Originally Posted by
zze86
We read about the Shimanami Kaido route and really wanted to try that. It looks amazingly awesome. Have you ridden that? Looks like it could be easily ridden in two days with plenty of detours and sight seeing along the way. Probably head to Hiroshima and from there try to hit up as many castles as possible. Would also like to head up to Gunma perfecture for some tofu and go down Mount Haruna (aka Mount Akina for you Initial D fans, lol).
I have ridden Shimani Kaido. It's a beautiful ride and there are lots of possibilities to extend the tour. Shikoku is one of my favorite places to tour in Japan. The coast is beautiful there and the central part is about as remote as you can get in Japan (aside from areas of Hokkaido, of course). With ferries you can connect back to Honshu to visit Hiroshima or jump across to Kyushu quite quickly from there. In fact my favorite bike tour in Japan was island hopping around the small islands of Kyushu. Absolutely beautiful.
There's a Japan Rail pass that would allow you to jump around the country easily using high speed trains, but there's also a new ferry pass for the long distance ferries that would be cool (but would eat more of your trip time).
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2018/07/20/travel/new-ferry-pass-offers-alternative-long-distance-travel/#.W1GCfNgzbJM
If you really want to save, there's a ticket called seishin jyuhachi kippu which gets you five twenty-four hour periods on any non shinkansen trains. Last time I bought it it cost right around $100. Using that the two of you could go from Tokyo to Osaka for example for two of your five stamps on the pass. It would take nine hours, and all on local trains, but it's a cool and cheap way to see the countryside and get around. Last time I bought it this ticket cost ¥11,500 and can be used by multiple people, while a single non-reserved seat on the shinkansen from Tokyo to Osaka was about ¥13,500. A week on the JR rail pass is about ¥27,000 for one person last I checked but that includes shinkansen. Time versus money...
*All prices are from memory and a couple years out of date so obviously double-check this yourself.