for its lemons, and you will find all kinds of lemon things (real fresh lemons, lemon ice cream, lemon drinks, lemon ramen?!!)

Onomichi Sites

Onomichi is a really cute coastal town. They are famous for the Temple Walk, a network of paths connecting 25 temples. They also love cats, with lots of cat souvenirs & even a cat alley!

Senkoji Temple Mountain Ropeway: The first thing we did was jump on the cable car up to Senkoji temple. The top has a viewpoint of the entire city, and you can walk down from there back to town and see multiple shrines. You can definitely walk up as well, but I found the cable car to be 100% worth the ride and really fun! It closes around 5pm, so make sure you save time for this.

Hondori Shopping Street: Walk down the main shopping street for food, souvenirs, and fun shops. The town closes relatively early, so you may see many of the shops close down around 6pm.

For food, try 廻船酒蔵ベッチャーの胃ぶくろ (honestly the best izakaya - small plates / tapa style food - in all of Japan) along Hondori shopping street.

View of Onomichi from the top of Senkoji Temple Mountain Ropeway

Temples walking down from Senkoji Temple Mountain Ropeway back to Onomichi

Day 1 biking

Short ferry from Onomichi to Kaneyoshi: Start off with a quick ferry ride across the channel for just a few dollars. It saves a significant amount of distance, and the ferry ride is fun!

Ferry ride with our bikes! Takes about 10 minutes

Takamiyama Viewpoint: First off, get ready for a gnarly climb up up up to your first viewpoint of the trip. This is the steepest part of the whole trail (maybe rivaled by a viewpoint on day 2!)

Takamiyama viewpoint after a tough climb!

Shimanami Beach: A nice stop to see a sandy beach and relax with a snack

Shiratakiyama Observation Deck: This was the best stop of the whole bike ride for me. Bike up to the car park and start hiking up to the top of the hill. There is a buddhist temple at the top with 1,000 buddhas of all sizes. They say that one of the buddhas are supposed to align to you, so keep an eye out! You can ring the bell at the top. It was such an unexpected place.

Dolce Ice Cream: Ready for your lemon fix? Get some lemon ice cream and other lemon products (did I mention lemon hot sauce earlier?)

Hill of Hope: After arriving in Setoda (and if there’s time before it closes at 5pm!) head over to the local temple which includes Hill of Hope, a huge marble structure at the top of the hill. Don’t bypass the whole temple though - there’s a pretty crazy cave that includes depictions of the pits of hell that’s absolutely worth a walkthrough (and my second highlight of this trip, behind the Shiratakiyama Observation deck)

We stayed at Yubune, which had a perfect onsen that was so relaxing after a day of biking and hiking.

Sunset from a dock in Setoa (with a goat / sheep yelling that sounded like a baby?!)

For food: make sure to try the local specialties Okonomiyaki (a savory pancake with noodles) & lemon ramen (because why not?)

Day 2 biking

Today is more bike-intensive but also less stops than yesterday! Get ready to cruise across more bridges and stop at more viewpoints.

Morning hike to Kojo Temple: Take a walk around town to explore this seaside village! There’s a circular walk up to Kojo Temple where you can get nice sunrise views and learn a about the local history.

Morning walk up to Kojo Temple and view of Setoda

Cyclist Sanctuary: Our first stop was here to check out the views. They have a little cafe and store for snacks.

Maps all over the Shimanami Kaido trail with distance and elevation

Hakata Beach: We stopped at this beach for an early lunch and a walk across the beach. There’s a dolphin farm where you can swim with Dolphins (but in my opinion it didn’t look very sustainable for the dolphins). I had corn ramen for lunch, another local specialty.

Kirosan Observatory Park: And here comes last (and second gnarly) climb of the bike trip. You’ll see tons of signs telling you how far you are, what the grade is (5%, to 10%) with encouraging remarks. The destination is worth it!

Woof, last major climb up, but worth the view!

Itoyama Park: Finally, you’ve made it towards the end! From Kirosan, you’ll bike across the longest bridge yet. Itoyama Park has the view of the Kurushima-Kaikyo Bridge on the other end.

Final (and longest) bridge before ending the bike ride

Train Imabari to Matsuyama: After arriving in Imabari and dropping your bike off (next to the train station, so easy!), we grabbed some snacks from the 7-11 and jumped on the train straight to Matsuyama. There isn’t a ton of sites to see in Imabari, so we decided not to stay the night here.

We finished! End point for the Shimanami Kaido after dropping our bikes off

Matsuyama sites

Once you get to Matsuyama, the citrus focus shifts from lemons to mandarins. You’ll find orange and mandarin flavored everything, even drinks on tap!

Matsuyama Castle: This is one of the oldest and most famous (and original!) castles in all of Japan. Take a ski lift up to the castle for an extra few dollars (totally worth it). The grounds outside the castle are free, while entering the castle costs extra. The castle is worth the visit with lots of history and samurai clothing. The view from the top is probably the best thing to do in Matsuyama.

Dogo Onsen: Japan’s oldest onsen does not disappoint! We stayed the night in this area. Not only can you onsen at all hours of the day, there’s cute tourist markets and places to get your orange food and drinks.

We stayed at Dogo-Kan, which hosts an indoor and outdoor onsen. I went pretty much at all hours of the day. This hotel was super nice. We stayed in a traditional room, where the staff comes and folds out your tatami mats at night. You also can wear traditional robes all around the hotel.

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