How I reached Bishanohana, Honshu’s westernmost point

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(the article below accompanies this video)

Do you have the wanderlust of the true traveler?

If you feel the pull of new places, you do. If you are always dreaming up new spots to go to, crazy reasons to visit strange and unknown destinations, then congratulations; you’re in the club. You’re a wanderer; a true and proud vagabond.

And remember, as restlessness ferments in your bones, that Type 1 diabetes is merely a thing to deal with, not a hindrance to your wanderings.

I recently dreamed up a new excuse to get me out of the house on weekends. It’s fun; it’s unique; there’s a checklist to tick off. And it means I have to travel all over Japan to places I’d never have heard of otherwise.

I want to visit the north, south, east, and west extreme points of each of Japan’s four main islands.

Ignoring all the thousands of smaller islands in Japan, the main ones (Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu) and their four extremities each make up sixteen destinations. (You math wizards will have already picked up on this.) Many of these juts of land are in out-of-the-way places, and most aren’t known by the general Japanese populace. And they’re hard to reach by public transport.

Sound thrilling? I thought so too!

The first destination: Bishanohana

My first destination is the westernmost point of land on Honshu Island. It’s a place called Bishanohana in Yamaguchi Prefecture. I ran it by some Japanese people and nobody had heard of it.

Perfect.

The plan for visiting Bishanohana

Here’s how I spent my two nights and three days on this trip. It’s an unusual route I invented myself that goes Osaka-Shimonoseki-Masuda-Osaka.

Would you enjoy a trip like this?

1. Fly from Osaka (where I live) to Fukuoka, on Kyushu Island
2. Take a train to Shimonoseki, a town back on Honshu Island
3. Find a local bus to a stop called Yoshimoko*
4. Walk about 5km to Bishanohana; gawk and preen
5. Stay in Shimonoseki for the night
6. Take a local train on Day 2 up around the coast of Honshu; stay in Masuda on the second night
7. Continue on local trains back to Osaka on Day 3

* I wasn’t sure about this part; online research (in Japanese, ahem) was vague about this bus stop. Japanese friends didn’t know that the characters 吉母港 were even pronounced “Yoshimoko.”

To Bishanohana itself

In fact, all the steps worked out fine to get to Bishanohana. The low-cost flight to Fukuoka on JetStar was about $100 one way, cheaper and faster than a train. (It’s true that I dislike flying, but in this case it was acceptable.) The train transfers all worked fine too, and I was in Shimonoseki exactly when I planned.

The bus, thankfully, worked out too: a few hours after leaving my house I was indeed at a rural stop called Yoshimoko on the far west coast of Honshu.

A group of senior citizens with visors and mallets played croquet in a nearby park, and they stopped to watch me as I strode down the road. Not a lot of tourists, foreign or otherwise, come this way. Not without their own cars, anyway.

After a few kilometers’ hike (the last part up a steep incline; my BG was 168 and I had a doughnut as I walked) I was there: Bishanohana. And I was the only person there.

Bishanohana turned out to be a curved little piece of land, not ten meters wide, with a calm and attractive sea just below and beyond it. About a kilometer away sat a small island called Futaoijima (蓋井島), and big puffy clouds moved lazily through the sky over it.

I took a time lapse video of an amazing sunset, with oranges and pinks shifting and shining through the churning purple clouds. The sun itself, by now a dark red ball, hit a small peak on the small island and disappeared.

It was quite a show.

Hitching a ride back to town

As I hiked back down the incline in the now-grey dusk, a car pulled up beside me. The driver was a guy who had shown up at Bishanohana to photograph the sunset while I was there. He offered me a ride back to Shimonoseki; it turns out he was staying at Smile Hotel that night, just like me.

We chatted on the one-hour drive back. His name was Hiro, and he was photographer/writer/editor for a travel magazine in northern Kyushu. He’d come to take a photo of the sunset at Bishanohana for the magazine, but was disappointed. (“Why?” I asked incredulously, having just witnessed the same gorgeous sunset as he. “Too cloudy,” he grumbled. You can’t please some people.)

He dropped me off at the front door of the hotel and I checked in. My blood sugar, after all the transportation and walking and hanging around Bishanohana and everything: 100 even!

After a delicious seafood meal in a nearby restaurant, I walked around the quiet, early-closing town a little bit, and then hit the sack.

There’s nothing like the feeling of a successful excursion to a faraway place. Even waking up in the middle of the night with a BG of 53 couldn’t spoil my elation.

Slow, local trains for two days

The next morning I saw the views from a big tower in Shimonoseki called Kaikyo Yume (海峡ゆめ). I was the only customer there, and in fact the girl at the counter said I was the first of the day.

Well ain’t it nice to have your own personal points of interest when you travel.

I used my remaining pre-train time to visit a local temple called Kozanji (功山寺) to get a goshuin stamp in my special booklet. Then it was time for the long Phase Two of this trip.

The little local train I boarded was not heading east towards Osaka, but north along the Japan Sea coast. I specially chose a train that was stopping at every station. Sometimes you want the slow pace of a train to reveal the landscape to you in its own time. And to introduce you to the people getting on and off the train at each tiny little station.

For several hours the few other passengers and I bounced along in our pleasingly rickety train seats, coast on the left and mountains or fields on the right. People did get on and off the train, and we all had a kind of relaxed atmosphere about us. Since being in a hurry is impossible on a train like this, why not just shrug and settle in to gazing at the passing scenery?

My blood sugars, unfortunately, were high. Sitting motionless on a train is fun for the soul, but not great for blood circulation. Mostly over 200, I ate my snack foods and tried to take enough insulin… in my stomach instead of my legs, which would soon have dire consequences.

Overnight in a bowling alley: welcome to Masuda!

Arriving (exactly on time) in the town of Masuda after dark, I found my way to the hotel-cum-lodge I’d reserved and checked in for the night, having a microwave dinner from a nearby Lawson convenience store that made me high again.

Oh screw you diabetes; I’m enjoying this trip.

The lodge I stayed at was like a capsule hotel for hikers (or something). It’s described on Google Maps as “unpretentious hotel with its own bowling alley.” I never saw any bowling alley but my “room” was a kind of berth with a thick curtain and a latch, not an actual door. Showers and bathrooms were down the hall; all I had was a bed, small table, and a TV.

Functional and ever-so-slightly pleasant. Just a place to sleep and then continue on your way. It suits the traveler well, and is only about $40. Despite the loud snoring of the guy in the next cubicle, I slept all right.

Ultra-high BG to finish the trip

The next day I was back on the trains, seeing more of the coast before turning south on a faster express train from Tottori station. And it was here that the BAD THING HAPPENED.

Settling into my seat on the final train of the journey, I innocently checked my finger in my seat and was shocked to see my reading, 418 mg/dL.

Four hundred eighteen!!!

Thoughts ran through my mind:

• Why was it so high? Probably because I’d been doing Humalog injections into my stomach, where they don’t absorb as well.
• What about the lunch I just bought? Forget lunch; I had a bunch of Humalog and ate a small piece of chocolate to tide me over.
• Does this high BG ruin the whole trip? Hellll no!

By the time I was back home in Osaka I was down in the 150s, so I finally ate my lunch bento for dinner and all was well again.

Final thoughts on the Bishanohana trip

This whole Bishanohana-and-train trip was great fun, and totally worth it. Anything that gets you to a place you’ve never seen before is a positive thing. And I was rewarded with some great experiences I’ll always remember:

• The perfect Bishanohana sunset (and good job, iPhone 6s, for the excellent time lapse video of it)
• The ride back to town with Hiro, the merry photographer
• Being the only customer up the tower in Shimonoseki
• Singing with the pigeons. Oh I didn’t mention that did I! It’s in the YouTube video I made about this trip
• Riding along the coast of Honshu and seeing every station and their people
• Feeling a sense of accomplishment for having done something cool and done it right

So, that’s one Japanese extreme point down, fifteen to go. Where to next!?

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