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A classic!

Posted on 2010-05-03 08:02 by rv

The weather is great, the roads are great, the camping is great, everything is going great!

This morning (and the most part of this afternoon) I found myself following route 2, a boring national road that connects most of the important cities in this area, and eventually leads to Hiroshima. The scenery was quite nice along the way but the traffic was dense, and there were a lot of traffic lights. I had a funny moment approaching a steep incline leading to a bridge. At first I thought it would be impossible, but then I figured I'd try anyway and accelerated like crazy, then pushed the pedals like a boss until I reached the top, completely out of breath. At that moment I heard a loud "SUGEE" (awesome!) from behind me. Turns out there was a gay-suit-cyclist right behind me. I guess he didn't think I could make it :D

On that note, I've become super saiyan rv, but without the spiky blonde hair. Hills that are impossible to do in my mind somehow get conquered with ease. I can really notice my muscles becoming stronger. At the start of the trip I used to drive about 20-21kph and would be at my limit. Now I can go two gears higher (on a flat road with no wind) and do 27-28kph. I think I am almost as fast today, with heavy luggage, as I was two months ago without luggage. Yay me. I've never been athletic at all, or good at anything physical, really. This is probably the most fit I've ever been.

Did I mention that the weather was perfect? It's about 25C during the day, and the mild wind is just perfect to keep me cool while cycling.

Right now I'm at a small beach with a beautiful view of one of the islands in the inland sea, enjoying the afterglow of a warm day. I'm on route 185, taking the seaside way towards Hiroshima. I didn't make it far on this road yet, despite my plan, but that's ok. I found a great place to stay so I'm happy. My original plan was to stay at this beautiful seaside beachpark, but I was stupid enough to ask permission at the only place in the vicinity: a semi-luxurious cafe in the middle of the park. The chef turned me down immediately. I don't like him.

Nice beach
Nice beach

I cycled on and found a nice hidden road that lead to a sandy path at the opposite side of the railroad tracks. There I found another side road that went steeply up the mountain. I walked up there to see what was there and found an abandoned shrine. The road went even higher and changed to a walking path, which I didn't follow all the way but probably connects to the natural area at the opposite side of the mountain. I strongly considered pitching my tent at the shrine, but decided to cycle a little but further just to see if I could find something better.

Abandoned temple
Path to nowhere

I always cycle 'a little bit further', but never seem to find anything better. Except today. I took another turn towards the mountains and cycled up a bit, towards a residential area. I asked some of the local people if there was any place to put up a tent, and they pointed me to a small temple a bit further up the mountain. Arriving there, another person appeared who brought me to the house of the temple owner, and I asked for his permission to pitch my tent there tonight. He agreed. I have a legitimate awesome place to stay tonight!

It was still early so I cycled back to find a convenience store and some food. On the way back I noticed steam coming from a building at the side of the road: onsen! All my basic needs are fulfilled: sleeping place, bath, and food. On previous cycling trips it often turned out like this at the end of the day, and I'm glad I haven't lost my traveler's luck yet. I'll be trying to stay at temples more often, it's worked great so far.

Tomorrow I have about 70-80km's left to reach Hiroshima. I'm expecting the road to be quite hilly, but with my newly acquired super saiyan strength and the beautiful scenery to entertain me, I think I'll enjoy myself.

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ZONK! o_0

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

I was cycling about 25 kph on a big wide boring road this morning when suddenly I saw a flying insect thing rapidly coming towards me. These flying insects usually manage to hit me exactly in the face so I was prepared for the worst. I closed my eyes and waited for the splat, but nothing happened. I opened my eyes again and couldn't find the bug anywhere. Then I looked down between my legs, where an ASIAN GIANT HORNET (or something very very similar-looking) managed to land exactly on my frame.  Bloody hell. I happened to blog about this a couple of days back when I came across the wiki page about insects with the most painful stings, but I didn't expect an up-close encounter like today.. I continued cycling with 25kph, contemplating whether to swipe at it with my gloved hand to get rid of it or to wait for it to fly away by itself. I waited for about 30 seconds and then it flew away. I live to cycle another day.

I ended up not going to the festival yesterday, because for the first time on the trip I'm not feeling 100% healthy. I drank way too much water and other drinks yesterday, and I think that's the reason that my stomach was upset last night. I ended up hanging around the youth hostel instead. I'm feeling better today though.

In other news, the weather's great, it's finally spring. I'm cycling high-speed on a boring road towards Onomichi, where I will take side road along the coast to get to Hiroshima (tomorrow). Onomichi also happened to be the start of my second cycling trip in Japan, where we started our journey into Shikoku. It'll be nice to see Onomichi again.

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The magic of...

Posted on 2010-05-02 09:46 by rv

The magic of what, really? Is it the magic of Japan? The magic of traveling? Or the magic of random chance? I have no idea, but today ended better than I ever expected. In fact, the days that I push the hardest and cycle the longest are the days that are the most fun for me.

Flashback to Himeji, the capsule hotel, 7AM. I woke up from the grunting old salarymen all around me. I like the idea of a capsule hotel, but I definitely don't like the guests. I'll consider it an emergency option from now on, but I won't voluntarily go there again. I got on my bicycle and started cycling southwest towards route 250, another beautiful road that I wholeheartedly recommend to any cyclist in Japan. Slightly hilly but beautiful nature and great fishing villages along the way, plus a very nice view on some of the tiny funny-shaped islands in the Seto-naikai.

I really enjoyed the route a lot and wanted to cycle on and on, but I forced myself to take a break when I reached a great field of grass next to the river. As I took a break there a guy approached me and started talking to me. I talked to him for a while. Ken-san has just retired and has been to Holland 40 years ago, and happened to be living 5 minutes from where I stopped. Just when I was about to leave again he told me to wait a while, and then walked to his house and came back with a bag full of food: strawberries, bread, cookies and a bottle of juice. Brilliant! Thank you Ken-san!

If you go here you can meet Ken-san too

I very much enjoyed route 250 for the entire morning, but in the afternoon I got closer to Okayama and it changed into a typical boring city road. I took a detour when I saw a sign that said 'cycling road', but the cycling road soon ended and I lost track of which road I was on. I could have checked the map, but instead I took the most interesting looking road and let my compass point westward. It didn't work that well because 20 minutes later I was back at route 250..

At this point I was way ahead of schedule. I expected to cycle about 80km's today but I reached Okayama which was about 100km's from where I started. This was unfortunate because there is no way to find a pleasant camping spot in the middle of a city. I considered a 24-hour public bath but it was closed, so I quickly cycled on in the hopes of reaching the other side of the city before sunset, where hopefully a new section of countryside would start.

ZONK

Well, that didn't happen. Instead I wandered into rich-people-city. I don't even know the name of the city, but there were huge expensive hotels and expensive Porsche's and Mercedes' everywhere. Not exactly a place to camp either. I had to cycle further.  And further I cycled. After 80 kilometers it's not really fun any more, cycling just happens automatically. At 100 km's I am ready to accept pretty much anything as a place to stay for the night. Today I cycled 118 kilometers and ended up in a town called Kurashiki. At this point I was fed up with the idea of camping and as soon as a business hotel appeared on the road I went in. Fully booked, damn. The kind lady gave me a map of all the hotels in the city, and I cycled to the next business hotel. Also fully booked. Double damn. Then I noticed the item at the bottom of the list: Kurashiki Youth Hostel. Brilliant! I somehow managed to end my day of cycling near the only youth hostel within 30km's! :D

The brilliance does not end there: as it turns out there is a festival in the city tonight, and that's why all the places are fully booked. After typing this I will go out and enjoy a nice Japanese festival ^_^. It's these days that are the best, really. Great weather all day long, the morning started out awesome, and then as time passed my mood got worse and worse, but somehow everything turned out great in the end. It always does. I wonder why.

The youth hostel was located in an inconvenient place as usual, and I had to climb a nasty hill to get there. The view of the city from the top of the hill was beautiful though, and I enjoyed talking to a nice young lady while watching the sunset. A great end to a great day.

The view from hostel hill

Also, Hiroshima: 180 km's! I'll be there in two days! :D

(I am very very very tired...)

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A bit windy but otherwise awesome

Posted on 2010-05-02 02:57 by rv

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Capsule hotels

Posted on 2010-05-01 22:17 by rv

Capsule hotels are full of disgusting old Japanese salarymen who will not live very long because they work too hard and smoke too much.

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Found something

Posted on 2010-05-01 12:19 by rv
No pain no gain
Yesterday I was being very kindly hosted by a friend who worked with me at Asahi Kasei for a year. He and his girlfriend offered me a place to stay for the night in Sasayama, and they immediately made me feel at home. So much at home in fact, that while I was relaxing and playing games with Mathieu I almost forgot about my trip o_0. It was great to have a content-filled  conversation in English for a change, and Mathieu's lifestyle showed a little preview of what could happen if I choose to stay in Japan. Despite, or perhaps because of the homely situation, I chose to cycle on to Himeji today. It's as if I've suddenly been reminded of why I'm doing this trip, and I don't want to lose my momentum.
Leaving Sasayama I continued to follow route 372 and was not disappointed. The beautiful landscape continued on and on for another 20-30 kilometers. The weather was great, the uphills tough, and the downhills rewarding. I put on my favorite music, struggled hard on every uphill and then found what I was looking for on the following downhill. On each uphill pass the scenery changes and the roadsides change to mountain rock or dense forest. The temperature cools down in the small passes, which is great because I'm sweating a lot on the uphills, which were a lot tougher today than yesterday. After completing the uphill there's sometimes a tunnel on top, which is freezing cold to cycle through. Then the mountain road starts to go down rapidly, and the mountain walls disappear, the road becomes wider, and suddenly I'm cycling down a hill with 40kph and the scenery opens up and reveals some rice fields hidden between the mountains, and a small village. There's no traffic, almost no people, the road decline is perfect so I can maintain 30-40 kph all the way through the valley, the perfect speed to enjoy the scenery. And then I reach the end of the valley and the next uphill begins.
That's what I found. The joy of cycling downhill on a wide open road at a nice speed with a beautiful scenery. That's what I was looking for when I started this trip, and that's what I remember from previous trips. It's not just the beautiful scenery, the uphill suffering is as much part of this experience as the downhill thrill. You can't have one without the other, or else it just wouldn't be the same. It's the ultimate reward for a tough physical challenge. On my first cycling trip to Kyushu I experienced this feeling while cycling along the coast of Shimashima island and Nagashima island. On the second trip I found this on route 26 and route 147 on the east coast of Shikoku. Now I can add route 372 wast of Kyoto to that list. It's been a long time since I felt this happy.
Conbini lunch is delicious and saves time

After crossing a bunch of hills the road turned towards the south, and as I got closer to Himeji the road changed into a countryside road similar to the ones in Kanagawa, sometimes passing through towns, sometimes cycling between ricefields, but the feeling of being surrounded by mountains was gone. The wind had picked up too and I was having a medium-hard time trying to keep my speed up. This turned out to be no problem, as I overestimated the distance to Himeji, and I arrived at Himeji with plenty of time to find a hotel and to take some photos of the castle before sunset.

The famous castle

Actually, finding a hotel took me quite long. I found a very cheap hostel (2100 yen for one night) on Google, and had to jump through some strange hoops to find the address. I took a photo of the google map on my compact camera and went off trying to find it, ending up in a residential area that was impossible to navigate. I had to ask directions three times and got sent to three different directions. I finally found the place by myself, but no hotel in sight. Considering how difficult it was to find online I guess it either no longer exists or never existed.
I decided to cycle to the station instead and find a business hotel. Big problem: it's golden week right now and a lot of hotels were either fully booked or they decided to kindly raise the price. One crappy (shitty, actually) hotel told me a one-night stay was 7500 yen. When I asked why it was so expensive they just told me "it's golden week". Running out of options, I got lazy and walked into a YMCA building that happened to show up in front of me, and I asked if they knew any cheap place to stay. Yeah, maybe a weird thing to do, but it paid off :D the YMCA guy showed me the way to a capsule hotel, something typically Japanese that I never had a chance to try. Until now.

Human storage facility
Inside one of the breeding chambers

Capsule hotels are weird. Weird beyond just the idea of sleeping in a tiny cabin and paying money for it. It's a very manly world here in the capsule hotel. I'm on the fifth floor in the common area right now, and on the fourth floor is a public bath. The common area has one huge TV showing manly things like baseball, or you can pay more if you want to see a soft-porn movie. Note that this is the common room and all the guests of the hotel can freely sit here. There is no non-smoking section, so I have to tolerate an annoying smoking guy who is sitting behind me. He can look at my screen, I wonder if he can read English.

Even the lockers are tiny

The sauna/public bath thingie is even weirder. I thought I understood Japanese bathing etiquette pretty well after going to onsen for four years, but this is slightly different. First, you get a locker to put your stuff in, but the locker area is right next to the entrance. If I took off all my clothes there I would have to walk to the bath area naked and anyone entering the sauna could see me. There were no Japanese people around to mimic, so I had to figure out what to do. I first took a look at the bath area while clothes, and saw more naked Japanese people, and a bunch of people in the sauna all wearing the same underwear. Another weird point, because usually the sauna is shared with the public bath, and everyone's usually naked. I went back to the locker area and found a stack of underwear ready to use for anyone. That idea didn't appeal to me, so I kept my own. I was about to undress and walk to the bath area when a young lady worker suddenly walked by. I've been to many onsens in four years of Japan but I've never seen a young lady in the male bath area (although there were sometimes old ladies doing the cleaning). This confused me even more. Finally a Japanese guy came in and I followed him in, finally able to take a bath. This place is very weird to me, and has a different etiquette from Japanese onsen baths.
Going back to the topic of cycling, tomorrow I'm going to head towards Okayama, the next big city on the way to Hiroshima. I'm planning to take a ziggy zaggy route that will hopefully be more fun to take than the big roads. Unfortunately Okayama is about 120km's from here, and while I could do that in a day, I'd be very tired and stressed out to make it in time. I've been looking for hotels or hostels about 80-90 km's from here but couldn't find anything cheap. The good thing is: the weather's been getting better recently! No rain, temperatures rising. I think I can camp tomorrow and the day after tomorrow without any trouble.

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The path to Sasayama

Posted on 2010-04-30 12:50 by rv

While preparing my bicycle this morning I ran into my roommate, tough Spanish guy. It turns out his name is David and he is on the way of a very epic journey, crossing many countries like New Zealand, Japan and Thailand. We had a wakeup coffee at the Starbucks before parting ways. Good luck David!

Fully loaded

David also started out with tent and camp gear but decided early on to send it back home as he would hop from youth hostel to youth hostel. It seems we both reached the same conclusion. I'm still holding on to my camping gear though. The weather will get better, dammit, because I say so. (That said, today was fairly cold and had light rain at times...) Also, I've discarded some more luggage and managed to put my bright blue bicycle carrying bag inside one of the side bags. I'm losing weight :D

According to Google maps I had about 60 kilometers to travel today, but somehow when I reached my destination it turned out to be 80. I didn't make a lot of detours today, but I did get lost in Kameoka, a city to the west of Kyoto. I had to climb a nasty mountain pass to get there, then coasted all the way to the city not really paying attention. Then I suddenly realized I had probably gotten too far and tried to backtrack in a creative way, accidentally climbing another nasty hill. That ended up nowhere, and when I asked for directions it turns out I wasn't too far yet at all, and I had to continue a bit further on the previous road. Oh well.

My destination today was a place called Sasayama. A single road, road 372, would take me there without any detours. Or without much of anything else either, as it turned out. R372 is absolutely one of the purest roads I have ever cycled in Japan. And by pure I don't mean nature, although there's plenty of nature things to see too (rivers, mountains, GRASS). It was pure because it was classic Japan the way it's supposed to be. A road slaloming between hills, occasionally passing by a small village hidden between the mountains, sometimes climbing a bit and passing through a pine forest or bamboo forest, and then going down again to the next hidden village. There is absolutely nothing to spoil the experience: no foreigners, almost no traffic, no vending machines, no convenience stores and no restaurants. Small villages don't need restaurants or convenience stores, they have a tiny grocery store and nothing else. There's no traffic because nobody goes there, and I barely saw anybody even walking outside. No idea where all the people went, but it was a very peaceful ride. Well, until I got hungry, that is. The only restaurants that I found on the way were closed, so I had lunch at the only conbini on R372, next to a giant huge tree. Not bad.

Here's some pictures of the road. The photos themselves are nothing special, and I will be the first to admit that from a photographic standpoint they suck. But imagine cycling in this area and you will realize how awesome this road is.

It was a bit cloudy today
And a bit hilly
And a bit foresty
A wide road, no traffic, and nice scenery. Perfect.
The only convenience store on the way

I keep on climbing hills that are way too steep for my comfort zone. I start to climb them optimistically in a high gear and then change gears lower and lower until either I reach the top of the hill or run out of steam. I'm trying as much as possible to keep my front gear in the highest gear at all times, partly because it's a nice challenge, and partly because it's near impossible to switch back to a higher gear after lowering it. It even got worse after the last bike repair guy 'improved' it. There's just no fixing the gears on this bike...

I'm getting stronger though. I still run out of steam fairly quickly, but when I started my trip that meant that I had to stop at the roadside and wait for my heart rate to go down again to an acceptable level. Right now I'm running out of steam while still in middle gear at the front, and instead of stopping to catch my breath I cycle up the hill slower and can still catch my breath. It's a great feeling to be able to do something that would be impossible for me just one month ago, and this motivates me to try even harder.

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Dr House

Posted on 2010-04-30 12:20 by rv

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Last day in Kyoto

Posted on 2010-04-29 11:23 by rv
Kyoto station

I kind of forgot to stop by the station until today. I somehow managed to avoid it completely, thanks to there not being many road signs that point to the station. This morning I woke up, bought breakfast at the conbini and ate it the riverside, which is an incredible place to hang out. There's always something to see or to do. Joggers, families playing, salarymen jumping the rocks in the river to get to their job 1 minute quicker than by taking the bridge, the nice old-fashioned houses being renovated by a construction crew, young people practicing their instruments, and a lot more. No matter what time of day there's always something to do. It's become my favorite area for the past two and a half days.

After finishing my breakfast I randomcycled to the station, noting suddenly just how many foreigners there are in Kyoto. I cycled along some big streets and found more foreigners, changed my route to include smaller streets and roads half-hidden between buildings, and I still saw a lot of foreigners. No matter where I went, there seemed no end to the stream of foreigners approaching me. Most foreigners who have lived in Japan for a longer period of time may recognize this phenomenon, but us 'native foreigners' tend to dislike seeing other foreigners in Japan. The foreign presence bummed me out for a bit and I didn't do much for the rest of the day except relax and surf the net.

Nearing the end of the day I planned to replace my brake blocks, as scheduled. Things did of course not turn out to be as easy as that, as somehow the new brake blocks I mounted at the rear somehow didn't fit properly. Seeing as the old ones were really worn out I went to a bicycle shop to have it fixed. Result: a new wire to the rear brakes: 1800 yen. Guh. And it's still not perfect because the wire hits the fender when I brake, possibly bending the fender and breaking it. We'll see how that goes. This bikeshopguy also pointed out to me that my bicycle really sucks, and every important part needs replacing, starting with the wheels. He said that the way my wheel connects to the tire is really bad, and may cause a puncture real soon. If it was up to him he'd replace the gears, wheels, tires and everything else, but I said no thanks, and I'll see how for I get in my current state. At least the brakes are fixed and fresh again.

Hanging out at the riverside

During the day I very much got the feeling that staying 2 days (3 nights) is nearing my limit, and I really want to continue cycling. Very much like the anime Kino no Tabi, stay at a place three days and then move on. Despite this feeling of wanting to move on I'm really feeling comfortable right now, here at the youth hostel. After two days of cycling around Kyoto I think I'm starting to understand the city, and I'm figuring out which things are where and how they're connected, and somehow it's starting to make sense.

The youth hostel's been the best so far, and staying for three days gave me a good chance to get to know people a bit better, and for them ask me more things other than the "So you're cycling, does your butt hurt?" standard conversation. I talked about crime in Japan with two middle-aged ladies today, discussed touring by bicycle with my roommate, who happens to be a tough Spanish guy who is also cycling Japan by bicycle after having come from New Zealand, and made conversation with the youth hostel ladies in the evening. Thanks to this I got a nice pointer to this website called CouchSurfing, which is (to me) surprisingly popular in Japan. I'll have to try that out some time.

Tomorrow I'm off towards the west to a place called Sasayama to meet a friend who kindly offered to let me stay at his place for a night. It looks like it'll be a mountainous road, but it's in the right direction and for a good cause, so it's worth it. After that I have yet to decide whether to take the 'normal' path along the southern coast towards Himeji, Okayama and Hiroshima, or to go crazy and crossover into Shikoku, cycle the hell out of Shikoku and catch a ferry towards the middle of Kyushu, cutting at least two days off of my trip. If I do that I'll have to skip Hiroshima and the Dutch theme park near Nagasaki, which were two of my destinations for this trip. The upside is that I'll be in the countryside taking less busy roads and there's more chance of adventure. I'm 90% sure that I'll take the road to Hiroshima, but I might be in a crazy mood and end up doing Shikoku instead. We'll see.

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Unrelated but scary

Posted on 2010-04-29 01:25 by rv

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_giant_hornet

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