Bicycling Japan 2007
My thoughts looking back
Red lines done on bicycle. Blue lines on an overnight bus.Looking back, it was a worthwhile journey. Of all the fondest memories I have of Japan the strongest and most vivid would be riding through the country just before sunset with the world ahead of me and my troubles many miles behind. Although it is hard to say yes to sleeping in the streets, freezing to death in a playground and getting stuck lost in rain, the challenge to stay alive is the most base of instincts. There is no BS here, you just have to make your destination and survive it. A clarity of what needs to be done and how you do it. Thats what I loved most about my life on the bicycle, nothing of those journeys the good and the bad I would trade for anything in the world.
Trip #3 - Kansai (Day 5+)
Unfortunately due to the holiday influx I was unable to get a spot in a Net cafe and went searching around for a public place to sleep. Rather than return to Kyoto station I tried my luck around various places.
1am: Unable to find any real good suitable spot I decided to take my chance on the emergency fire stairwell outside a commercial building. It was relatively sheltered, although of course if security or anybody came up those stairs I was in trouble!. With that in mind I just rolled out my mat and the camo tarp.
2am: It was bad I started to freeze w/o my sleepin bag, and staying on that stairwell made me nervous of getting caught so I left and rode back into town.2:30am Made my way back into main city area to a Maccas to seek some shelter but alas, for some reason the 24hr maccas was scheduled to close from 3am to 5am! What the! I ordered some hot chow, cause I was staring at 2hrs of bitter cold out on the streets.
3am: Back out on the streets, it was way way to cold. Was decidedly getting really desperate for shelter out of the wind and cold. In fact so desperate I spied an apartment block with stairs leading to a basement area.... Guess what, I found a little area behind a door down there and just sat in that hidden area to wait out the cold. If I ever came close to just freezing to death on any street in the world it was going to be tonight.
4am: Late at night but people moving in/out of the apartment complex kept me on my toes. I really didnt want a random seeing me hundled in their basement trying to keep warm lol
4:30am: The more I just sat and tried to sleep the colder I got, I had to keep moving. I packed up and careful sneaked out of the basement.
I figure I could wait out for 30mins until Maccas re-opened. As i did a little recon of the area I noticed something I hadnt seen before. The subway was open! Not only open but it was underground and heated! Hastily I joined the other 5 or so people that had sort refuge.
6:30am Security smiled at me as they continued their patrol down the subway to wake up the remaining refugees. I was a wake a long time before they arrived and I was better of at Maccas it seemed.
That was it, I somehow managed to survive a night out in sub 10c weather without any suitable accomodation. I ate a hearty breakfast that morning, for I knew later on that night I was up for more hell.
Day 6: Spent time checking out Kyoto shopping district
The internet cafe was full again tonight. Instead I found a 24hr maccas and somehow lucidly managed to drift in and out of sleep until morning. Everytime I managed to doze of I'd wake only to realize a whole bunch of ppl were sitting next to me. After 6 hours at maccas I was finally woken by staff and made my way out of the building, time? 8am.
Day 7: Bus trip back to Tokyo
Finally, goodbye Kansai and back to Tokyo. I spent the day riding up the Kyoto river bank and seeing as how the sun was out, I decided it was a beautiful day to catch up on some real sleep!
I sprawled out on the benches and boy was it nice sleepin in the sun. Unfortunately in winter the Sun sets at 5pm, then it starts to get cold ... real cold. Being my last day I returned the bicycle and walked slowly back along the river bank to the bus terminal and back to Tokyo.
Trip #3 - Kansai (Day 4)
Day #4 - Day trip to famous Nara park. 40km ride back to Kyoto. Slept in net cafe again. First shower I have had in 4 days!
With an early start, I was out before 6am and after a bit of braekfast at a local combini I was up, up and up on my way to Nara park.
It was still early in the morning and apart from other photographers I had a free run around Nara park. It was beautiful, I had come just on th e right time to catch the sundance of yellow foilage.
I even managed to catch some real close ups with the deer at the park,
After a couple of hours, it was time to head back to Kyoto. I left at 12pm and knew if I kept a good steady pace I could reach Kyoto in 4-5 hours. As it was winter the sun sets 5:30pm, real early and I was hoping to reach Kyoto just before nightfall.
View of the country side riding on route 24 to Kyoto. You can see the dark clouds hanging out in front, which turned into some heavy rain as I rode through it that day.
Thats the main hwy on the right, there was no sealed pathway on the road, I had to ride through some guys open field.
As it turned out the ride took about 5 hours and I arrived in Kyoto just as night fall approached. However the rain that passed me in Nara went straight to Kyoto and I arrived cold, hungry and wet from hitting patches of rain in Kyoto.
After Nara I decided it was time to head back to Tokyo, so I rode to Kyoto station to buy a bus ticket home. Unfortunately it seemed I had just arrived back in Kyoto on a 3 day holiday period! Dangit.. the earliest bus back to Tokyo was now 3 days away!Trip #3 - Kyoto & Nara (Day 3)
Day #3 - Day trip in Kyoto then a 40km ride to Nara on National Hwy 24. Slept at in a net cafe in Nara.
I awoke early at around 5am, the combination of the cold wind rustling through Kyoto station and the increasing foot traffic made me feel uneasy as the deserted train station started to come alive from the morning rush. Carefully I packed up my things and was back on foot to find the nearest bicycle rental shop. I had already spent last night walking around on foot and just got extreemly tired and frustrated at how slow things go when youre walking.
Unlike Tokyo, where their exists a constant buzz and electricty in the air Kyoto by comparison felt much slower and traditional.
Walking into the city you soon notice all the temple like structures everywhere.
After spending most of the morning walking into Kyoto I found my way towards the Keihan Demachiyanagi station and managed to scout down a cheap rental cycle shop. It was only 2000en and I got a bicycle for a month! I even met the a young girl who worked the shop and to my suprise had actually returned home from an exchange in melbourne! Talk about a small world. The girl was very helpful and even found me a 3 speed bicycle, despite the owners initally insisting they did not exist.
Relieved I packed all my items on the rickety bicycle and with a rough map sketched by the helpful girl made my way to Kyoto's number #1 tourist destination... The Golden Pavilion.
Navigational aides. If you see this carved onto a mountain side the Golden Pavilion will be close.. real close.
A clear day meant I could capture the mirror reflection of the pavilion.
Another shot of the pavilion further up the path.Unto the next big tourist spot, Kiyomizu Dera apparently a tall wooden temple structure of some fame.
View just outside Kiyomizu, notice the Geisha, very common sight around Kiyomizu Dera for no real reason I could gather.
There it is! Old suspended amoung the tree tops and bursting with tourists!
Unfortunately road conditions were tragic on Hwy 24. I thought in Kanto it got bad, in Kansai is unbelievable. At one stage I was riding on the opposite lane, in the dark on the road and with 1 meter to the right of me a good 5 meter ditch into blackness and 1 meter to the left of me oncoming trucks.
Although there were no bicycle paths, no street lights for miles on certain sections the ride itself was on flat land. It wasn't long after that I finally arrived in Nara sometime after 8pm.
Dinner was at Matsuya and I loitered around an amusement center before shuffling of to the Net Cafe for some sleep.
Trip #3 - Kansai (Day 2)
I finally awoke to a frosty morning in Osaka. With no map and the tourist information center closed till 9am, I went sought shelter in the tried and true place... Maccas.
Final destination Osaka, traffic rearing to go as morning rush hits.Without a bicycle it was hard to get around, especially when I was walking around with a sleeping bag in one hand and a foam mat in the other. I was feeling lucky punk, and it so happened I arrived on a Osaka Council designated "no car" day! I could purchase an all day train pass at a special discount. Counting my luck for the day I headed of to the only place of real interest on the tourist map... The WORLDS largest IMAX screen at the Suntory Museum.
The movie that day was something to do with the underwater corral reefs. It was great I really got into the whole 3D thing as well. I even had the entire cinema to myself, except for a handful of oyagis. After the movie I spent a little bit of time walking around the bay area only to realize how old and run down it all seemed.
A really rundown looking apartment complex right opposite the bay area. The whole place really pailed in comparison to Odaiba in Tokyo.
After IMAX it was off to the big Osaka landmark, the castle.
Osaka Castle
Flower festivalAfter a bit of this and that in Osaka, night had come it was 9pm and I had run out of things to do . Compared to Tokyo, Osaka was a bit too quiet. Tokyo for some reason has a strange electricity in the air, a sense of excitement. Having been spoilt by the best meant I had a hard time seeing the worth in staying in Osaka any longer. (A theme that repeated itself in every other metro city in Japan I visited). Of I went to the train station.
Ahh, time to leave this town and move onto something else. At least Kyoto is a mere 1hr train ride away!I managed to arrive in Kyoto by about 11pm and as I had neither a map or information on where to stay I just did what I had trained to do all this time. I slept at the station.
For a large station, its designed really poorly for people wanting to sleep in it. Its a big open design meant a cold wind ran pretty much through every nook and cranny in there. By about 5am its both coldy and windy.
Learning where to sleep and where not to in Japan seems to rely on a bit of trial and error. The location pictured above is right next to an escalator hidden behind a wall and pillar. A nice spot. Unfortunately I found out why nobody else was there already, by 1am security came around kicked me out of my spot as they decided to wall out just that section ahead of me. Dejected I moved maybe 3m down to another spot. Which brang me to my first rule of sleepin in public places
#1 Go where the other bums are. If the spot is perfect and no bums are there already there is most likely a good reason for that.
Incidentally I also discovered rule #2 that night
#2 There will always be a loud, rtarded drunk bum around. Avoid if you can. He is the one sleeping by himself. Also for good reason
Im actually grateful I didnt understand Jap for once, as only 5m to my right was a random hobo who seemed to like shouting random phrases to anybody 5m within his radius. I unfortunately was 1cm in that radius and coped both weird looks and strange ramblings from that guy. I actually left a little earlier from that spot as that guy really started to freak me out. Although being Japan, i doubt these ppl can really do much to you.
As I didnt have a map I spent the morning looking around for the main shopping district in Kyoto. U know, the place that has a cheap eatery, net cafe to sleep and a good entertainment arcade of sorts to burn some time away before going into the net cafe for 5hrs of sleep. And that my friends is how I lived in Kyoto for that 3 extra days I didnt plan on staying.
Trip #3 - Kansai (DDay)
Day #1 - Night bus to Osaka
I was originally planning to ride to Osaka (500km) but I decided that 5-6 days of hard riding in the middle of winter w/o proper equipment was *just* a bit to uncomfortable. The next best thing was of course a cheap $50 bus ride on what they call a DREAM BUS. The idea is you depart at around 11pm, sleep and like magic 7hrs later you wake up at your destination.
Here I wait at the Shinjuku Higway Bus TerminalThe Dream Bus is what you expect of a budget coach. Although in comparison the seating space is about the same as on an airplane anyway. The only real problem is with the seats. Bearable for the first 1 hour, but after 5 hours it really starts to hurt. After 6 hrs it doesnt matter as much as your rear end would have already gone numb. As for sleepin? Unless you can sleep upright, it was just 7 hours of in/out broken sleep
Trip #2 - Tokyo --> Utsunomiya --> Nikko (150km)
Route Day 1 (80km): Departed 12 Noon From Ikebukuro and up north onto the eastern route 4 Hwy. Decided on the way to make a stop over at Oyama.
I left Tokyo a little late in the day but made some pretty impressive gains distance wise. In fact the most amazing thing riding out of Tokyo is you can really tell when you reach the next prefecture out, it goes from 60 floor buildings to this....
Grass glorious grass!
For some reason route 4 consists of 2 parallel roads going north seperated 4km away from each other. I took the GPS recommended course and rode up the eastern Route 4 Hwy. Man it was shit, just long rides next to a national highway with nothing but fields on your left and right. Combinis where far and few apart which meant I had to take all my toilet breaks on some guys cabbage patch.
Which cabbage?The best part of the ride was actually peddling hard enough that as I found out later, I had managed to break the bearings in the peddling mechanism which means every time I peddle the bike groans and creaks like its about to snap in 2 and consume my gonads!
As it was raining and I sorely missed seeing the electric lights of a town I decided to detour to Oyama only 30km out from Utsunomiya. Amazingly Oyama has a really large recreational park that is pitch black and entirely devoid of people. Normally this would be a sure fire way to spend a night and end up mugged or worse murdered etc being Japan it was actually the perfect spot to steal a free night out in the park.
Base camp. Actually my first night sleepin out. I call it Camo Bum Style. I bought the special camo tarp to keep my bum hideout concealed, of course it works better on grass, preferably without a large bicycle next to it.
Route Day 2 (35km): 5:30am start from Oyama riding in the rain, decided to shack up at a MacDonalds and slept there till 10:30am where it finally dried up, arrived at Utsunomiya 2pm.
I always found it impossible to wake up before even 10pm in Tokyo, but suddenly at 5:30am in the morning I had all the reasons I needed. The moment first light hits, you have all the motivation you need to pack up and leave lest the public catch you camping out in a public park. At any rate it was time to leave in the search of food, like a Maccas...The best part about Maccas in Japan is that they dont disturb you if you decide to catch a wink or two.Although i'm dodgy I did feel obliged to buy something before I just sat down and slept, even if it meant making a "purchase" using my stack of 20 free coffee vouchers I managed to score of a housemate heheheh
6:30am, its raining im cold, Maccas will do just fine...zzzz
This is how I know im on the right track, woo im 90km out of Tokyo!? only 18km more to go!
The magic of breaking the 100km distance, I had never ridden out so far in my life. A little more riding then at 2pm
Success, I had finally reached my first major destination. Why Utsunomiya? Luckily I had some nice friends this way that offered me a place to sleep in what little area they had (Thanks Gem & Mish!)
Route Day 3 (35km): 6:30am departure from Utsunomiya then a hard ride up to the mountains arriving at Nikko 12:30.
I didnt take much but I managed to convince my friend to ride up to Nikko with me on his 1 gear second hand mama chari bike.
Note the stock shopping basket attached to the front. Sold to housewives with the intention of making short rips to the supermarket my friend cained it 80km in total and didnt even get 1 blowout.
After 2 hrs of riding we hit a sign.
In Japanese Nikko means, "the ride of never ending hills". Of course that meant the ride back was going to be cruise control, all I had to do was steer away from other cars. Nice.
I convinced my friend these were Japanese cherries, he ate them and said something about shit and his pants about 1 hour later. (Just joking, id never do that to a friend... )
Its a real beautiful ride to Nikko and I really do recommend it, we did this ride early Nov and when the sun is out its abs lovely ride through scenery like this,
Lovely!
They even have wide shoulders for you to ride on the road.
Soon after midday we finally arrived, our final destination Nikko!
If your wondering why my friend is in all the photos, its cause my photos are on his camera. Maybe if he were to write a blog..nah
Zen garden, ummmm.....Nikko is also the site of a world heritage temple,
Looks grand it does, but I was happy just seeing a pic of it, since you needed some obscure ticket to actually visit it I didnt feel like my money was really well spent seeing something I had technically seen already on print.After a bit of sightseeing, we realized it was only 6pm and suddenly had to
fill in 5 hours before we could setup camp. We found the perfect place,
Thats right smile you dodgy asian its a laundromat! It was warm, sheltered and even had benches for me to lie down on. The best part about a laundromat is that if you sleep in there everybody assumes youre waiting for your laundry to wash/dry ahahah!
Sure you can sleep, but why not try out some crazy Jap machines while your at it? Thats right, a shoe washing machine.
But as we found it does 2 things really well, the first is clean and the second is to totally ruin your shoes! As we both put in our shoes together, I got the better end of the stick as my shoes were the pair that that got cleaned while it was my friends shoes that just ended up getting partially destroyed by the machine rofl.... The best part was then sinking $5 in the shoe dryer before he finally relented and stuck them in the commercial 10kg dryer and having them now also partially melted.
It wasn`t long before our fun and games where over, time to setup camp.
We found a tennis pavilion and made camp there. The noob with his shoes poking out is my friend. He just slept right on cold concrete. I fared a little better in a sleepin bag and foam mat. Still it wasn't the best place, the holes in the wall were our undoing. By 4am the wind picked up and starting to blow right under the camo tarp.
Route Day 4 (35km): From Nikko back to Utsunomiya
Up by the crack of dawn we slinkered our way back to the laundromat AGAIN to warm up before getting some brekky at 7-11.
Surprisingly we didn't look to worse for wear.Back up to Nikko for more sightseeing before heading back around midday. Taking solace in one of newtons laws about what goes up must come down, it was a straight shot ride home.
We made a record 20kms in slightly over 1 hour, then exhausted did the remaining 20 kms in 3-4 hours.
Final Day (110km): 6:45am departure from Utsunomiya then arrived home at Ikebukuro around 6pm. A monster ride!
Not much to say, I left early and kept riding till I got back into Tokyo. At least it was flat ground most of the way. The only frustrating thing about the ride was the insane head wind I was riding against in the morning. Gusts of at least 20km going AGAINST me, if it was at least behind me I could have set sail with my tarps raised.
It is the most amazing feeling riding 110km in one day and finally reaching "home". I felt like a conqueror but nonetheless tired and sore from the ride.
Trip #1 - Kamakura (53km)
Route Day 1 (40km): 10am From Ikebukuro down west to Shinjuku, Shibuya, Harajuku then out of Tokyo via Meguro and down Highway 1 through Kawasaki then a mistaken detour to Shin-Yokohama THEN finally to Yokohama by night fall (7pm).
I started my ride late in the morning, I spent an inordinate amount of time checking and rechecking all my gear to make sure I had the right stuff for the journey. However I didnt have the right camping gear but it worked out anyway, the GPS unit found me a route to Kamakura which involved me riding straight through Shinjuku. Luckily this meant I could stop at the outdoor store to get supplies in case I decided to sleep outside.
The ride out of Tokyo city was painfully slow. The uneven pathways and worse still crazy pedestrians meant you had to brake frequently. Eventually I made it out of Tokyo and onto Hwy 1, a straight ride taking you to Yokohama. As I used a psp slim with a GPS unit (max 6 hr battery operation) it meant I had to take mandatory breaks for both man and machine every so often.
An unscheduled stop just outside of kawasaki at a water tap for a bit of R&R on the way to Kamakura.I hit Yokohama by night fall after losing almost 2 hrs riding to a SHIN Yokohama, that extra Kanji in the station name actually makes a real difference to were you end up! It was a real relief getting into Yokohama. Strangely enough I had come to Yokohama previously for my Nova initial training almost a full 3 months ago, things have certainly turned out much different then what I had imagined.
I decided to stay the night in Yokohama, loitering in shops (yodobashi kamera), sleepin outside the train station before finally spending 5 hrs in this internet cafe.
Unlimited coffee and drinks, pity I was to spend it all sleepin instead of freeloading on caffeine!
Proof of life!Route Day 2 (90km): 6am from Yokohama to Kamakura by 10am, then a short distance to the beach then back all the way to Yokohama and down Hwy 1 to Gotanda. Then east along Tokyo city to the Tokyo Tower by 8pm. Then all the way to Akihabara finally stopping at Ueno station to try my luck at sleeping at the station. 6am decided it was to cold and rode back to Ikebukuro by 7pm.
After a so-so sleep session at the net cafe it was back on the road for a 20km ride to Kamakura. A real terrible ride, full of hills and tight mountain passages. In fact certain sections didnt even have pathways just a gutter for pedestrians. then after 3 hours of riding...
Success! I had finally reached Kamakura station! The epicenter of the town.
Now onto the main course, Kamakura is well known for this,
As you can see this little fella is me standing right in front of the Giant Buhda. Which had for some reason giant jet vents... Look!
Hmm, could it be this giant buhda is actually a giant mecha?The beach was close by to the Buhda and took the chance to see this,
As you can see, real average looking. Im not sure why its a beach, the air was lacking the distinctive salty sea smell, strange?That was it, a statue a beach and now back to Tokyo!. Fast forward 6 hours later and here I am,
Was there not a more iconic way to finish the trip than a stop at Tokyo Tower? I remembered saying something about wanting to try the bum sleep thing, you know in the station out in a cardboard house, so I did exactly that! I tried to create a cardboard house but realized how much it sucked when I noticed my little cardboard roofless - 3 wall house was totally pwned by the elaborate cardboard mansions that some of the homeless could create. I swear one of them looked like it had both a bedroom and second room for maybe one more person! Defeated I turned over to the station.
You never know who you are going to meet, its true. I met a person who was strumin away on his little guitar play tears in heaven and even hotel california. I was his adoring crowd for about 1 hour before deciding I was sleepy by 2am. So I tried setting camp on the stairway out side the station (mind you its a HUGE station) in 14c weather with moderate wind. All I remember is waking up and having delirious thoughts about a Mr. Wind trying to get into my makeshift sleepin bag. Thats right I had somehow personified the cold and wind elements into an evil jap person trying to get into my makeshift sleepin bag. Cold and hungry at 5am in the morning I got some food at a combini then rode back home to Ikebukuro for the best sleep in 23 years.
The great adventure!
Here it is, a $150 18 speed ATB bike from MUJI. Registered for 500en in case it gets stolen so that the keisatsu (police) can call me back in Australia and offer me to come down to the local station for pick up.
Navigation is a breeze, I have a PSP with GPS software and it seems like most cities are joined by only 1 major numbered highway. Accomodation and food is also no biggy, I will just deal with it as the need arises. First stop Kamakura to see this Giant Bhudda my students kept telling me about.
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My thoughts looking backTrip #3 - Kansai (Day 5+)
Trip #3 - Kansai (Day 4)
Trip #3 - Kyoto & Nara (Day 3)
Trip #3 - Kansai (Day 2)