Escape from Tokyo

Great, I'm in Tokyo. Now how the hell do I get out of here?!

That's how I felt a couple of hours ago. I just got off the ferry at Odaiba and had to make my way out of there. I tried to get on the rainbow bridge but when I arrived at the entrance there was a big sign saying BICYCLES NOT ALLOWED. The security guy there was very friendly and explained to me why bicycles are not allowed: it seems that the walkway is only 1.5 meters wide, so it's dangerous. I tried to persuade him by looking very tired, very foreign, very confused, but even begging didn't help. I had to go the long way round, which took over an hour. Even before the hour had passed I was already fed up with cycling in Tokyo. I have to admit that this unexpected event could easily have been avoided if I had checked the internet before getting on my bicycle..

Since the ferry only arrived one hour late instead of the expected four hours late, I still had some daylight left, but I wasted it by waiting for traffic lights in Tokyo. Since I didn't have any maps of the area I followed my compass+common sense again, which turned out quite well. Avoiding small roads and following big roads in a generally south-west-ish direction got me on the right road to Yokohama, and after I got out of the center of Tokyo things sped up quite a bit. I zoofed past Kawasaki and soon made my way into Yokohama, where the Landmark Tower server as my lighthouse and guided me to my destination. Cycling at night is definitely the way to go when you're in the city: less traffic and less daylight wasted on ugly boring roads.

Yokohama pissed me off quite a bit. I had decided to sleep at a manga cafe tonight, and the highest probability of finding one of those is near Yokohama station. Since the area is quite crowded, especially on a Saturday night, I wanted to park my bicycle someplace safe. I cycled around the station for about an hour trying to find, but there wasn't any. When I was in Hiroshima there was a beautiful underground bicycle parking area that was secured by surveillance cameras, but in Yokohama there is nothing? That's just shit. I was considering giving up and cycling another 30km's to the seaside to plant my tent when I found a manga cafe and a bicycle parking place along the roadside. I'm taking a chance here because the parking place does not seem very safe at all to me. I'll find out tomorrow if all of my luggage is still there.

Tomorrow I'll be back in Atsugi! I'm planning to take it easy for a couple of days and take care of some business, but I'm not really intent on sitting still. Now that I've decided not to stay in Japan for too long, I want to go around more, and it's likely that I'll be going around by bicycle a bit to maybe find some interesting places to camp. That way I'll save some money too. Anyway, first I'd better get some rest, then tomorrow morning I can escape from Yokohama. Good night!

Posted in Spirit of Japan | Tagged , ,

Sakura in Yokohama

As mentioned in the previous post, I went to Yokohama today. The weather was perfect and the sakura beautiful. Here are some huge photos.

On the way to minato mirai
Excellent day for a stroll
Landmark tower
Landmark tower. AGAIN

I also came across this fascinating way of youth transportation:

Baby bag

Check Picasa for more sakura photos :)

(Note: this post took over 1 hour to write because it takes 3 seconds for each photo to load on my netbook. 50D resolution is not very compatible with a slow-by-default netbook..)

Posted in Japan , Photography | Tagged , ,