BOAT RACE Biwako: The Quiet, Earnest Speed Sport Next to Our Lakeside Hotel

This trip was originally all about Lake Biwa — Japan's largest lake, so vast it feels like the sea. We stayed at the Otsu Prince Hotel right on the shore, where the whole view out the window is blue. What we didn't expect was that right next door sat a boat-racing stadium, 'BOAT RACE Biwako' — so one morning, we wandered in.

What is kyotei (boat racing)?

Kyotei (also called 'boat race' in Japan) is one of the country's public-managed sports — like horse racing, keirin cycling and auto racing, it's a legal, bettable sporting event. There are 24 boat-race stadiums across Japan, and Biwako sits right on Lake Biwa, one of the few held on a freshwater lake. Admission is just 100 yen — cheap enough to feel like a token gesture.

Like horse racing, but much quieter

The atmosphere is a lot like a racecourse: odds scrolling across the big screen, fans' support banners lining the pit, a scattering of regulars in the stands watching the water. But honestly, it was far quieter than horse racing — you could tell boat racing isn't a mainstream pastime. Most of the time it was calm, just the sound of engines cutting across the lake.

The young people striving on this path

Inside, I came across a recruitment board for becoming a boat racer. To turn pro, you first have to pass into the racers' training school (in Fukuoka) and clear tough physical and eyesight requirements, with a very low acceptance rate. Reading it, I felt a quiet pang — even though boat racing is a relatively niche sport, there are still plenty of young people willing to pour themselves into this path.
That moved me, because the things I love aren't exactly mainstream either, yet I keep quietly working at them. Seeing others do the same, I suddenly felt a little less alone.

You only realise how fast it is in person

Videos don't do it justice, but seeing it live, the speed is genuinely startling — the boats scream past just above the water at up to around 80 km/h, throwing up huge sheets of spray in the turns. And it's very much a test of skill: with the same lanes and similar engines, how you position and cut the inside of a turn all but decides the race. It's a sport that leans heavily on the racer's technique.

The Story of This Place

First, the backstory of the venue itself. BOAT RACE Biwako sits on the lakeshore at Chagasaki in Otsu City, at the southern tip of Lake Biwa. It opened in 1952 (Showa 27) under the official name "Lake Biwa Motorboat Racecourse," becoming the nation's second officially sanctioned boat-race course after the Tsu course in Mie Prefecture. It also holds two unusual distinctions: of Japan's 24 boat-race venues, it is the only one whose operating authority is a prefecture (the Shiga Prefectural Government)—most others are run by municipal governments—and its racing surface is Lake Biwa itself, Japan's largest lake. That makes it freshwater, a genuine rarity among courses that mostly race on seawater or brackish water. Here's a lesser-known fact, too: Japan's very first training institute for racers and referees—the Lake Biwa International Motorboat Racer and Referee Training Center—was located right here (it operated until October 1956, Showa 31). In a real sense, the history of training Japan's boat racers began on these very waters.

Now for a few tales handed down in this same Otsu lakeland—and to be clear, these are legends, not documented history. As the story goes, on the \"Seta no Karahashi\" bridge just a few kilometers from the racecourse, at the point where Lake Biwa drains out, a great serpent once lay stretched across the span. The warrior Tawara Toda (Fujiwara no Hidesato) strode fearlessly over it, and that night the serpent revealed its true form as the dragon deity of Lake Biwa, who begged him to slay a giant centipede coiled seven and a half times around Mount Mikami. Toda felled the monster with a single arrow, was feasted in the dragon palace, and was rewarded with a \"rice bale that never empties.\" This tradition is documented in the historical encyclopedia of the Otsu City Museum of History; by the east bank of the Seta River, the Ryuogu-Hidesato Shrine and the \"Centipede Memorial Hall\" at Unju-ji Temple survive to this day, and the hall still keeps a relief of the giant centipede coiled around Omi-Fuji (Mount Mikami). There is also a tale said to have long circulated across the Omi region about how the land was formed: that the earth dug out to make Lake Biwa was carried off and piled up overnight into Mount Fuji—or that the giant Daidarabocchi, trying to build Fuji, sat down with a thud and the dent he left became the lake. It is a folk imagining born from the naive observation that Lake Biwa and Mount Fuji seem to match in area and shape, not a true account of how either was geologically formed.

Standing there watching the boats carve white wakes across the freshwater, with the same hills and waters that carry these legends off in the distance, you suddenly feel that this race isn't just skimming across water—it's skimming across an entire story of Lake Biwa, from its dragon deity to the birthplace of Japan's boat racers.

A great rest stop mid-trip

If you happen to be staying by Lake Biwa too, I'd recommend treating this as a 'rest stop' on your trip — pay 100 yen, feel the lake breeze, and watch a few races. You don't need to understand the betting; just watching the little boats fly across the blue lake, together with that quiet, moving sense of 'someone taking a niche pursuit seriously,' makes it well worth pausing for a while.