Only in Japan: taking a Hello Kitty-themed bullet train (shinkansen) where one carriage is entirely pink and the restaurant car has a life-sized Kitty for photo opportunities. We take this train from Kyoto to Hiroshima to skip some of Japan’s most build-up areas where riding is less fun. We skip to the West. From Hiroshima, we’ll slowly island-hop and cycle Eastwards again towards, eventually, Tokyo. After the usual packing up the bike, hauling it through…
Sidewalks in Japan are ridiculous. They are everywhere, even along stretches of highway, and everyone cycles on them (even though technically you are supposed to cycle on the road I think) so that is good. They provide you with a nice refuge from busy traffic. Also good. But sometimes they also end abruptly, leaving you stranded on the wrong side of the road with no way to continue. Or they’re full of plants. Or they…
After our successful summit of Norikura pass (twice!) but our failed attempt at, you know, actually passing it, we were resolved to try again the next morning. We carefully counted our food options. Our ‘base camp’ was miles away from any supermarket, but with our emergency noodles and curry we would have enough food to see us through another attempt. The next morning, again, we woke up with frost on the tent and blue skies…
Planning a cycling trip is hard: you already know that almost nothing will go according to plan, and there are many uncertainties (earthquakes, typhoons, closed roads, technical failure…we’ve had all of it). But already before we started there was one big fat question mark hanging over the trip: will we be able to cycle Norikura Pass? Norikura Skyline Norikura Pass is Japan’s highest (paved) road with the saddle at 2716m, much higher than either of…
Day 46: Sad Spaghetti We finally manage to leave Nikko. Although it was nice to have a day there, it just feels like we haven’t really been moving much the last few days. Not to worry though, we’re about to enter the Northern Alps and there will be plenty of challenging climbs, starting today! Out of Nikko we head straight towards a series of switchbacks going up to Lake Chuzenji, from where we will summit…
We have a small to-do list for today: find a post office to send home a package with souvenirs, find breakfast, look at some temples and, most important, find a bike shop because the emergency repair on my tire is not going to get us far. It is literally held together with duct tape. Breakfast and post office are no problem, post offices and konbinis are in nearly every town. A bike shop is also…
We try to stretch our budget as much as we can, but some things just have to be experienced (and thus paid for) when touristing in another country. For Japan that would be enjoying a Ryokan, a traditional accomodation with meals and usually hot springs included. If we’re gonna splurge we want to do it right, so we found one of the most remote ryokan in Japan that we happened to be someehat nearby. To…
Because I’m pretty behind on my writing and want to catch up in one go, let’s try another format where I give you short snippets for each day. Day 35: Out of Akita Well rested after a double restday we hit the road again, but it is hard to leave the comfort of the hotel. We linger around forever, and navigating out of the city is slow with lots of traffic and lots of traffic…
After the rain dumped on us at Lake Towada we have exactly one day of good weather to enjoy before another typhoon will hit Japan. We could have known (we did) because it is typhoon season after all, but it sure seems like there are more typhoons than usual this year. In any case, we keep an eye on the weather forecast and typhoon predictions, which range from ‘just bad weather’ to ‘a fucking shitshow’…
From Yokohama we continue South on the coastal road towards Towada. We didn’t initially plan to take this road, instead we would cross the peninsula and ride the Pacific coast, but the weather forecast wasn’t looking great, we both wanted a rest day, and there wasn’t anything in particular we would miss out on if we didn’t cross, so we took the most direct route to Lake Towada. The road sucks: busy as expected of…