The number of rental bicycles used on Shimanami Kaido’s public bike network passed 170,000 in fiscal year 2025, a new all-time record. As a cyclist who lives right along the route, I’ll walk through how it was reported locally and share my own thoughts on what’s behind the numbers and where things might be heading.
Hi, I’m Yuki Kawai — a touring cyclist based along the Shimanami Kaido. Having cycled this route more than 300 times, I created this site to share practical, experience-based tips for anyone planning a cycling trip here. I hope it helps you make the most of one of Japan’s most beloved cycling destinations.
Rental Bicycle Usage Hits an All-Time High
In April 2026, several Japanese outlets, including the tourism industry site Travel Voice, the national newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun, and regional broadcasters and papers on both the Ehime and Hiroshima sides, reported that Shimanami Kaido’s public rental bicycle network had set a new all-time usage record for fiscal year 2025. (Japan’s fiscal year runs from April to March, so this covers April 2025 through March 2026.) The total came to 173,279 bicycle rentals for the year. Reading the news as someone who lives right along the cycling course, I found it matched what I’d been sensing locally all along—that this really had been a record year for visitors.
In this article, I’d like to look at that news alongside what I notice out on the road every day, and share a few thoughts on how travel on Shimanami Kaido may be changing. Think of it as a small field note from someone who rides this route regularly.
I also want to think through where Shimanami Kaido might be headed from here.
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A Sharp Rise in International Visitors
A Record-Breaking 173,279 Units
In fiscal year 2025, 173,279 rental bicycles were used on Shimanami Kaido, breaking the previous record of 149,740 set in fiscal year 2017 by more than 23,000. Compared with fiscal year 2024’s total of 135,732, that’s an increase of roughly 28% in a single year.
The number of bookings for fiscal year 2025 was 79,502, well below the 173,279 total for bicycle units. I suspect this gap comes down to the fact that a single booking can cover several bikes at once—for groups, couples, families, and school trips. School trips (shugaku ryoko), the multi-day class trips that are a fixture of Japanese education, are said to have increased sharply since the pandemic.
I’ve put together the full rental bicycle usage data going back to 1999, when Shimanami Kaido first opened, on this page:
According to Shimanami Japan, the organization that operates the public rental bicycle network, and the news coverage around this record, ongoing digitalization of bookings and other services has made things more convenient—and that’s cited as one factor behind this year’s growth.
International Visitors Are Driving Much of the Growth
What stands out most to me in these numbers is the surge in inbound (international) usage. International visitors are now estimated to make up roughly 40 to 43% of all users, a significant jump from the previous year. Broken down by area, usage on the Imabari side (Ehime Prefecture) rose 125.3% year over year, and on the Onomichi side (Hiroshima Prefecture) it rose 129.1%. Both gateways to Shimanami Kaido saw substantial growth.
These figures line up closely with what I notice out on the road. I see far more international travelers than I used to, and on some weekdays it can feel like I’m the only Japanese person cycling out there. I’ve put together a closer look at which countries visitors are coming from, roughly how many, and how they tend to ride Shimanami Kaido, on this page:
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Changing Travelers, Changing Travel Styles
Long-Stay Cyclists from Europe, North America, and Australia
One thing I’ve noticed more and more on Shimanami Kaido is international visitors taking their time on rental bicycles, riding at an unhurried pace. I also see cyclists riding their own touring bikes loaded with panniers, clearly on much longer journeys.
As I’ve mentioned in another article, Taiwan remains the largest source of visitors from within Asia, but I’ve also been seeing more travelers from France, the UK, and Germany, as well as from the United States and Australia.
From conversations on the road and from reading social media and reviews, it seems that many international visitors who rent bicycles here, often backpacker-style travelers, are on trips through Japan lasting several weeks to a month. Rather than sticking to temples and shrines, many of them seem to be combining sightseeing with active pursuits like hiking, kayaking, and cycling.
An Adventure That Isn’t Too Packaged
Not long ago, I had a chance to talk with a French couple in their twenties who were setting out from Sunrise Itoyama, the main rental terminal on the Ehime side. One thing they said stuck with me: they liked cycling here precisely because it felt like their own adventure, rather than something too packaged as a tourist attraction.
For travelers from countries where cycling culture already runs deep, the freedom of renting a bike and simply setting off on your own seems to resonate especially well—it’s a kind of travel they can shape actively themselves, rather than simply experience it as a packaged tour.
Rather than working through a set-piece “experience” program, they get to study a map, plan their own route, wander into a village they’ve never heard of, and stop at a café that catches their eye. I think that kind of freedom is really at the heart of what makes cycling Shimanami Kaido appealing.
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Two Reasons Behind the Sharp Increase
Wider Access to Online Booking and Multiple Languages
As the news coverage mentions, digitalization of the rental bicycle system is cited as one factor behind the growth, and I’d agree this has been a major shift. Before 2022, when Shimanami Japan began managing all the rental terminals on both the Ehime and Hiroshima sides under one system, Sunrise Itoyama had no online booking at all. Reservations could only be made by phone.
Having to call and speak Japanese must have been a real barrier for international travelers. Once online booking became available, with English and other languages supported, it became far easier for visitors from anywhere in the world to reserve a bike. It’s not hard to see how that change may have contributed to the rise in international usage.
Official Information and Real Traveler Reviews Reaching a Global Audience
I think the other factor is how much more information now reaches an international audience. Not long ago, searching online in English for cycling information about Shimanami Kaido often turned up very little official information. Improvements in translation tools and cross-language AI search now make it much easier for international visitors to find useful information, even from Japanese-language websites.
Even bigger, I think, is how widely personal accounts now spread through social media and review sites. Looking through reviews written in English, French, and Chinese, I find a lot of genuinely positive impressions of cycling Shimanami Kaido. Hearing from other travelers with a similar style of travel makes it easier to take the leap and try somewhere new. I’d say today’s numbers come from both official promotion and this traveler-to-traveler word of mouth working together.
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Looking Ahead: Room for More Ways to Enjoy Shimanami Kaido
Balancing Domestic and International, Weekday and Weekend Demand
As glad as I am to see rental bicycle use grow, there are a few things worth thinking through. Because of how holidays work in Japan, domestic travelers tend to concentrate around long holiday periods like Golden Week (a cluster of national holidays in late April and early May) and the summer break, as well as ordinary weekends. Meeting that peak demand likely means having more bikes sitting idle on weekdays.
If demand from international visitors, who tend to arrive more evenly across weekdays, can balance out that domestic pattern, it could make the whole system more stable to run. I also have a small worry that as international visitor numbers keep growing, Shimanami Kaido could start to see something like the overtourism that has made destinations such as Kyoto harder for Japanese travelers to enjoy. With Japan’s population continuing to shrink, I think it also matters to keep finding ways to communicate the appeal of Shimanami Kaido to Japanese travelers too.
Room for Riders Who Just Want a Short Ride
The public rental bicycle system is currently priced by the day. That pricing doesn’t fit especially well with lighter use, like wanting to ride across just the Kurushima-Kaikyo Bridge, the longest of the crossings on this route, or go for an easy two-hour ride. Charging the same rate whether someone keeps the bike all day and returns it elsewhere or rides for just thirty minutes doesn’t really suit families or others who just want a brief taste of cycling here.
Compared with international visitors, Japanese travelers tend to have shorter trips, often just two or three days. On a tight schedule that also includes Dogo Onsen (a well-known hot spring town near Matsuyama) and the town of Onomichi, wanting just an hour on Shimanami Kaido is a fairly common need, especially among Japanese travelers. I suspect the current system is priced this way to keep things simple for the many visitors aiming to ride the full Imabari-to-Onomichi route, but there does seem to be room to improve it.
If that’s difficult within the public rental system, bike-share services could be one way to meet that kind of demand. HELLO CYCLING, a nationwide bike-share operator, already has a small presence on Shimanami Kaido, and I think that if bike-share options here were expanded, a wider range of people would be able to enjoy cycling this route.
Running or launching a rental or bike-share service on Shimanami Kaido comes with its own set of challenges. Because so much of the demand is for one-way rides, moving bicycles back across the toll bridges between islands adds real cost, and there are only so many people and businesses able to handle maintenance out on the islands. None of this is simple, but I’d love to see the environment here gradually open up to more ways of enjoying this route.
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A Road Where Everyone Can Ride at Their Own Pace
Welcoming Change While Keeping the Heart of the Journey
Record-breaking rental bicycle numbers, an increasingly international mix of visitors, growing digitalization. The environment around Shimanami Kaido has changed a great deal over the past few years. And yet I feel the heart of this journey hasn’t changed at all: riding at an unhurried pace from island to island through the calm scenery of the Seto Inland Sea. Small farming and fishing villages, roads that hug the coastline, the view from up on a bridge. The reasons I keep riding here—for the scenery—are the same now as they’ve always been.
I hope Shimanami Kaido keeps being a place where everyone, first-time visitors, repeat riders, and travelers from far away, can enjoy this route at their own pace, without ever feeling rushed.
In this article, I’ve gone through the news around Shimanami Kaido’s record rental bicycle numbers, along with my own take on what’s behind them. One thing that hasn’t changed through all this growth is that Shimanami Kaido remains a route where even first-time cyclists can ride with confidence. For more detailed information on cycling here, feel free to explore the page below.