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Yup

Posted on 2010-04-27 05:50 by rv

I'm in Kyoto. It's smaller than I expected. I tried to take a scenic route but ended up 3 kilometers from Kyoto station, which was pretty much far-out already. I started out this morning in full rain-wear, but took it off again after one hour because it was barely raining and I was soaking wet from my own sweat that couldn't find any way out. That's the second time that has happened by the way. It was nearly dry all the way, but when I arrived in Kyoto it started raining more heavily. Despite the rain I enjoyed myself and wandered around the streets by bicycle a bit. When I went to the hostel to check in I was again too early, but they let me leave my luggage at the entrance. My luggage takes up an entire corridor, it's horrible. I'll try to decrease my luggage even more. There's still some clothes, tech and tools that I can leave behind or send back home.

I also took the opportunity to visit a bicycle shop to get my gears checked. A professional guy spent about 20 minutes tuning and twisting every wire and nut and bolt on the gear assembly, and after the tuning it felt pretty much the same as before. He told me I'd have no trouble at all cycling to Kyushu with these parts, and he didn't recommend replacing them, using the phrase "相性がわるい", meaning that the parts might not work well together, and that replacing only some of the parts could only make things worse. I'm actually fine with that, as lately I haven't been having problems at all. The bike's gotten used to me, I guess. A bigger problem is the brakes: the guy told me that they should immediately be replaced as they are in extremely poor condition. When I told him I'd been cycling the past 300km's with the brakes in this condition he just stared at me and said "anyway, replace your brakes". I guess I should.

Today I'm going to wander around the area near the hostel a bit. Tomorrow I'll have a nice chance to wander around Kyoto by bicycle. The weather should be perfect too. After that I'll have one more day to get rid of some luggage, fix my brakes, and prepare for the second half of the journey. I'm halfway done!

Posted in Spirit of Japan | Tagged

Japan sucks

Posted on 2010-04-26 10:13 by rv

Whoops, the adventure feeling is completely gone today. If I had to use one word to describe today it would be MEH.

I'm in Nara-ken now. Nara prefecture looks almost exactly like Kanagawa. Today's road was extremely flat with only one slightly hilly section. I cycled 80 kilometers today, but because I started early I was already at my destination at 14:30. Not a lot of cycling and not a lot of hills meant that I still had a lot of energy left. Unfortunately for me the area I arrived at was pretty much like Atsugi: just a typical Japanese city with nothing special anywhere in sight. The weather got cloudy too so I was very much bored and not feeling the adventure at all. Right now I'm at the youth hostel, which turned out to be a typical Japanese house next to a railway line. Every 10 minutes a train goes past and the sound of a bell disturbs the neighborhood. I'll be glad to skip this area and get to Kyoto. This is just too normal.

After being in Japan for a while now, I've observed that there are not many outdoor places that are very accommodating to people. For example, today I walked along a road at the riverside, but the entire side of the road was blocked off with barriers making it impossible to get close to the river. There is no possible place to just sit down and relax! Even if you improvise it's still impossible. If there were no barriers, or if the space between road and riverbed was only 10-20cm's wider, then it would be possible, but no. In the entire country of Japan there will be no such thing. There will be no loitering around at random areas. Japanese people go from home to work and back again, and if they want to loiter around they will go to a dedicated loitering place and spend their time in a concrete park instead, even if they have to go 5 kilometers out of their way to find one. This just plain sucks. In Holland, no matter where you are, there will be benches or grassy areas to sit on. I used to forgive Japan for not having these kind of places because Japan is overcrowded and Japan has no space, but that's simply not true. It has plenty of space to put a couple of benches alongside some roads, it's just simply not the 'Japanese way' to do that. It's for the same reason that there are no trash cans in this entire country: you dump your trash at your building's garbage collection place, or at a convenience store along the way. If neither is possible, Japanese people will carry their trash with them for the whole day. Unless they dump it at the riverside, which is why so many of Japan's natural scenes are spoiled by huge amounts of garbage. You suck, Japan.

I very much dislike these points about Japan. Japan is great if you can accept the Japanese lifestyle and don't try to change it. Things are the way they are, and you'd better accept them, or else you'll only get annoyed. If you can accept them, or if you are never confronted with the bad parts, then Japan is a great country. In every other case I can imagine that people won't like it very much. It reminds me of Apple: there's only one way to do things and it's convenient maybe 90% of the time. The other 10% you're screwed and you wish you were somewhere else. But, like Apple, sometimes there is just not a good enough alternative.

I like Japan because people don't bother me. Every0ne minds their own business and leaves you alone. I like Japan (well, the Tokyo area) because of the convenience. There's train stations everywhere, convenience stores, beautiful sights, anything within 1-2 hours travel. I like Tokyo because it's so huge and there's always something new to discover, and I never have to worry about getting lost because there will always be a train station nearby. I like Yokohama because it's beautiful and peaceful and just gives me a good feeling to walk around in. I like Atsugi because it's both near the countryside and near the big cities, and the area around it is great for cycling and exploring.

Lately I'm not looking forward any more to meeting new people on this trip. Especially the Japanese people's reaction is always the same. First I tell them that I'm from Holland and I work in Japan, then they ask me what's Holland and do they speak English there. Then I laugh and tell them that they speak Dutch, which is a little bit like German. Then they ask about my job and my trip and why my Japanese is so good. After that they run out of things to say and end the conversation with "Ganbatte kudasai": well, do your best. The most interesting conversations I've had on this trip have been with foreigners who have been in similar situations as me, living in Japan for a while and then having to decide whether to stay here forever or go home. I was hoping to meet more of those people at youth hostels, but today there's only one old Japanese guy from Yokohama and he's not very talkative. I have more interesting conversations online than in real life..

Tomorrow I'll reach Kyoto. If I start cycling early I'll have two and a half days there, and I should be out of there just before the golden week madness begins. I'll probably get my bicycle's gears fixed when I get there, although they've been remarkably fine recently. I really wonder if they can be any better than this, because even when I first bought the bicycle the gears were a bit wonky. I've finally gotten used to their current state, so I wonder if fixing them will make things better or worse. Oh well. Kyoto, here I come.

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Not bad

Posted on 2010-04-26 03:03 by rv

The weather is good, the roads are flat, and I'm almost at my destination already! The youth hostel I booked is about 25km's further ahead, so it shouldn't take me that long to reach it. Right now I'm at a cafe on the top of a hill having lunch. A 32-year old good-looking waitress was so impressed with my Japanese that she proposed to me. Yeah, things are going alright.

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Wakayama

Posted on 2010-04-25 12:25 by rv

Wakayama is undoubtedly one of my favorite places in Japan. It's a place where I feel at rest somehow, though I can't quite exactly explain why. This is the third time I've been here, and I hope I can come here again some day.

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The road to Kyoto

Posted on 2010-04-25 07:48 by rv

As it turns out it's pretty easy: I just have to follow route 24 all the way north and I'll end up in Kyoto. This road bends nicely around Osaka and goes through Nara instead. They even put a nice youth hostel right in the middle between Wakayama and Kyoto, allowing me to split up the task evenly over two days. Tomorrow will be a little tough, as I still have to climb a medium-sized hill and cycle 80 kilometers ,but I think I'm up to the task. Daylight time is getting longer, and now that I don't have to worry about where to stay at night, I can also continue cycling longer. This means I'll have a nice chance tomorrow to make a detour whenever I see something of interest. Based on the images from Google Earth and Maps this area looks a bit like my home ground in Kanagawa, flat farmland areas surrounded by mountains. Should be a relaxing ride tomorrow. ^_^

I've also booked my hostel in Kyoto in advance, which turned out to be a good thing, because my first choice was already booked. Instead of staying in a cozy small hostel I've now moved to the tourist-factory hostel which can host 150 people. I'm not expecting it to be great, but at least it's cheap. I'm very much looking forward to having a free day to explore Kyoto by bicycle, so that I can check out all those random streets that Kyoto is so famous for.

I'm not sure of which route to take after Kyoto. I need to decide whether to take the north coast or the south coast. Eventually I want to end up Hiroshima, so if I take the north coast I'll have one suffer-day to cross the mountain range from north to south. On the other hand, the north area seems more interesting, mostly because I've never been there, and I already took a train once along the south coast. The south coast will potentially have nicer scenery and be a lot warmer, though. And it'll probably be easier to find accomodation along the south coast. Oh well, I've still got some time to think. If temperatures could only improve a bit then I wouldn't have to worry so much about accomodation... Where's that global warming when you need it?

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Made it!

Posted on 2010-04-24 10:18 by rv

Arrived in Wakayama two hours before sunset! The remainder of the route since the last blogpost turned out to be flat and wonderful, with tunnels in all the potentially difficult areas. I like tunnels. Tunnels are great.

This little shrine captivated me during sunrise.
More fog in the morning.
Thirty seconds before I took this photo an old bent man crossed the road.
Route 42, about 20km's short of Wakayama

Based on these photos you might think that today was a great day. Do not be deceived. Today was FUCKING WINTER.

I'm at a business hotel now, the same place I stayed at four years ago during my first trip. The place is called City Inn, but the pronunciation in Japanese is in fact 'Shitty Inn', as the katakana for the words leaves them no other choice but to pronounce it that way. I've scheduled another break day for tomorrow, as I have to do some budget calculations and decide my route for the next couple of days. I'm going to make a slightly more detailed route tomorrow, and I need to look up at which places I can spend the night without spending too much money. Tomorrow is planning day.

Mini-note: the decision scale that balances the 'stay-here-and-get-a-job' and 'go-back-to-holland' has been shifting recently. Two weeks ago it was about 70-30 in favor of staying. Recently I'm thinking that Japan looks quite similar no matter whether you're in Tokyo or Kyoto or in-between, and besides that, I get the feeling that I'm giving myself a huge overdose of Japan-ness before quitting. Current balance: 50-50.

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New rules

Posted on 2010-04-24 02:53 by rv

Although my haphazard style of cycling is fun sometimes, I can no longer continue. The weather is just impossible. It's about 10 degrees colder than I expected, and this makes camping at random places pretty much impossible. The wind chills you down to the bone in seconds, even inside my tent, which is not very windproof. I camped under a bridge today, a fairly nice place, but the wind was very strong and froze me at night. I've decided not to camp any more at least until after Kyoto. Until then I will be planning my route and my destination every day so I can stay at youth hostels or other cheap hotels instead.

Depending on the circumstances I will also no longer cycle in the rain. Because of the rain I had an unexpected surprise last night: my sleeping bag was soaking wet... It was already very cold inside my tent, but not being able to use my sleeping bag made it worse. I opened it up, reversed it, and used it as a blanket, avoiding the wet parts mostly, but it was still very very cold. I need to laundrify it when I get to Wakayama, which is my destination for today.

Today I am angry at everything, because things are simply not going the way I wanted. I'm always too positive about things, but today is certainly a reality check. I woke up at 5AM from the cold (and at 1AM and at 3AM), proceeded to pack my stuff and started to cycle at around 6AM, taking route 42 towards Wakayama. By 9AM I was completely dead and sleeping on my bicycle. It really felt as if I was blind. I was somehow able to see the road, bumps, cars, traffic lights etc., but I didn't have any energy left to look around and enjoy the scenery, or even figure out which town I was in.

The road is megatough yet again. The uphills are longer and steeper than yesterday, and the wind is incredibly strong, severely limiting my speed on the downhills because of risk of falling over on a strong gust of wind. On the straights I am pushing hard but due to the wind and tiredness I can only manage about 16-17kph today. Despite all the bad parts I've done 60km so far, about 50km left. If the road stays hilly like it was for the past few hours then I will die along the way. If it improves a bit then I might reach Wakayama before dark.

I encountered another touring cyclist yesterday: a young Japanese guy going in the opposite direction of me. He started his trip 5 days ago and planned to circle Japan. He told me he didn't have a tent, but he had a sleeping bag which he would use for example to sleep at bus stops. That's hardcore, and I have to admit that my trip is luxurious compared to his. I thought about continuing to circle the whole of  Japan after I get to the tip of Kyushu. It took about 0.1 seconds thinking time before my mind answered: NO WAY. Kyushu is the end of my cycling trip in Japan, I'm sure of that now.

Also, I smell like shit.

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A dark day

Posted on 2010-04-23 09:08 by rv
Looks a bit like hell.

When I woke up the rain hadn't disappeared completely: it was dripping until in the afternoon. After visiting the southernmost point, which was shit by the way, it cleared up a little, but the sun only came out around 17:00. No photo of the southernmost point because it sucked, so here's the view towards the north instead.

And this was my lunch:

Maguro-don!

Today was a tough day again, with lots of uphills and downhills. Whereas two days ago the uphills were long and impossible, today they were quick and near-impossible. I can't count the number of hills I've climbed today. I stuck mostly to route 42, with one exception: road 801. It seems to have been a big road before, but now it's only used for bicycles. It turned out to be a very weird road, going uphill a lot and it had a very jungle-ish feeling to it, with no civilization near it at all. Unfortunately I ended up back again at route 42 so it turned out to be useless detour. It was fun though.

Route 801

I finally decided to listen to the audio-book of "The four hour work week" while cycling. I wasn't very fond of reading it, but listening to it seems to be ok. I don't agree with a lot of things the author says, but his core ideas are not bad. More later as I listen to it more.

Still about 110-120km's to Wakayama. I will try to reach Wakayama tomorrow. If the hills are anything like today then it's going to be very difficult...

Posted in Spirit of Japan

Cycling

Posted on 2010-04-22 13:23 by rv

The 200MB video finally finished uploading. Here it is, made a couple of days ago near Shizuoka. The camera was handheld and the road was bumpy, so sorry about the shaking.

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Rainy day

Posted on 2010-04-22 12:20 by rv

This rain cloud took the entire day to pass over my area. It's been pouring from morning till evening and I've been in my hotel room doing nothing. Besides the conbini at the opposite side of the road there is absolutely nothing of interest in the town that I'm in. The rain didn't let up even once so I didn't even go outside to take photos. Instead, I spent the whole day surfing the internet, sorting my photos and watching anime. Today very much reminds of the days I spent in the youth heim before I left on this trip. The hotel room very much reminds me of the youth heim: same layout, similar carpet, bed in the same place, almost exactly the same bathroom, except that the hotel room's bathroom is even smaller than the youth heim's. It's life as usual in an unusual place.

A bit of tech talk then, starting with cameras. If I could reconsider I would definitely not have brought my DSLR with me. It's been pretty much a dead weight in my side bag, and I'm hardly ever taking it out. While cycling I take photos with my S90 compact camera because it's just easier to stuff anywhere. If I want to take a photo of nice scenery with my DSLR I have to stop, find a place to park my bicycle against (the stand thingie doesn't support the full weight any more), get off the bike, open the side bag, find the DSLR, take a photo, and then reverse the entire process and continue on my way. Obviously this is silly. Besides that I am hardly ever stopping at places that are so beautiful that I wish I had a better quality camera than my S90. Advice to other people doing this kind of trip: don't bring a DSLR, it's a waste of weight. A micro four-thirds system might just be acceptable though. (Oh, and I would definitely leave behind the silly USB solar charger: there's absolutely no need for it in Japan.)

Back to the S90, the more I use it the more it annoys me. When I want to take a picture of something in the distance I turn on the camera, immediately turn the zoom lever, and nothing happens. I have to wait for the camera to start up first, and then twist the zoom lever, otherwise it won't do anything. This is very frustrating. Another thing that sucks about the S90 is the response time after taking a picture. Usually I take a photo, realize that the exposure compensation should be a bit lower or higher, adjust it and immediately take another picture. I adjust this with the main control ring, but this ring doesn't start responding until a couple of seconds after the photo review screen disappears. I try to make it faster by half-pressing the shutter but that only updated the screen a bit quicker, the controls still won't respond until 1-2 seconds later. These 2 points can piss me off a lot.

Oh, and bad karma to Canon for changing the codec for their videos on the S90. It's using a .mov container and (I think) an H.264 codec, but my favorite programs VirtualDub and VLC are unable to convert this properly to a more compressed format. I'd been meaning to upload a short video to Youtube, but it's 200MB out-of-camera and none of my usual conversion tools work. Thanks Canon for messing something up that worked fine before. I'm almost tempted to use Canon's own software, but thankfully I'm not that far gone yet.

As you may have guessed, I am loving the mobile internet connection and my netbook. I've overestimated the time I would be away from 'civilization', and as a result my netbook's power level hasn't dropped below 9000. Wait, I mean 90%. I can go for 3-4 days without recharging, and still check my e-mail from any location in Japan. It's absolutely brilliant and I would have gladly paid twice as much for this kind of convenience if I had to.

Speaking of convenience, there's an awful lot of Circle-K convenience stores around here. Somehow I always end up at Circle K, even though there's plenty of Lawsons and 7-11s out there as well. Circle-K seems to have picked the best spots. The same goes for restaurants: even though there's plenty of McDonald's and Sukiya's and other Japanese chain restaurants out there, whenever I want to eat there's always either a Mos Burger or a Gasuto near me.

Tomorrow's weather should be nice, so I can continue my trip on route 42. I'll reach the southernmost peak and mini-peninsula, look around a bit, and then continue north towards Wakayama city. I won't reach it tomorrow and maybe not even the day after tomorrow, but I am looking forward to seeing Wakayama again. It's one of the cities I visited on my first trip in Japan, only 3 months after arriving here. That was also a wonderful crazy trip, and I owe it to that trip and the crazy Spanish intern who dragged us along that I have such wanderlust right now. The next few days should be fun :)

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