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A once in a lifetime encounter

Posted on 2010-05-10 11:46 by rv

Continuing from the last post, I was bored and hungry during lunch time, so I went down the hill a bit and found a cable car station. The cable car went all the way up the mountain and promised a restaurant at the top. Despite the horrible weather, and despite the warnings of the ticket lady that I would not be able to see anything from the top because of the rain, I paid 1200 yen and went up the mountain. I then proceeded to take the space elevator and did a space walk.

Space elevator

Well, no. But I did reach the top of the mountain which was about 660 meters high, and had a nice lunch. I played Sokoban on my digital camera for a while hoping for the weather to clear up, but that didn't happen. When I went down again to catch the cable car back to the surface a guy told me I had to wait for 10 minutes for the cable car to arrive, and that I could wait inside with him. We talked a bit, and I told him that I wanted to go the city center to get some food for tonight. The guy, Kojima-san, told me he would finish working soon and could pick me up at the youth hostel in an hour or so, since he was going to the city center anyway. Great!

Later Kojima-san picked me up at the youth hostel and he kidnapped me. He didn't take me to the city center, but he brought me to his house instead, where his wife had a very surprised look on her face when we walked in. We talked a bit, and Kojima-san made a reservation for dinner in one of his favorite restaurants in the city center, and arranged for some of his friends to join us. Before that he took me to a standing bar where we ate yakitori and drank a bit. I realized that not drinking for four weeks affected my alcohol tolerance. I'm getting drunk a lot quicker than before...

The dinner was absolutely amazing. We ate squid, but not just regular squid sashimi (raw squid), this thing was still moving! It was on a place right in front of me and it was still moving! When I touched it with my chopsticks its tentacles would move around and freak the hell out of me. WTF. We ate squid sashimi from the top of the live squid, and after finishing the sashimi ordered the chef to take the live squid back and cook it for us. Wow. I'm normally not that fond of squid, but this one was delicious.

THIS THING MOVES

Continuing to drink during the dinner I was fairly loose in the evening, and during the taxi ride back to the youth hostel I realized when we arrived that Kojima-san had already paid for everything. During the ride I had a fairly deep conversation with the taxi driver about Japanese crime rates and the difference between rich and poor in Japan.

Coming home to the youth hostel I talked a bit with Hamasaki-san, and he told me about a Japanese saying which goes "一期一会". Ichi go, ichi e. A once in a lifetime encounter. I'm having a lot of those lately.

I'm building up a lot of gratitude towards the people that have helped me during my trip. I hope that in the future I will have a chance to forward the favor to other travelers. It's a traveler's debt, which continues throughout the ages because people are treated nicely when they are travelers, so they want to treat other travelers nicely when they can. I will certainly not forget this, and I will do my best to assist fellow travelers in the future. If everybody could be nice to each other the way we are nice to travelers, then the world would be a better place.

One time, one encounter

Also, Panakuro-san, if you're reading this, please contact me by e-mail, because the e-mail address you gave me didn't work. Thanks!

Posted in Japan , Spirit of Japan | Tagged

Rain

Posted on 2010-05-10 01:48 by rv

Even rainy days have become a routine. I wake up in the youth hostel and take a look outside, realize that it's raining and check the weather report online. I keep hoping that it will stop soon so that I can move on. After checking the weather report I know that it won't stop until late in the afternoon and I decide to stay for one more day. After deciding to stay I wish for the rain to get worse, so that I am justified in my decision. It did get worse, and now I'm all alone in the youth hostel in a dark old room.

I'm quite susceptible to the weather, even when not traveling. Rainy days depress me, and sunny days please me more than the average person. I always thought it's because I like to take photos, which look a lot better with a clear blue sky. Maybe I'm just addicted to colors.

Since today is raining I'm feeling rather down. My stomach feels better since yesterday but my muscles have started to hurt even more. It's at days like this that I wonder if I should just cycle straight to the finish without taking detours. The fantastic Kyushu-zigzag-plan that I made yesterday seems impossible to do on days like today. I haven't quite reached my limits yet. Before the end of this trip I must go out and cycle in the pouring rain, camp in the pouring rain, live in the pouring rain, for the sole reason of challenging myself. If I can't do that then I won't be fully satisfied.

Posted in Spirit of Japan , Thoughts

Whoops

Posted on 2010-05-09 10:12 by rv

I made a bit of a mess of things since the last post, but somehow it turned out all right. At first I got lost about 5 kilometers after departing the restaurant. Figuring I could just random my way into Mordor I followed my instincts (and my compass, a bit) and ended up nowhere. I thought I had to go south-west-ish but I ended up too far south and had to backtrack a bit. Then I got confused by the many different roads in here and ended up taking a road that started south-west-ish but then changed to head south-east-ish, away from my goal. I spent almost an hour getting back to the road I was supposed to take. Guh.

The traffic didn't help me either. I traveled through an urban center with many 4-lane and 6-lane roads, but that didn't stop people from cutting me off and turning left right in front me. That happened to me 3 times today, whereas on this entire trip it happened only once before. People suck at driving here. Pretty much anyone that's about to turn left but finds me in the way usually waits for 5-10 seconds until I'm past the street they want to enter. Not here. These people go past me very slowly, then turn on their indicator, then put their car in such a position that I cannot possibly avoid them, and then they stop. Because it's impolite to cut people off, so they'd rather block the entire traffic lane and create a game of who-goes-first with me. I always take the initiative in those cases because Japanese people are too polite to do anything.

The station is a parking lot. Smart AND ugly.

Ok, frustration out of the way, let's get to more frustration. Finally arriving at the train station that was supposed to be near the hostel, I found the road towards the hostel not very accomodating. In fact, today's hill was by far the steepest climb I have made on this trip, and I had no choice but to push my bicycle up the hill, which took a good 20-30 minutes of pushing, taking a break, pushing again, etc. Today's hill is the mother of all hostel hills.

I take photos while I suffer

For every bit of suffering there is a reward, and for every uphill there is either a beautiful view or an awesome downhill in return. No awesome downhill this time, as I would kill myself without even trying. I have to be very careful to get down tomorrow. However! There is a beautiful view! Let me show you where I am blogging from today:

A nice seat
..and the view from that seat, chotto dark.
A shippy in the far-away

Not bad, deshou? Youth hostels are the perfect place for scenery freaks like me.

I had a long conversation with a (sort of) famous person today: Masahiro Hamazaki, who played as a goalkeeper in the Japanese national football team in the 1968 olympics. Nowadays he's running the hostel I'm staying at tonight. It seems that the hostel is quite popular with sport clubs of Japanese high schools and middle schools, as it's run by a famous person. Tonight there will be an entire class of school children staying at the hostel, and they had booked most of the rooms already, but Hamazaki-san arranged a single room for me so I don't have to bunk in with the schoolchildren. He likes talking to his guests a lot, and since I arrived early today we talked about a whole lot of things. He had more stories to tell than I did though: about the end of the war, the Americans coming, rebuilding Japan, playing football in all kinds of countries. I pretty much heard his life story. We talked quite a bit about how life is so easy nowadays, and that 'my' generation does not know war or hardship. How easy it is to be able to walk out of your house at 3AM and find a convenience store or a restaurant if you're hungry. Hamazaki-san told me that when he was young, there was no such choice, but a car would come by where you could buy ramen, sort of like an ice cream truck. That actually sounds pretty awesome to me. I honestly can't say that I know hardship, but I do know that a plain old bottle of water tastes a lot better after you've cycled 30 kilometers in the burning sun. Hardship makes you appreciate life more.  When we finished our conversation Hamazaki-san told me that I could look up his name online, and if anything he told me was a lie he would give me back the money that I paid for the room. He did, of course, not lie.

It seems that I'm heading to Fukuoka city tomorrow although I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing there. I'm heading there kind of as a safety measure, as it might be rainy. It's also a good starting point for the journey towards Nagasaki. In any case, I'm quite happy to relax today. I didn't feel very well this afternoon, and it was my own fault again. I started out cycling this morning, listening to music that made me want to go faster and faster. By lunch time I was exhausted and wet with sweat. I then went to a family restaurant and ordered 'drink bar', which means you can drink as much (non-alcoholic) drinks as you like, and I drank way too much carbonated stuff.  It's a very satisfying end to the first half of the day, but it makes the second half a living hell. I'll try to control myself a bit better from now on..

Posted in Spirit of Japan , Uncategorized | Tagged

I'm in Kyushu! Now what?

Posted on 2010-05-09 03:16 by rv

I 'm so used to cycling on the road instead of the sidewalk that I just followed the main car road all the way until the tunnel that leads to the fabulous island of Kyushu. When I arrived there I realized that the tunnel was only for cars and I drove all that way for nothing.. I did this 2-3 times before on this trip and previous cycling trips, and it's always funny to see how Japanese people completely panic when they think that you're about to take a car/toll road with your bicycle. Last time a guy sitting in the toll booth ran out towards me, screaming "NO NO NO!!!" while making cross signs with his arms. I only wanted to ask directions... This time was Yamaguchi province so I of course was received warmly, and they pointed me to the right tunnel, which was next to the seaside. I only had to climb a bloody huge hill to get there...

The distance to cross
Going down...
Lots of pedestrios
The border!

I wasn't supposed to cycle in the tunnel, rather I should walk all the way while holding my bicycle. My bicycle is heavy. After about 50-100 meters I realized that my arms would get very tired trying to balance my bike, so I got up and cycled at a walking pace until the end. And now I'm in Kyushu!

So.... I realized that I didn't really have a plan. Tomorrow I'll reach Fukuoka, but it seems to be 'a Japanese city', and I've already seen plenty of those, so no need to stop there for long. I'm at a family restaurant now planning my route for the next 1-2 weeks. I think I'll be zigzagging a bit, first to Fukuoka, then approaching Nagasaki from the northwest. After that I want to cross by ferry to Kumamoto prefecture and see Mount Aso, an active volcano. Then I'll go down the volcano at the east side and reach a little place called Nobeoka on the east coast. From there on it's a long way down to my final destination, Cape Sata.

I'm staying at a youth hostel today. It's actually warm enough to camp and although it's cloudy I don't think it'll rain (much). I thought I'd spoil myself a bit and congratulate myself for reaching Kyushu. Yay me. Although perhaps spoiling is not the right word. I just had a conversation with the owner, and he told me "You'd better bring bread for dinner, cause our dinner service is way too expensive". Obviously the hostel is on top of a hill so there's no restaurants anywhere close, and there's no way I'll climb a hostelhill twice with all my luggage. Bread it is then. Here we go.

Posted in Spirit of Japan , Uncategorized | Tagged ,

Damage

Posted on 2010-05-08 10:39 by rv

It's been very sunny the last week, and as a result my face is bright red and my arm is burned in four different colors. My hands are fine because I'm always wearing gloves, but the piece of skin connecting my hand to my arm is burned the worst, because it's always in the sun, even when I'm wearing long sleeves. The rest of my arm used to be a healthy brown color but it turned a bit too red today, so I had to cycle in the hot sun wearing my raincoat.. My shoulder area is burned worse than my hand but less than my arm. It looks strange.

Despite wearing cycling gloves all the time the trip is finally starting to take its toll on my hands: some of the skin on my palms is starting to come off. It's not unexpected: the last trip I was wearing crappy gloves and the skin came off after one week. I'm improving o_0

I'm in the public bath right now, leeching off their electricity to charge my laptop, which was half empty. After this I need to go out and set up my tent. Ready for another night of cold T_T

Tomorrow I'll be in Kyushu!

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Yamaguchi is nice

Posted on 2010-05-08 09:02 by rv

I had to struggle a bit to get a happy end today, although mostly the struggle was with my own stubbornness.

Woke up this morning freezing cold, as I mentioned in the last post. I can tell you by the way that an 'abandoned' camp site in the middle of nowhere gets darn creepy at night. There were no lights on anywhere, and the wooden fences kept on making noises all through the night that sounded like sticks breaking in half. It's good that I found out soon that the fences were making the noise, otherwise I would've had trouble sleeping. Well, more trouble than just sleeping in the awful cold.

Good morning!

I started cycling when I got a call from Panakuro-san, who wanted to cycle together with me for a bit and show me around. I accepted and we rode together until lunch time, taking all the nice shortcuts and avoiding the big roads. It was a great ride and at a nice pace. After a well-deserved sushi lunch I rode on by myself. We already did 70 km's before lunch and I no longer felt compelled to drive quickly. Instead, I found a seaside road and followed it all the way round, as this is sort of a peninsula. My direction changed from west to south to west again and then north, and sometimes I lost track of the sea because of all the heavy industry around here. Still, it was a relaxing ride. The first half was hilly but nothing too heavy, and the second half was a very very long stretch of wide open road that made me feel as if I was in Australia. Thank you Panorama-san for showing me around!

A little bit hilly
Bridgy

Yamaguchi prefecture is a rather different place. I really like the people here. They don't talk with a strange accent and they're all very friendly. I remember back in Hiroshima (prefecture) where everyone talked gibberish, was generally slightly more rude and traffic was chaos. Here is the complete opposite: I understand everyone, they're all nice to me and there is no traffic at all! It's almost creepy how empty this prefecture is. Huge six-lane roads in a lot of places, yet no cars that drive them. Almost no pedestrians either. Like a ghost town.

Where's Warudo?

By the time I reached 80-90 km's on my daily distance counter I decided it was time to look for a campsite.  I found one barely acceptable place at the beach but decided to drive on, thinking there'll be another place at the coast. For the next 20 kilometers I was then not able to even get close to the coast because of all the huge factories that were taking up all the seaside area. It reminds me a bit of Holland actually; big roads, not a lot of traffic, lots of industry, and very flat, open areas. So nostalgic.

Finally I reached another beach area that looked exactly like the place I was rejected from before coming to Hiroshima: nice beach area, trees, grass, and a fancy restaurant in the middle. Remembering my previous experience I decided to cycle up a nasty hill to get to an 'official' camping site, but staying there for one night would cost me 2000 yen. No thanks. I asked a random person if there was any other place to camp cheaper, and she told me to just cycle up the hill a bit further and there'd be a parking/lookout area with toilets where I could camp for free. Nice!

Thinking I'd do that later I cycled down a bit, found another suitable campsite, and then cycled onward a bit to find a place to eat. That turned out to be impossible. I asked three different people if there was any restaurant or cafe around, and they all told me that the only place is the fancy restaurant at the beach. Damn. This is really countryside. Too tired/annoyed to keep searching I bought food at the convenience store and headed back to the beach to eat. From there it'd be a 10 minutes ride to the campsite. On the way back to the beach I realized that I'd somehow made a full circle and ended up 5 kilometers back where I came from..

Today's weird drink

Today's weird drink: Nata de Coco: a drink that looks and tastes like yoghurtsperm and has tiny squishy solid jelly-like cubes inside that you have to chew to eat. Despite the strange description this is one of my favorite drinks in Japan, and I'm glad I came across a vending machine that sold it.

Condom vending machine

Speaking of vending machines, I came across this one today: a condom vending machine. First time I've ever seen one in Japan. Two strange points about this vending machine: 1. it looks like it was made 50 years ago, and 2. it was located in the middle of nowhere, the nearest city was at least 5 km's away. Peculiar. One pack costs 1000 yen by the way.

Arriving at the beach I decided to ask at the fancy restaurant if it was ok to camp at the beach area. The worst thing that could happen is that they reject me, but I already found another camp site, so that would be no problem. I made a point of parking my bicycle at a place where the person I asked the question to could see it, but there was no need to bother, as all people in Yamaguchi are nice. He told me that it was perfectly okay to camp here, and then he asked me what I was planning to do about bath/shower, and told me there was a public bath very close to here that was very cheap and nice. Excellent! Yamaguchi-ken is great.

Mai beach

So, sleeping spot secured, dinner secured, bath secured. All ready! Tomorrow I have about 40 kilometers to go until I reach a city called Shimonoseki, which is the crossover point to Kyushu. Kyushu! I'm almost there :D

Distant Kyushu

(of course, it will still take me at least two weeks to get the southernmost point...)

I did say that I didn't want to cycle back to Tokyo or even Hokkaido, but I really am  in the right rhythm right now, and I'd feel sorry if I had to give up my current lifestyle for something else. Maybe I can make this trip longer somehow. Hmm...

Posted in Spirit of Japan , Uncategorized | Tagged

The city of light at the foot of the mountain

Posted on 2010-05-07 11:21 by rv

I'm in Yamaguchi prefecture, which roughly translated means 'foot of the mountain' (technically it means mouth of the mountain, but you get it) in a town with the beautiful one-kanji name of Hikari, simply meaning 'light'. Such a nice name. I'm sure you're all dying to know about what horrible hardships I suffered today, but there will be no such thing. Today can be described in one word: perfect!

But if I'd describe today in one word that would be a rather short blogpost, so here's a rundown of what happened today. I got up this morning in my soft nice bed at the youth hostel, saw the dreary weather outside and considered staying another day. I've never been so glad about my decision of moving on as I am today. Somehow I get up and at 8:30 I was eating breakfast in front of the A-bomb dome, which looks even more depressing when it's cloudy. Having memorized some of the road names based on Google Maps, I took off in the south-west direction and followed route number 2 westwards.

Being immobile for the past two days I really enjoyed getting back on my bicycle and seeing new places again. I put on some music, zigzagged between traffic (Hiroshimans really believe that red lights are there to ignore) and managed an awesome pace on the completely flat road, reaching Iwakuni in no-time and skipping Miyajima completely because I had been there before and the weather sucked. It's strange, really. Before starting this trip I really wanted to check out a beach on Miyajima that I had found on Google Street View, but now that I'm actually here I find that it's not really necessary. Considering all the other places I've seen on this trip suddenly that one place doesn't really matter any more. Besides, if I had stopped at Miyajima today I wouldn't have reached the incredible place from where I am typing this blogpost.

Reaching Iwakuni I had a choice of following the big road 2 through the mountains, possibly reaching my destination faster but suffering a lot. I chose to go south on route 188 and hug the seaside road all the way until middle afternoon, when I reached a T-junction. My destination was towards the right, but a potentially beautiful park area lay to the left. Curiosity got the better of me and I turned left to explore the park area. It wasn't 500 meters later that I discovered a beautiful lane of Torii (gates), and as I stopped to take a photo another cyclist caught up with me and started a conversation.

This cyclist, who didn't want his name published on this blog, I will refer to as Panakuro-san. Panakuro-san works at a factory, sometimes night shifts, sometimes day shifts. Yesterday was his night shift so he had the day off today. He said he could show me around the park area, and we could cycle together to the next city where he lived. He'd been cycling casually for most of the day, whereas I had been speeding like a madman (but comfortably). It turns out our averages were the same. I can keep up with lighter cyclists if they're not really trying very hard :D

The next town was about 20 km's away, and it was around 16:00 when we reached it. Panakuro-san told me he knew a very nice place I could camp tonight, but that the uphill to get there might be a little bit tough (kitsui kamo shirenai). I assumed that he was underestimating my super-saiyan strength and I told him not to worry, as I could easily handle a little hill. Obviously I was wrong.

Panokura-san showed me a nice road in the area, between the seaside and the main road. It was flat, nice and not much traffic around. We made good progress when suddenly he turned left towards what I thought was the sea, but then suddenly an island appeared in the distance. The only way to get to the island was to climb a nasty bridge that had a very steep uphill and no space cyclists. The good part about this particular island is that it's a dead-end destination and almost nobody lives there, so there's not much traffic. I was very impressed by the view from the bridge, but things would get even better. Well, after they got worse.

The place Panokuro-san knew was a camping area known in Japanese as 'auto-camp'. In other words, you drive there with your car and bring your (huge) tent and all kinds of camping equipment with you. When we arrived at the 'gate', which turned out to be at least 2km's from the actual camping area, we saw that the camping season only starts in July, and the camping would be closed. Noticing that the road went steeply uphill from there Panukura-san asked me if I wanted to give up and find someplace else. Not wanting to be a weeaboo I told him that this kind of hill is also an easy climb for the awesome man from Holland, and that we could simply cycle to the place and see if anyone was there. Pan-san went up ahead and I didn't see him again for 20 minutes as I was out of breath all the time, suffering my life away as I tried to get up the impossibly steep hill. What a horrible waste of effort it could turn out to be if I really couldn't camp there.

Well, if that had happened I wouldn't have called this day perfect, of course :D It did take me forever to get there and I was in the lowest gear all the time and soaked with sweat when I finally arrived. The camping area was conveniently located on top of the highest mountain on the island, which made it terrible to reach by bicycle but offered a view of the surrounding area that I again have to describe as perfect. It's one of the most beautiful places I've seen on this trip and in Japan. I'm a landscape freak by the way, in case you didn't know that already.

As we looked around for someone to ask if it was okay to camp we suddenly spotted a person coming towards us: the gatekeeper. He was the only person there, and he was just about to leave to close the gate, as it was 17:00 already. The gate would close for cars but bicycles could still get through along the side, he said, so no need to worry. He told us that normally a night's stay at this place costs 2800 yen, about as much as a night in a youth hostel. Since there was nobody around it was not possible to camp here, said the gatekeeper. Then he said: "But since I'm leaving now and closing the gate, there will be nobody here between now and 8AM tomorrow, so if you leave before 8AM (when a different gatekeeper will open the gate again) I'll just pretend I didn't see you". Awesome! I've got the whole camping area to myself, and it's the most beautiful place I've stayed at so far! This is truly a perfect ending to a great day. I spent the last two hours just looking out at the bay area towards the mainland, where all kinds of ships are coming and going, and towards the west where there's more tiny islands, and a beautiful sunset as well. Today could not possibly have ended any better. And I owe it all to Pinocchio-san.

Cycling note: I broke my own distance record and average speed record: 122.57 kilometers at an average speed of 20.70kph. I don't feel very tired even, probably because the road was incredibly flat. The tire held out well today, and there were no heavy bumps on the road at all. I'm still a bit worried though.

You're probably wondering where the photos of today are. Well, I didn't want to spend time choosing which ones to share, so I shared all of them on Picasa instead. Hope you like them. I'll spend the time saved on not choosing and editing photos on stargazing, as the night sky is beautiful today, and so is the city skyline that I am looking at as I type this blogpost :)

(Actually it's only the photos taken with my S90. I'll share and edit the DSLR photos later when I have more time. )

Posted in Spirit of Japan , Uncategorized | Tagged

Hiroshima

Posted on 2010-05-06 07:33 by rv

First, here's a backlog item: the GPS log of a couple days ago on everytrail when I cycled towards Okayama. I got lost after following a cycling path, and that's when I turned on my GPS. I've just seen the log today myself, and it turns out my detour wasn't that great. It also shows the rather boring urban part of the trip.

I'm having trouble getting out of bed in the morning! The youth hostel bed is the perfect softness for me and I just want to lie in bed for the whole day. I'm quite used to getting up early though, and by 8AM I'm usually bored with sleeping already and want to get out and do something. Today I did the usual: went to a conbini, bought breakfast and went to a riverside to eat. Right after finishing breakfast it started to rain.. As I got on my bicycle again I wandered across another bicycle shop and asked if I could borrow a pump to fill up my rear tire to the maximum. Still worried that a lot of air escaped since my puncture two days ago I was ready to pump it up a lot, but as it turned out it was still completely full! Looks like my quickfix worked. The sticky foam spray super puncture fixing stuff is awesome.

Today I went to the Peace Memorial Museum. I'm not much of a museum person, but this museum was an experience that I will not soon forget. I was very impressed. A friend suggested me that this museum is worth seeing twice, something I dismissed immediately before visiting there myself, but now I completely agree with him. This is a must-see place that you have to visit at least once in your life. Rather than the Nagasaki museum, which focuses more on the icky disgusting effects of the bomb, this museum tells you a story and makes you feel as if you were really there, experiencing it firsthand. I want to share more details here, but I think it would be better to go there yourself and see it with your own eyes.

Entrance to the museum
The a-bomb dome
Another one of the a-bomb dome
The museum from afar

After the museum I took a break and walked around the area a bit, which was now pleasantly quiet after the stupid festival was over. Unfortunately the weather was lousy for taking photos, so I moved on towards the city center with a mission: to find a kebab restaurant. Earlier this morning a friend talked to me about kebabs and instilled an insatiable desire in me. I found this place online, put some photos of the google map on my digital camera and set off to find it, which turned out to be quite easy. As a foreigner in Japan it's not always easy to find kebab! Which is a real shame because I'm quite used to eating kebab in the Netherlands, and it's one of the foods I really miss here in Japan.  I can highly recommend Molly's Med Cafe. The food is awesome and it's a great place to relax. They also sell beer by the bucket, but I passed on that as it was still early in the afternoon.

MY KINGDOM FOR KEBAB

As for my general impression of Hiroshima, I get the feeling that everything's a bit more chaotic here than elsewhere in Japan. People walk at random places, there's always a near-accident going on around you and there's a general sense of confusion and lack of sense in the road layout. There's always people cutting across or walking where they're not supposed to walk (or cycling where they're not supposed to cycle >_<;) It's very different from Kyoto, which had perhaps more people walking around on the streets, but somehow everyone managed to avoid each other and things seemed to make sense. What's worse, if you cycle on the sidewalk then Hiroshima is definitely the worst possible city to be in.  If you want to cross a road you first have to go back a bit, zig-zag down a ramp to get underground, get to the other side of the crossing and then zigzag your way back up. At some places there is no underground crossing but you have to climb up a bridge, which is double the amount of zigzags. Not very funny, especially if you're carrying luggage. I gave up on doing it the proper way and just cycled on the road all the time. In the general chaos of Hiroshima traffic nobody seemed to notice or care. (Note that I call Hiroshima traffic chaotic, but this is of course by Japanese standards. There's a lot worse places in other countries.)

I'm going to do a bit of packing today and I have to figure out roughly which way I'm supposed to go tomorrow. I didn't get a map for the last bit of mainland, so I'm relying on my compass until I get to Kyushu. I'm not in a hurry now that the temperature's gone up, but I'm also expecting a bit of rain for the next couple of days, so it might not be the best time to camp. I'm sure things will fall into place with a little bit of traveler's magic, though.

Also, poorly chosen name for a transit line: the Ass tram.

Posted in Cycling , Spirit of Japan , Uncategorized | Tagged

Relaxing

Posted on 2010-05-05 07:55 by rv

I'm not doing much today. I woke up at 8AM and hung around the youth hostel while my laundry was being laundrified. Then I took off on my bicycle, struggled with my gears as I went down the hostel hill and cycled into the city center. I bought lunch at a convenience store and cycled onwards to a riverside park, where I spent most of the day doing nothing. The temperature was just perfect in the shade and I enjoyed finishing a book called The Zahir, which was a very inspirational read. Besides that I picked up a new road-map-book for the next stint of my trip. It'll still take 2-3 days from here until the northernmost tip of Kyushu, but I think I can navigate that without maps.

My little friend the caterpillar
A random park in Hiroshima
Road-map-book-thing

On a very awesome note: the CHDK firmware is available for the Canon S90! I was waiting for this for a long time, and now it's finally there, thanks to the great work of some creative hackers. Besides being able to play Sokoban, Mastermind and Othello on my camera I can now take time lapse videos in very high resolution without connecting my camera to a PC. Excellent.

I've had plenty of time to think, and I am definitely forming a good picture of my situation in my mind. Right now I've identified that my issue is not so much the issue of leaving Japan or not, but rather a choice between following my dreams or accepting reality. If I follow my dreams then I choose to do what I really like: Cognitive Science. This means going back to study, which for me is the easiest to do in the Netherlands, as I get money to study until I'm 30. That doesn't mean that I ruled out the possibility of studying elsewhere though. The other option is, generally speaking, getting a job, which for me means getting a job in Japan, because I really like it here. If I choose a life of comfort it'll be in Japan.

Obviously I haven't decided yet, although formulating my problem in slightly different wordings makes it a choice between something epic (following my dreams) and something boring (getting a job), which is a whole different perspective. That's all I'm going to say about my choices for now, as I like to take a bit more time to think about this myself.

Changing the topic, here's some statistics of my trip:

  • I've been on the road for 22 days.
  • Approximate distance traveled: 1600 kilometers (I'm missing a couple of days because of cyclocomp mishaps and because I forgot to write down my daily stats)
  • I blow my nose about 20 times a day. I'm a snot machine.
  • Maximum speed: 55.4kph
  • Highest daily average: 18.6kph (this drops rapidly at the end of the day because I have to find a camp site or discover the path to the hostel)
  • Longest distance traveled in one day: 118 kilometers
  • Hottest day: 05/04 at ~27C
  • Coldest day: 04/16 at ~4C in the snow!
  • Number of nights spent camping/hosteling/business hotel: 5/10/6   (and 1 homestay and 1 capsule hotel)
Tomorrow there's only one thing I want to do: visit the Peace Memorial Museum. After that I'll move westwards again towards the tip of the main island of Japan, where I will somehow cross over to Kyushu. Today's the sky's been looking a bit gray-ish, but I'm hoping the weather will get better again after a couple of days. I really need to camp more and internet less.

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

A hot day in Hiroshima

Posted on 2010-05-04 13:09 by rv

I made it to Hiroshima! But not without problems...

Let's start at the beginning. I woke up at around 6AM, packed up my tent and went on my way. I had a very good rest last night, and it was the first time that I could sleep comfortably in my tent. Last night I really felt at peace at the shrine, and I sat outside for a long time just staring at the scenery while finishing some leftover snacks. I had a good time thinking about a lot of things, and I felt fresh and ready this morning. For the first 2 hours I alternated between watching the scenery and watching the tiny caterpillar which was crawling up and down on my left-front bag. I imagined what it would be like to be a caterpillar on a bicycle, and I cycled on and on and on. 

I don't know about you guys, but I'm getting desensitized from the continuous beautiful landscapes, so today is just this one photo. I'll share some other stuff instead.

"Sports drink"

The other side said "USA daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!". Weird drinks from random vending machines are part of the fun of cycling in Japan.

My lunch

I went to a restaurant called Coco's, which is a family restaurant chain fairly common in these areas. I was very sceptical at first, because I went to another family restaurant called 'Joyfull' yesterday, which was absolutely shit, but Coco's is bloody awesome. The hamburger tasted more like steak than like hamburger. Excellent.

My dashboard

When I took this photo the caterpillar left already. Note how I managed to fiddle my iPod on there. I got tired of it after half an hour and dismounted it again. There's a whole bunch of scratches on the back of the iPod but iDon'tCare.

I'd gotten an early start today because of camping, and I managed to do about 60 km's before lunch. After exiting the restaurant I turned back onto the road and got ready to take my time and enjoy the remaining 25 km's to Hiroshima. The weather was great, the scenery was nice, and I was ready to slow-cycle the entire afternoon away while looking around random places on the way.

It was after entering a long tunnel that I noticed the first sign of trouble. The tunnel was very dark, and I took the pedestrian path instead of the main road. There were a lot of bumps on the way that I could not really anticipate for because of the darkness. In the middle of the tunnel I hit a big bump, and I felt the inside of my rear wheel hit the tire. That's a very bad sign, meaning there's not enough air in the tires. I don't normally hit a lot of bumps along the way, so I hoped sincerely that it was just because of the stupid tunnel and not because of lack of air, but my fears were justified. When I exited the tunnel I noticed my tire was nearly flat.

My first puncture! What to do? Well, I happened to exit the tunnel into a small city, so my first instinct was to find a bicycle shop and get it fixed professionally. I've honestly never fixed a flat tire myself, and although I have the tools, I don't have the confidence and would probably waste a lot of time fixing something that a professional can fix in half the time. I asked at the place where I flatted out, which happened to be a taxi company, if there was any bicycle shop nearby. Alas yes, but they were closed because of the golden week, which is a national holiday week in Japan. They told me I would not find any bicycle shop in business for at least the next two days.

Thinking how much time it would cost me to fix it myself, I decided to see how long it would take to deflate the tire while cycling on it. I got out my tiny foot pump and pumped as hard as I could, and then cycled on like a speeding (well, sweating) bullet towards Hiroshima, which was at this point only 20km away. If I could olnly reach the youth hostel then I could take my time getting my bicycle fixed later.

My stamina outlasted my tire, which was flat again in less than half an hour, still 15km's away from the city. I had no choice but to stop my bicycle at the side of the road and fix it myself. I prepared for the worst and got out my bag of tricks, which contained this little gimmick:

Yes, this magic spray is supposed to fix punctures. Well, it's surely a lot better than getting out the inner tire and replacing it with the spare, so I tried this first. The usage seemed fairly simple:

Right. Put it on the nozzle and push. Even I can do that. I should've spent a little bit more time reading the instructions, because I pushed way too long and the stuff squirted out of the nozzle like shaving cream. Oops. Oh well, better too much than too few, I guess. I proceeded to pump the tire as hard as I could with the crappy foot pump and proceeded on my way.

It works! The magic spray thing works! I still cycled like a speedrabbit all the way to Hiroshima, but the tire didn't go flat any more. After I reached Hiroshima I started searching for my hostel, and I happened to run into a bicycle shop that was not closed on the way. Lucky! I asked the pro to take a look at my tire, and he found no leak. I told him how I fixed it, and he told me it should be ok. Worst case scenario is that the tire starts leaking again after a week or so, in which case I can use the spray again or just replace the tire. I'll ride with it for now as I've decided to take a break here for a couple of days. If the tire is flat again before I leave then I'll replace it. Oh, and my chain is nice and oily again! It's been squeeking like a thousand birds for the past 300km's but now it's ninja-style quiet again. Like a stalker.

The pro does his thing

Soon after the healing I arrived at the youth hostel, which was yet again at the top of a hill with an impossibly steep road leading towards it. I think they do it on purpose. It certainly killed me. Then I had to carry four side bags, two backpacks and a sleeping mat down a long corridor, up two long stairs and down another corridor before reaching my room. Guh. Oh well, the hostel is three times as cheap as the average business hotel so it's absolutely worth it.

I made it! I'm in Hiroshima. I set out again on my now luggage-less bicycle at around sunset to explore the city. Turns out the youth hostel is very very far from the center, and it took me about 20 minutes to get to the famous peace lane (is that the name in English? I don't know). There's a festival called 'flower festival' in the city today, and tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow. They could have called it 'hana matsuri' in Japanese, but for some reason it's called flower festival in English. Meh.

First impressions of Hiroshima and the festival: people don't get out of the way for me, policemen are annoying, and the stupid festival completely destroys the peace because there's a lot of young loud drunken annoying Japanese guys walking around acting like idiots. I wanted to see the famous genbaku dome and the peace park, but that's exactly the area where the festival was being held. At first I thought it was only me, because all the Japanese seemed to enjoy themselves, but my two youth hostel bunkmates share my opinion: they came to see the genbaku dome, and they don't care about the stupid festival.

The festival wasn't all bad though: right in the middle of the festival street there was a concert going on, and I immediately recognized the song being played as one of the ending themes of an anime called Full Metal Alchemist. Whenever I hear a song in public that I know is anime theme song, I smile, and I feel happy to be in Japan, where the anime culture is so nicely mixed with regular society.

The festival streets were blocked off for the people to walk, and being a good citizen I stepped off my bicycle and walked all the way to the next crossing and the end of the festival. I was about 20 meters away from the exit when I got on my bicycle and started to cycle again, very slowly, towards the exit. There were no people in my way at all at this point. Then suddenly a policeman with a f*cking megaphone runs up to me and starts shouting "GET OFF YOUR BICYCLE!". WTF?! I politely explained the guy in Japanese that I was leaving the area and that there was nobody I could possibly hit. The response: "GET OFF YOUR BICYCLE!". I politely thanked the policeman for the advice, got off my bicycle, walked 15 meters, then got on my bicycle again and cycled onwards. I also called the guy an asshole after he couldn't hear me anymore. hahaha

I finally reached the genbaku dome and hung around there to take some photos. There were a lot of people gathered around there and a Japanese pop group was singing. Something about 'Yamato world peace' or something that really didn't matter to anyone around as they were only there to enjoy themselves at the festival. Lacking the interest to stay there and listen to more of that crap I went somewhere else and found a nice ramen place to eat, then went back to the youth hostel.

Super-saiyan note: remember when Goku does the weight training and then takes the weights off? I felt like that after leaving my luggage at the youth hostel :D It felt awesome to ride without luggage! I can actually start from a standing stop in a high gear and have some form of acceleration (and no squeaking thanks to the oil)! It felt great. Well, it felt great until I had to climb the damn hill that leads up the youth hostel again. Feeling overconfident without my luggage I started too fast and was completely out of breath at the halfway point. Whoops.

I've yet to find the magic of Hiroshima. Perhaps my timing is a bit bad with the flower festival and all that, but I'm hoping to go around a bit tomorrow and discover the nice places, not the populated places. Well, after I do my laundry, that is. I've got a whole new bag of smelly clothes ready to get washed again..

Good night!

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