Saturday morning Bike ride
If you were along for the ride you would have seen the following things and you would know that these pictures don't even come close to the real thing!
(The beginning of the trip...still in the Cho/neighborhood with this beautiful view I had to stop and take a few pictures...I didn't know what beauty was just ahead of us.)

Still climbing up up up for the next hour

Now we're away from the cars and busy roads...wandering through bamboo

Still climbing and feeling good...so much fun!

Lola woke up just in time to get her picture taken. She's such a good sport.Still climbing...
Now which way...
we needed to decide to go left or right. Left would take us back down the mountain and home in about 20 minutes. Right would take us somewhere we'd never been. We went right and saw...this little old Japanese woman harvesting rice,

these fields that have been harvested already.
This sight was so much bigger in real life. You can see the water in the background and a USS Navy ship steaming along. It was breathtaking...we came out of some trees and shade to this beautiful view of Japan.

Right-center you can two black mounds on the water...they are parallel with each other...the one in the foreground is the USS ESSEX and the one in the background is an island.

And then the scenery changed once again...

Coming down this part of the mountain was pretty quick...this picture is looking back up into the mountains we just rode over.

This was the last picture of the ride....the 99 Islands in the distance.

After we came down off the mountain we rode through town a bit more on our way home. I now can say that I love Japan. I've seen the good in it while riding. There's nothing like seeing Japan from your bike.