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Stuck

Posted on 2010-05-22 23:49 by rv

The weather today is incredible. It's a full-blown rainstorm. I reinforced my tent again but it's still not liking the huge winds. The roof that I put my tent under did not help one bit as the winds just blow the rain in from sideways. Thanks to that I did find out that my tent is rainproof, one day before reaching the final destination.

I bought some food at a nearby convenience store and goat soaked in the process. I'm not leaving this place again today, the weather is just too bad. Cape Sata will have to wait until tomorrow..

Picture obtained from the JMA. I'm slightly south-east of the main storm, but there's another one forming and heading this way...

In the meantime, my two camping buddies also woke up and seem to be mainly staring out into the rain in disbelief. They don't do much else. They're not very talkative either, so we're all being bored inside our respective tents while waiting for the rain to stop. I guess I should take a nap...

Posted in Spirit of Japan , Uncategorized

The plan

Posted on 2010-05-22 11:41 by rv

Hi all, the internet is back online. I guess it was just a glitch at my provider's side.

Before I begin my daily story, let me tell you about how I intend to go back to Tokyo from here. Today I passed a small city called Shibushi, and this just happens to be the place from where I can catch a ship back to Tokyo. There's a ferry departing for Tokyo about every 5 days, and it's cheaper than booking a last-minute airplane ticket. It's not cheaper than booking an airplane ticket well in advance, but that's unavoidable considering the nature of this trip. I've decided to take the ferry back to Tokyo on May 31st.

Arriving in Tokyo on June the first, I will have one month of job hunting until my visa expires, although I can probably extend that by begging a bit at the immigration office. They're very nice to Europeans, although they hate everyone else. I feel like I got scammed a bit though: my 'sources' told me that I could get a percentage of three months of my previous salary if I became unemployed in Japan. One of the criteria to receive this money is that you are actively seeking a new job. Scam number one: to actively search for a job, I need to have a valid address in Japan. This is an issue because to get a room in Japan as a foreigner is difficult: most landlords will not rent to foreigners. Besides that you need a guarantor to back you up when you sign the contract, which is great if you have a job because the company can be your guarantor. If you don't have a job, then you'd better find a very close friend cause it's a big favor to ask. Alternatives are 'weekly mansions' or 'monthly mansions', but I'm not sure yet how that works. This seems solvable, until you get to scam number two: it will take three to four months until you finally receive the money. I heard this from someone who deals with hiring and firing people, so I'm considering this to be fairly accurate. Waiting for and arranging to get this money will cost me a lot of time, and I care about time more than money.

Back to today's story: shortly after my morning blogpost it started to rain. It was very soft rain, but there was a lot of it, and I was soaked to the bone again. I made a stop at a gasoline stand where I received free drinks and food from the nice people who worked there. I chatted with them a bit as I waited for the rain to stop. It didn't stop, so eventually I decided to cycle on in the rain. There was no particular reason for me to cycle in the rain, as the ferry leaves on the 31st and I still have over a week left, but I felt like cycling in the rain today. It gave me a nice sense of achievement. I've set my cyclocomp to display only the time, not the distance, so I really don't know how far I've cycled until I've reached my arbitrary destination. Today it turns out I cycled exactly 100km. I am satisfied.

The road today took me between the mountains and was quite nice. It was close-to-nature, but not that close. There were still houses and sometimes tiny villages, and the occasional convenience store, but there were also long stretches of almost-nothing that were very satisfying to travel through. After getting caught by a rainshower in the middle of the day I cycled on and on until I reached the opposite coast of the peninsula that I am on right now. As soon as I reached the coast the road changed from an almost-nature road to a full nature road. Long stretches of mountain, tough uphills and no convenience store in sight for a very long time. It's often like this on small peninsulas: nobody really has a reason to go here, so there's nothing here. Just a road and some mountains.

Finally I did arrive at a conbini, and right next to it was a camp site. There I met two other guys who had already set up their tent. One was traveling by motorcycle, the other by scooter. Together with my bicycle we make a nice bunch. They told me they had spent the whole day here as the rain was horrible and they didn't want to travel on a day like this. I quite understand.

Roofed tent

I set up my tent underneath a small roofed camping building. I had to tether my tent to the sides of the building as the strong winds are constantly lifting my tent up in to the air. While I'm not in my tent, it's basically floating in the air 10 centimeters off the ground. Because my internet didn't work just now, I listened to the weather report on of my camping buddies' radio, and the forecast is not good. Heavy rain, lightning, and big wave warnings everywhere except where we are (cause this area is in a bay and not exposed to the open sea). As I am typing this I can hear the rain falling around me. Tomorrow might not be a good day to travel...

Many clouds today

Also, this cat came along, and I fed it half of my baumkuchen. He liked it a lot and now he won't leave. I'm worried he'll pee on my tent.

Manky cat
Posted in Spirit of Japan , Uncategorized

Dark

Posted on 2010-05-22 03:05 by rv

The weather is the only thing in Japan that doesn't run on schedule. It was supposed to rain the whole day today according to the weather report, but so far it hasn't rained yet and the sun even shone for 5 whole minutes this morning. The rest of the time it was dark and cloudy though.

Bicycles only

There was a tunnel near here which cut right through the mountain. Unfortunately bicycles weren't allowed to go through the tunnel, and instead had to cycle around the mountain instead...

5 minutes of sunshine
Hidden mountain village
Whoops

On occasion I try to be polite and take the sidewalk instead of the main road. I only do this if the road is very narrow or if I'm on a very steep uphill and my speed is very slow, which was the case in the picture above. Of course, when the sidewalk started there was no guard rail, and the path only narrowed after a corner so I couldn't see where the path went. This is another perfect example of the golden rule of bicycle touring: never EVER give up your place on the road. If you try to let a car or truck pass by going on the sidewalk you will never get back on the main road. Trucks will not let you back on or there will suddenly be a guardrail or a height difference between sidewalk and road, forcing you to ride the extremely bumpy and narrow sidewalk for a long time before your next chance of returning to the road. Cycling on the sidewalk tires out my arms twice as fast as cycling on the road, and I'm sure it's more than twice as hard on the tires because of all the bumps. It's just not worth it.

Recently I've been seeing a lot of 'checkpoints' on the roads, where cars and trucks are forced to drive slowly between some pylons. After that usually the trucks are stopped at the side of the road and being cleaned. Disinfected I guess. I found out today why: there is foot and mouth disease in Miyazaki prefecture, which is where I was yesterday. They're trying to contain the outbreak by cleaning every truck that goes in and out the area. It seems pretty serious..

In other news, my gears have magically fixed themselves. Upshifting is nearly back to normal now. Very nice.

Today is gloomy-ish, so I think I'll stop early today. I'm not in a hurry any more, but I'll tell you about that later.

Posted in Spirit of Japan , Uncategorized

Nichinan

Posted on 2010-05-21 10:42 by rv

The day started like this:

and turned out like this.

Since the last post I followed route 220 from Miyazaki all the way south to Nichinan, which is where I am now. Nichinan is a silly name. Route 220 is beautiful, probably. I say probably because today was cloudy and everything looked gray. I realized I didn't really look around that much today, I was just focused on cycling. I'm sure if today had been a clear blue sky I would be blogging right now about how today was so great and about all the beautiful sights that I saw along the way, but the weather just spoils it for me. Not a big deal. On days like these I focus on cycling instead of sightseeing, and I'm happy with what I accomplished today: 120 pure and honest kilometers.

When you're cycling in the mountains it's very easy to lose your frame of reference. After some time of zigzagging up a slope, you start to forget which way is north or south. And if you're going uphill on the same road for a long time, you start to forget what is horizontal. Eventually you're just expending a certain amount of effort and going at a certain speed, but you have no clue whether that's good or bad. The slope could be very steep or your muscles might be tired, meaning you're going (t00) slow, but there's really no way of telling until the road starts to go down again. I'm training myself to guess the inclination of the slope based on the amount of sweat on my shirt. It still needs a little bit of tuning.

As the day went by my bicycle started squeaking more and more and all colors disappeared from the world, covering everything with a grayish blue haze. When it gets to 3PM everything just happens automatically and I stop thinking. I just cycle, and the world passes by. And when I wake up, I am at my destination. On occasion I have stopped at the top of a hill and wondered how I got there, because I didn't remember the uphill at all. And then my mind focuses and I realize that it was actually quite tough. I'm just automatically forgetting the bad parts, I guess. And the good parts, too..

I was in such a cycling daze when I cycled past some roadworks, passing a guy on the sidewalk while going quite slowly, when suddenly the guy yelled loudly: "HAI STOPPU!". That snapped me back to attention, and I stopped, wondering what he wanted. "I will give you tea!" and then he ran inside his shack to find me some tea. Nice guy. Then out of nowhere a woman appeared and gave me cookies. Seriously, I have no idea where she came from. We chatted a bit, and then I cycled on to Nichihan. At this point I had not seen a convenience store for several hours, and the only side road that appeared was blocked by a landslide. Well, the area is known as a 'quasi national park', so I guess that's to be expected. It was certainly one of the closest places to nature that I've seen in Japan.

Arriving in Nichihan it took me about 5 seconds to realize that there is absolutely nothing of interest here. A train station, a family restaurant, and that's about it. Somehow I stumbled onto a business hotel that was fairly cheap (for Japanese standards), and I decided to call it a day. When I checked in the owner seemed quite paranoid, and asked me a lot of details about my passport. He told me that, according to a new rule that only recently was created, hotel owners now have to ask all foreigners for their passport number and address. They did that already anyway. The owner also told me that if he didn't follow these rules, the police would come and 'make trouble'. When I asked him what kind of trouble he didn't answer, but if I had to guess then I'm pretty sure this person has never experienced 'trouble'.

As my trip is nearing the end, I am making arrangements to return, and as it turns out that's not always easy. I'll tell you all more about that next time, when I've confirmed the last detail that's still an uncertainty in my plan.

Good night!

Today's strange drink

(This was actually pretty good >_<; )

Posted in Spirit of Japan , Uncategorized | Tagged

On the road again

Posted on 2010-05-21 03:41 by rv

Today the road is straight and flat and wide. Exactly the road I was wishing for when I was in the mountains, but I got tired of it already after two hours. Even listening to music it's quite boring to travel on a road that never changes. Even the scenery did not change a lot on the way. I kept myself busy with adjusting my luggage while cycling and attempting to drive exactly on the white line at the side of the road.

I tweaked the front gear changer part thingie a tiny little bit yesterday morning, and since then gear shifts on the front are working flawlessly again. Unfortunately the rear gears are still very wonky, and whenever I change up a gear I have to press the gear shift button three times. After pressing it three times it's a mystery which gear it'll select, but I can find the right gear again by shifting down and slightly pushing the downshift lever until it finds the right gear. It's a bit wonky, but it'll do.

My bicycle's still full of crud, and it's making constant squeaking noises right now. The chain is also very muddy and I really should clean it when I get the chance.

I've already cycled 60-70 km's, and I'm going to try to cycle 50-60 km's more. I'm getting close to the end so I want to speed things up a bit, which is one reason why I want to cycle a lot today. The other reason is rain. It's supposed to start raining at the end of the day and then continue to rain for the whole day tomorrow. The more distance I can cover today in the sunshine, the less I have to cycle in the rain tomorrow.

Now that I've roughly decided how to end the trip, I'm quite happy to finish it, even though I didn't want the trip to end a couple of weeks ago. A choice-supportive bias, I guess.

Posted in Spirit of Japan , Uncategorized

Moist Humid Damp Wet Disgusting

Posted on 2010-05-20 09:05 by rv

I woke up today and deliberately did not look at the weather report because I really wanted to get going again. The village I stayed at for one and a half day was quite possibly the most deadly silent place I've ever been in Japan, and I really wanted to move on. Still, not looking doesn't make things go away..

That's close

The village's altitude was about 500-600 meters, and I had to climb another 200-300 meters to get over a mountain range so I could get to the road that I wanted to take. Yup, my first time to cycle in the clouds.

Getting closer..
Yeah, now I can't see shit

Well, that was interesting. A 200 meter early morning climb in the clouds. Because it was still quite early there wasn't a lot of traffic, but there were a lot of tunnels. I'm sure my blinking led-taillight saved my life a couple of times today. Eventually though, the road started to slope down again, and I appeared again.

Somehow not a place for cycling
Looking down from a bridge

Bridges and tunnels are natural enemies. Tunnels appear at the top of mountains at the highest point, meaning you have to climb to get there, then have a scary experience in the tunnel as cars go right past you, and then you can relax on the downhill towards the next hill. Bridges on the other hand are always built at a lower altitude than the rest of the road, because it's cheaper to build a lower bridge (and for the same reason tunnels are always on top). This means that you first have to go downhill and build up speed, brake because the road is more narrow on the bridge and you don't want to hit that truck, and then you have to climb uphill again. This ends my rant about bridges. A lot of weird thoughts go through my head during an average day of cycling...

ooh

The road was painful. Soon after coming out of the clouds it started to rain, and it was a weird kind of rain that didn't feel wet. It just felt like tiny mosquitoes smashing in your face and then falling off. There was no sense of wetness. Dry rain? The rain may not have felt wet, but everything else did. Today was incredibly humid, without being too hot though. I don't want to say that I had trouble breathing, but I clearly noticed that the air was different than usual, and not in a good way. I was expecting this feeling to go away as I went down, but even at sea level I have this strange feeling. It's like all the clouds have accumulated and reached sea level. A very nasty feeling.

Speaking of rain, it pretty much rained for the whole day. It wasn't very strong but it was always present, soaking me completely. I soon found out that my cycling pants become translucent when exposed to a large amount of rain. A minor inconvenience, as I still had a pair of rain trousers in one my sidebags. It rained and rained until I finally reached the seaside, and then it stopped. Unfortunately, by that time my bicycle was full of crud.

Crud

The image quality is shit because my S90 was set to ISO3200 for no good reason. The stupid scrollwheel on the back is way too loose.

I reached a little city called Nobeoka, which I only know because my former company has a data center there. While in the mountains I was getting tired (it wasn't all downhill!) and was thinking of ending the day at Nobeoka, but when I reached Nobeoka I felt that I could still go on, and I cycled 20 kilometers further to a place called Hyuuga, which is where I am typing this blogpost from.

On a cycling note, thanks to the past 3-4 days of mountains and hills I have regained my super-saiyan strength and have now leveled up to become super-saiyan level 2. I can now do a continuous 30kph on a flat road. This trip has had a really good effect on my body. I've lost a lot of weight, but for some reason I don't look any different... -__-

I'm very close now. Maybe two or three days of cycling and I can be at the southernmost point of Kyushu. As for what happens after that, I am still in doubt. My parents are pestering me to come back and watch the World Cup (football) with them, but if I want to find a job in Japan I'd better do it before my visa expires. Decisions, decisions..

Posted in Spirit of Japan , Uncategorized | Tagged

The park inside the tunnel

Posted on 2010-05-19 08:24 by rv

Japanese people have a knack of creating things that are supposed to be nice and cute, but turn out to be strange and creepy.

I'm in a village right now, which is the most countryside place I've stayed at during this trip. There is one tiny convenience store slash supermarket, a train station with a one-man train arriving every 1-2 hours, and that's about it for the sights in this area. That, and the tunnel park.

The entrance to the tunnel park

The name may sound nice, as it has the word 'park' in it, but you should know that the Japanese people use the word park very lightly. A big slab of concrete in the middle of a city can already be called a park in Japan, so I guess some decorations in a tunnel qualify as well.

Cozy

The back story behind this park is that the tunnel was under construction several years ago, and was supposed to connect the village I am in with a bunch of villages at the opposite side of a huge mountain range that divides the area. During the construction of the tunnel there were a lot of mishaps, delays and floods, and eventually they decided to abandon the project. The consequences of that are that I have to climb a very nasty mountain range tomorrow, but besides that, the village had a half-completed tunnel that they didn't know what to do with. Since tunnels are always so nice and pleasant to walk around in they decided to turn it into a park.

It's not really a park, though. It's more like a tunnel. It goes on for maybe 50-100 meters straight, and the only way you can go is forward, until you reach the end.

Rockblocked

There's water pouring out of those cracks. A lot of water. After you reach the end you have to go back the same way until you reach the point where you came in.

It's a very peculiar place, and it really makes me wonder why they made something like a tunnel into a park. The general feel of the place is creepy and weird, and it's certainly not a place I'd feel comfortable in for a long time. I remember seeing a similar peculiar place before called The caves of heaven and hell, also in the mountains. The Japan that you can find in the mountains is very different from the seaside or city-side Japan, I can tell you that. I'm a bit sad that I can't explore more on my bicycle, as my stamina would run out rather quickly if I started taking random roads that lead to nowhere (which is not really a problem on a flat road). Maybe next time I'll travel by motorcycle instead.

Here's some more photos on Picasa. As you can see today is quite rainy, and when the day began I was not sure whether to continue cycling or not. In the end I decided to stay one more day, and spent most of the day inside the youth hostel avoiding the rain and horrible humidity. The tunnel park was actually quite cool and nice for that matter.

I did some research today on how to end this whole thing. I'm nearing my final destination, Sata Misaki (Cape Sata) at the southernmost point of Kyushu, and I can be there in three to four days. After that I have to get back to the Tokyo area to a) finish up my life in Japan and go back to Holland, or b) find a job. I'm still leaving it out in the open which one it will be (even to myself!), but one thing is certain: I will go back to the Netherlands for a while to visit my parents, which is something I need to prepare for as well. Plane tickets aren't cheap, especially if you don't want to plan them in advance.

Doing research on what happens after this trip made me feel as if the trip was already over, and it made me realize that I haven't accomplished anything. I didn't have any magic revelation or spiritual moment. The only thing I found out is that it doesn't really matter what I do, because I'll be happy with my choice no matter what. If I did have to point out one thing about this trip that I learned, then it would be that. It's not about the destination, it's about how you get there.

Posted in Photography , Spirit of Japan , Uncategorized | Tagged

Battleship Island

Posted on 2010-05-18 18:21 by rv

There is a very small island near Nagasaki that used to be known as Hashima, but is now more familiar under the name of Gunkanjima: Battleship Island. It is named like this because the island's concrete buildings and the seawall that surrounds it make it look like a battleship. That's quite interesting in itself, but it gets better. There used to be a coal mine on the island about 100 years ago, and a lot of people worked and lived on the island. They had everything: a hospital, a movie theater, a school, even a pachinko place and a swimming pool. The workers and their families resided on the island and lived out their lives there, until the coal mine was closed in 1974, and the inhabitants left the island. The island has been abandoned for over 30 years. Buildings have crumbled, vegetation runs wild, and all that remains is a beautiful memory of how people lived 30-40 years ago.

As you may have guessed from previous posts, this is a place that interests me greatly. I knew about this place already a couple of years ago, and at that time there was no (legal) way to visit the island. The buildings on the island are in various states of decay, and even I will admit that it's probably dangerous to go around exploring haphazardly. Fortunately for me, the island is again open to tourists since April 2009, so I booked a tour to travel to the island from Nagasaki. It was a bit above my regular budget, but it was quite worth it.

The gate
Ruins of a forgotten city
Powerful nature
More destruction

The tour itself starts at the Nagasaki port, then going through the bay under the bridge thingie towards Gunkanjima. Once there, we departed the ship and set foot on Battleship Island. From there on I got a slight disappointment. I had hoped that we would be free to roam around in areas that were deemed safe by the officials, but this was not so. Instead, the whole group stood at a concrete platform in the blazing sun, listened to a guide tell trivia about the island most of which can also be found on Wikipedia, and then moved to another concrete platform where the whole procedure would repeat itself. Never were we close to the actual ruins, which I found a bit of a shame. Nevertheless, the whole experience was quite interesting, and I did learn a lot about the island.

Tour guides handed out straw hats against the sun
Old rubble, new walkway
The stairway to hell

After the trivia we boarded the ship again and circumfered the island, and then went back. Perhaps the most interesting part of the tour from a historical perspective was the in-ship movie that we were shown on the way back, showing actual footage of the island made 40 years ago. Very interesting. At one point in the movie some children jumped of a (small) rock into the ocean, and you could hear all the Japanese people gasp audibly. Modern Japanese people are very concerned about safety and wouldn't even dream about jumping off a rock into the ocean. This is a sad thing.

I'm really glad I went there. The tour costs 4300 yen, but in return you get a very good look at what happens to places that society abandons, something that seems to happen rather often in Japan. For more information I highly recommend the Wikipedia article on Gunkanjima / Hashima island.

More photos here on Picasa!

Posted in Photography , Spirit of Japan , Uncategorized | Tagged , ,

Children

Posted on 2010-05-18 12:16 by rv

A mother teaching her child how to ride a bicycle in a park in Nagasaki.

A young boy giving me one of his candy on Fukushima island.

Another young boy laughing as we both move left and right three times in a row trying to avoid bumping into each other as we pass each other on the street.

A little girl enjoys her first talk to a foreigner and makes sure the whole restaurant knows it, making everyone laugh.

For the first time in my life I am thinking: having children is not so bad.

Posted in Spirit of Japan , Thoughts , Uncategorized

Mount Doom

Posted on 2010-05-18 08:44 by rv

On some days it's just better to stay in bed. I would have, but around 4AM, even before sunset, I heard old ladies talking outside. When I finally decided to wake up at 6AM I noticed that they were cleaning the area, as the beach I was staying at was also a 'community center'. When Japanese people get old they wake up at 4AM and start cleaning random places. Useful functionality. The day started brightly, both in spirit and in shutter time, but then quickly turned sour.

Kumamoto coastal area
Peculiar lighting today
That's not good

I took this picture as I was taking a conbini break to eat breakfast, about 5 km's after I left. I'm absolutely sure that the tire was fine when I woke up, so I must have punctured it during the first half hour of cycling. Now that's a good start of the day.. I quickly spotted a piece of glass in the outer tire and removed it. Then I tried the magic glue leak fixing spray can again, but no luck this time.

Magic spray exit hole

It did make it easy to find the leak, though. Having never fixed a flat tire before, I didn't really know how to start. Somehow I managed to use a 100-yen (~1$) tire fixing kit to get the inner tube away from the wheel. I decided not to fix the leak, but replace the inner tire with the spare one that I was still carrying around since the start of the trip. Finally the spare parts are coming in handy. First inner tire replacement: successful! :D I used the little foot pump to pump up the tire and made it really really hard. In my mind I always thought of the tiny foot pump as a piece of crap, but I have reconsidered my opinion: it works perfectly, and if you give it a little effort it can blow up the tire if you want to. Not that I did that, of course. It turned out to be a very long breakfast break, so I quickly got underway again.

Random weird stuff at the side of the road

I had to get to Kumamoto city to get on the road to Mount Aso, an active volcano that I wanted to pass by as I cycle east towards the other coastline of Kyushu. At this point I should tell you about my way of navigating: I use a small book that contains road maps, but it doesn't really show the altitude clearly, although mountains are marked with a height mark. Usually I figure that if a road is straight, and it passes between mountains, then it's okay to travel. If it's zigzaggy then it's probably steep. I found a nice little road called route 101 which seemed like a great shortcut: fairly straight, going between mountains, and saving me at least 5-10km's of going south. Obviously I messed up.

Whoops, mountain road

It turned out to be quite steeply uphill, with barely anyone around. Even the towns I passed through were empty, which was kind of creepy. If all the old people wake up at 4AM, do they go back to sleep at 7AM? Meh. The worst part of this road is that before reaching Kumamoto city I had to go all the way down again, making all my efforts worthless.

Kumamoto

It's probably because of the flat tire I had today, but I am noticing a lot of glass at the side of the roads! I'd say that even taking into account that I'm biased I've seen a lot more glass fragments than normal today. Before reaching Kumamoto I noticed that my rear tire was not inflated enough and I pumped a lot of air into it, perhaps too much. Then I reached the city and went to a bicycle shop, and got them to insert ever more air. It's probably over the recommended limit right now, but with all the luggage I'm carrying I think it's ok. It feels a lot better now.

Yeah, that's convenient..

Cycling through the city I found a bunch of these things at the side of the road, saying that there are people cleaning (I think). They also form an obstacle for me. Normally this wouldn't really bother me, but I just had a flat tire today and was feeling annoyed at the gloomy weather, and I had to restrain myself to kick at them. Kick at the signs I mean, not the cleaning people. There were no cleaning people, which made the signs more stupid. Not feeling in the mood to explore the city I cycled on towards Mount Aso.

Meh

The beautiful mountain ranges and the active volcano were nowhere to be seen because everything was cloudy and dark and shit. Quite a letdown. Especially because the climb to get there was the worst climb I've experienced since climbing to the Fuji five lakes area on the first and second day of the trip. According to my altimeter I've climbed about 550 meters, though that might not be exactly accurate. It was a very long and steep uphill road, and to make things more fun for me they had construction workers at the steepest part of the road, narrowing the road even further and making it rather easy for trucks to hit me and score 50 points for a gaijin on a strange bicycle. Or a strange gaijin on a bicycle.

I was riding route 57, which split before the Aso area, and I chose route 325 to go south. Passing over a narrow bridge with no room for bicycles I enjoyed my first downhill for about one minute, then realized that immediately after that there was another uphill. And another one. And another one. The road kept going slightly downhill, then steeply uphill all the way until my destination. Again, normally this wouldn't bother me, but today really was not normal. Ever since fixing that flat tire my gears have been acting weird. I can no longer upshift to the highest gear at the front, decreasing my maximum speed from ~35kph to about 20kph. Not good at all, especially on the downhills. In the past I was able to shift up at a certain speed at a certain pedaling rate, but now that doesn't work any more. I tried hard though on every downhill, going 30kph exactly, trying to push the damn chain in the right gear, but ended up failing and swearing to myself. To make matters worse the rear sprocket is also acting up, and sometimes when I change down one gear it changes down three or four gears instead, almost making me fall on my face and making me curse even more. I am not happy with my bicycle today.

Eventually the road stopped going down then up, and settled on just going steeply up. Since I was always in second-lowest gear I didn't have to worry about my gear problems any more. And just as I was finding a good pace, I got stopped by the police.

Patrol car

Why?! I didn't do anything wrong! I was even driving on the sidewalk this time! I can just imagine the train of thought in these police officers.  "The weather sucks and we're bored today. Let's bother a foreigner because he might do something bad."

When they first stopped me I thought that it was just that, and they were looking to chat. So I put on my friendly face even though I was swearing and cursing at my bicycle and the mountains and the rain and everything else just one minute before, and I chatted with them. One officer did the smalltalk while the other one made sure that I didn't kill any people in the past. The good cop chatted with me about all kinds of things, but the bad cop was very straight-to-the-point and didn't speak much. When he asked me where I was going, I told him I was going to a hostel about 20km's away. I guess they thought it was suspicious that I didn't have a reservation, because after I told them that he wanted to see my alien registration card. I showed them, and bad cop went in the car to investigate me. Ok, I can accept that. I haven't been stopped by the police even once on this trip, so I guess one time is acceptable. But it wasn't just over in five minutes, no. It took a good 30 minutes of standing in the rain, getting colder and colder, while bad cop checked to see if all my information checked out. It's nice that policemen have nothing better to do than stopping poor innocent gaijins suffering on a hilly road, but I was trying to reach the hostel before dark, and waiting in the middle of nowhere for 30 minutes is not helping!

Good cop

(I did of course ask his permission before taking this photo)

They finally let me go, and I continued on my way to the hostel. Note that in my original plan I would camp near Mount Aso, but the crappy weather and the delay because of the flat tire made me change my plans. Getting close to the hostel I asked directions at a convenience store, and found it rather easily thanks to the map they gave me.

Navigation made easy

On bright sunny days I'm not really bothered by much. But on days like today everything annoys me. Suddenly discovering a huge insect on my leg while I'm cycling, seeing glass at the roadsides everywhere, climbing a useless uphill because after that the road goes downhill and then uphill again, fighting a very strong wind for the whole day, wordpress being slow, the 'r' key of my keyboard nearly not working, gears failing, tires puncturing, getting stopped by the police for nothing, and so on, and so on.. I did a lot of swearing today (in English, in case you're wondering). Some of the bad things I chose for myself, like the route, some of the bad things are out of my control, like the weather. But other than that a lot of things did not go quite ight today. GUH

But this drink at least is awesome

The rain is starting to pour down now. Tomorrow might be worse than today. But I doubt it.

Posted in Spirit of Japan , Uncategorized
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