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Three Months In Japan

I get emotional looking at this picture, taken on the last morning of my trip

In the fall of 2025 I had my longest bike trip till now, and probably ever. I had taken three months off from work, and I wanted to use does months to cycle in Japan, again. The plan was never to cycle from the northern most point to the southern most point, since I wanted to explore more than simply racing to the end. I’m not going to lie and say that I didn’t try to make my plan go from the north to the south, but I would have needed at least one more month (if not two) if I had aimed to cover everything I wanted to see in one go. So instead I prioritized a little bit of everything, Hokkaido in the north, the Japanese alps, and Sado in the middle, Yakushima island and Nagasaki in the south. To make it easier for myself I’ve split the travel journaling into three parts, one for Hokkaido, one for Honshu, and the last part about my return to Kyushu.

Got time to do half of the Biwako circle, too many cars for my taste

As a big fan of planning, I used the time from the end of my last trip in Kyushu in 2024 to plan this three month trip, and I’m quite happy that all of that planning paid off! I managed to follow my plan for the most part, and it made it easier to make a plan B on the road, when the main plan failed.

I have also moved away from Instagram, so I made my own little blog for my family and friends to follow while I was out riding. It’s written in Norwegian, so I’ll do a short English recap for each day on this site. If you want to see more pictures, you need to head over to my plog.

When the forecast said rain, I always tried to find some shelter for my tent

This post is just a summary of my three months in Japan, but instead of adding my gear for in each of the other three posts, I’ve written about it down below. The gear didn’t change while I traveled, some of the gear got moved around, but other than that I’m pretty pleased with my setup for these kinds of trips.

  • Hokkdaio
  • Honshu (To be written)
  • Kyushi (To be written)

How to travel with a bike

For all my trips I bring my own bike, and this time I traveled between places in Japan - I even took a flight down to Yakushima from Tokyo. To avoid bringing the bike on the plane I shipped it beforehand, together with my gear.

My bike and gear was safely transported to my hotel at Yakushima

When traveling back to the mainland from Yakushima, and when I took the train from Kobe to Matsue, I needed to pack down my bag into my rinko bag (輪行袋). This is standard for all transport if you need to bring your bike “inside”. You can roll your bike onto the the car ferries for a price, or pack it down usually for free.

Not the easiest load to carry, but you get used to it

My gear

Surprisingly not that much gear needed for three months

Since my first bikepacking trip in 2016, my setup has evolved quite a bit. The gear has been refined, and I’m quite happy with my setup. For a trip where I don’t need to cook and where it won’t be too cold, I’ve got everything I need, plus (a little bit) room to spare.

For this three month trip I upgraded my tent from a 2p MSR Hubba Bubba, to a 1p Big Agnes Copper Spare. Originally it was to save grams, but it turns out that it’s volume that counts when you want to pack small. I can always get more fit to carry more weight, but I don’t want bigger bags. The second thing to get an upgrade was my sleeping bag, I went for the Sea To Summit Spark Pro, it’s filled with down, and packs pretty small. It can also be opened all the way, and worn like a dress, so it was perfect to sit in my chair and read a book on the cold November nights in Kyushu.

I bought cute accessories from all the different places I stopped at

Afterthoughts about my gear

I had some luxury gear like a chair, a “big” pillow, and a drone. Neither of them where necessary, and I’m not sure what I’m going to use the footage of the drone for in hindsight. That’s always the problem when I film, but I’ll try to make a little compilation when I get time.

The chair was nice to have, but maybe not absolutely necessary. It was a bit hard to find a place to pack it, I ended up having the skeleton in the frame bag, and the fabric in one of the fork bags. There was almost always a place to sit when I camped, but it let me avoid sitting on cold concrete. Still don’t know what I will do on my next camping trip, but I’ll probably bring it.

Easy access to a towel is always nice

As for the drone I need to find a better place to store it, I found that having it in the frame bag made it a hassle to use. In the frame bag all of my stuff was kinda stacked on top of it, and the only place for the drone was at the bottom. So if I had done some shopping, whatever I bought was then placed on top of the drone, making it a hassle to repack every time I wanted to film.

The “big” Exped Deepsleep pillow (size M) was the perfect pillow for my trip. Even though it’s a lot bigger than my inflatable Exped Ultra Pillow, it’s so much more comfortable. I had the space for it in my seat post bag, and it was so worth it! Getting the right amount of air in an inflatable pillow is too much hassle, when you can just use a “normal” pillow instead. In the image showing my gear, you can see that the pillow is the size of the uncompressed sleeping bag.

One of the few pictures I have of my bike with the accessories

Seat post bag

  • Sleeping mat
  • Tent (Big Agnes Copper Spur 1 person)
  • Sleeping bag (Sea To Summit Spark Pro)
  • Rain pants attached to the outside
  • Gloves and long leggings attached to the other side

Full frame bag

  • Snacks
  • Drone and controller
  • Pedaled Yama Trail wind breaker
  • Helinox Chair Zero

Top tube pack

  • Electronics
  • Cables
  • Insta360 Go S3 camera

Rando handle bar bag

  • Credit card
  • Sleeping mask and earplugs for sleeping
  • Souvenirs
  • Battery bank
  • First aid kit
  • Tissue paper
  • Spectacle pouch (I wear glasses)
  • Nook ebookreader
  • Headlamp

Right and left fork bag

  • Light hiking shoes on top in a waterproof bag
  • Cycling rain jacket
  • Fleece
  • One pair of Black Diamond climbing pants (perfect for bikepacking, they are comfortable and look stylish)
  • Change of clothes
    • Two pairs of wool boxers
    • One pair of Pedaled wool socks
    • One Northern Playground grandfather shirt
    • One Northern Playground hooded shirt

Snack pack

  • Snacks

Hydration backpack

  • Water
  • Passport
  • Toilet paper

Cycling kit

  • Pedaled wool jersey
  • Two pairs of cargo bibs, 7mesh and POC
  • Two pairs of Pedaled wool bike socks
  • Quoc Gran Tourer Black Gum bike shoes

The bike

  • Fara Gravel Adventure 2020