Ikuchi Bridge

The sun was getting low as I approached Ikuchi Bridge on the first day of my walk from Honshu to Shikoku along the Shimanami Kaido.

Connecting Innoshima with Ikuchijima, it is a cable-stayed bridge built in 1991.

The total length is 790 meters with the main span being 490 meters. The two supports are delta shaped.

Once across to Ikuchijima I had to find somewhere to lay my sleeping bag for the night.

Murakami Pirate Castle

It was late afternoon as I crossed over the bridge onto Innoshima Island on the first day of my walk along the Shimanami Kaido. I stepped up my pace as there was somewhere I wanted to visit before it closed for the day.

The Murakami were a clan of samurai who for a long time, until Hideyoshi moved them, controlled the waters of the Inland Sea from a series of bases on the islands.

Called pirates, or a navy, depending on who wrote the history, Innoshima was one of their main bases and there were numerous fortifications on the island, though the current structures are far more grand and substantial than anything that existed back then.

There is a small museum and it is possible for visitors to put on some samurai armour for photo ops.

Innoshima Bridge

If you are cycling or walking the Shimanami Kaido, the road that connects Onomichi in Hiroshima with Imabari on Shikoku, then the first bridge you cross is the Innoshima Bridge connecting Mukaijima Island with Innoshima island.

When it was built in 1983 it was the longest suspension bridge in Asia. The total length is 1,339 meters, and the main span is 770 meters.

All the bridges of the Shimanami Kaido can be used by pedestrians and cyclists, and on the Innoshima Bridge they are carried below the expressway carrying cars.

Though the views are a little obscured by the chain link fence, at around 40 meters above the water the views are still great.

Japanese Pirate Ships

Looking, in some ways, like a viking ship, the draincover for Imabari on the northern tip of Ehime in Shikoku depicts some ships belonging to the Murakami Suigun, sometimes described as a "navy", but more often described as pirates who operated in the Inland Sea between Shikoku and Honshu. On the island of Oshima just off the coasst of Imabari and now a part of Imabari City is a big museum devoted to the Murakami Suigun.

On Innoshima, another island in the Inland Sea, now a part of Onomichi City, Hiroshima, is the Murakami Suigun Castle, a base for the "pirates". The ships have quite a different style.

The town of Miyakubo on Oshima has a depiction of one of the pirates on its draincover. Just like everybody in Japan and Japanese history he is happy and cute. No robbery, murder, pillage or rape for these pirates.