A while back one of my blog followers from Australia named Pual Evans informed me he was coming to Japan on a cycle tour and would look me up once he arrived in Niigata. So on Sunday he dropped by Furumachi Bicycle and had a chat about his adventures on the road and cycling in general. After work we went to Cafe Velo for a drink and told me about another cycle tourist called David Onizuka from the US who also happened to be in town that night but on Sunday night they were not able to meet up , but they ran into each other on Monday and both dropped by my shop for a chat. I am quite jealous of cycle tourists that drop by my shop as I did several long cycle tours years ago and its great fun to spend several months on the road touring around looking at new places and meeting interesting people along the way. So guys best of luck for the rest of your journey and if you are ever back in Niigata City again please drop by and David get rid of that Gel seat cover that on your new Brooks B17 !
Here is a link to Davids website http://davidonizuka1.wix.com/cyclingthroughjapan We are not here to "preach to the choir" regarding the more obvious aspects of bike safety such as the importance of helmets or bike lights. Rather, the post will consider Japanese traffic law as it relates to cyclists as well as the challenges and dangers posed to cyclists in Japan by road conditions and motorist behaviors. The Law Bicycles are considered light vehicles and are allowed on motorways, unless posted. In principle bicycles are not allowed on sidewalks. Bicycles must be equipped with a front light and brakes front and rear. Japan does not have a helmet law Bicycle-related deaths USA/ 677 (2011, latest year for which I could find data, down from 721 in 2001) Japan/ 700 (approx. annual number); this figure was cited by the teacher at my school who is responsible for bike safety in a recent speech to students- 80% of the 700 students ride to school; the number was sourced to the National Police Agency For comparison, USA/ 317,000,000 (pop.) Japan/ 127,000,000 Now, without reliable "exposure" data, these numbers may not be particularly helpful. However, based on the 30 combined years of experience Don and I have cycling in Japan, we can attest that Japanese roads and motorists offer serious challenges to cyclists' safety. The Roads Roads are often narrow and congested, made even moreso by parked vehicles. Bike lanes are practically nonexistent. Japan loves tunnels, which can be quite harrowing in heavy traffic. The Drivers * drive too fast, in particular the cabbies * ignore red lights * overtake cyclists and abruptly turn, sometimes with no signal (called "winker" in Japan) * pull out or turn in front of approaching cyclists, necessitating expert handling skills by the latter (in this regard, beware of other cyclists, too) * pass too closely * are unaware that cyclists have the right to use the road The Cyclists * ride while texting (ditto the drivers and the pedestrians) * cycle while holding an umbrella * ride on the wrong side of the road * take blind corners at speed * veer into the path of an overtaking rider (pedestrians do this too) It hardly needs saying that not all cyclists and drivers are unsafe or inconsiderate. Nevertheless, we encounter the above often enough to know the importance of unceasing vigilance and defensive cycling. There is plenty of great cycling to be had in Japan; mostly it's far from the madding crowd. I woke up early and rode towards the famous ramen town of Kitakata were I stopped at the station to use the toilet , while at the station I saw on telly that bad weather and rain was forecast to hit later that day so started the ride out of town towards the mountain R 459 , right at the turn off I stopped at 7/11 for breakfast and somehow forgot to turn left but headed straight instead. After a few kms I realized my mistake turned around and soon found the correct road. The weather was cool which made cycling easy but if I was to make it to Tsugawa early in the afternoon I would not be able to take many breaks. I stopped at every fresh water spring I came to and even though I had ridden this road several years ago things had changed quite a lot at least on the Fukushima side were they were busy widening the narrow mountain roads. There are only a few small towns along R459 , most of them are very small one of them called Miyako is famous for its Soba noodles and there are fields of buckwheat going all around the village. Once getting onto the Niigata side it was clearly to see that it had rained early that day making some of the steeper down hill sections on switch back roads a little scary but thank god I still had some stopping power from my disk brakes. I keep pushing on and soon had re entered Niigata prefecture and the weather by this time had become much hotter , soon I was alongside the mightly Agano river and around this time I thought I had a chance to make it back into Niigata that day. Even though I took 6 days off the thought of a free day before returning back to work sounded pretty nice and the idea of spending a night in the rain did not seem very appealing. I rolled into Tsugawa station at 2pm having covered 90km already and asked the station master how far it was roughly was into Niigata city he said is was another 57km !. I did a quick calculation and accessed my current condition - could I ride another 57kms along the river and into the city. I decided I could so I pressed on and about 10 kms out of Tsugawa I was stopped by some guard men at a road works site, I had experienced a lot of this throughout this tour so I thought if I wait a few minutes I will be allowed to pass. To my horror this was not to be the case , the head guard man told me the road had been washed into the river and when I asked if I could pass through on my bicycle he said it was not even possible to walk past the landslip so he said I had to return the way I had come back up the road into Tsugawa and take the busy R49 down into Niigata. Why they hell had they not put another guard man 10km back up the road at the turn off warning road users that it was impossible to pass !. I had to decide quickly what to do and the options were
Option 1 . Stay the night free camping in the river side park and most likely face a night of heavy rain Option 2 . Find the nearest 7/11 quickly stock up on food, water and snacks and hit R 49 for a 3 hour ride back to Niigata City I decided as it was already 2.30pm to get to the nearest 7/11 , soon I had found one and bought the following supplies to get me back into the city. 2 ltrs water , hamburger, pack of fried chicken cutlet sandwiches , 2 x snickers bars , I consumed everything but one snickers bar and refilled the 2 ltr drink bladder plus I still had more Soy Joy bars left over as well and fast the busy R49 back to Niigata City. One great thing about R49 is that is mostly downhill but apart from that I was faced with a tunnel that was 2666 mtrs long, not my ideal road to take home but as soon as I could I got off R49 onto some more quiet back roads and crossing the Agano river back towards the city dusk was already upon me and with my lights on I entered Niigata city to finish my tour. The last day was one of the toughest days I have ever had on any bicycle , but I pleased to cover 153 km in 11 hours on a loaded single speed and had a fantastic adventure over the past 5 days. After a nice sleep in I thought it looked like rain so quickly packed and had breakfast before riding a nice river side cycle road towards the center of Aizu Wakamatsu . Aizu being an old castle town has a lot of history and some fantastic historical buildings that have been preserved, some are now being used for cafes, shops etc but at least they did not tear them down like a lot of other cities throughout Japan. I really just pottered about the city all day , eating lunch , taking photos etc before visiting Tsuruga castle which was packed with tourists and kids on school trips. I bought an Aka Beko which is the towns mascot , It is a red cow painted with white and black spots and the one I bought was meant as a mobile phone accessory so I tied it to my handle bar bag for good luck. It was about 30 deg in Aizu that day so I waited until the weather had cooled down a bit before cycling to a nearby small town were I free camped in a park by the river that night. It was an easy day so I slept well and considered cycling all the way back to Niigata city the following day if I could make it to Tsugawa in Niigata prefecture in reasonable time
After waking up at 5am and packing everything I was ready to go at 7am and as it was only 18 deg it made for easy riding until mid morning when it was already 26 deg . I stopped along the was a a small local shop like a 7/11 and bought a few snacks for the long ride ahead . The new route led up a valley that rejoined the R 400 that I had intended to take at first. The road I was now on was called R 401 and very remote with almost no traffic at all, nearer the top it became too steep to cycle so I was forced to dismount and walk about 10 km to the summit. Upon reaching the top I stopped for a rest and took a photo of my bike next to the sign the area was full of light tan moss and grass and looked like nobody ever ventured this way very often. About 50 mtrs down the other side of the mountain I noticed my left foot was really slippery which made cornering dangerous, so I stopped to clean off what I thought at first was some kind of moss - it was not moss at all it was some of animal shit, maybe bear or tanuki but hell it stunk and it was now all over my left shoe & pedal !. All I could do was to spit water at it and use a few tissues to clean most of it off but later on I found some running water and did a better job of it. Not long later after passing through the village of Showa and short section of steep down hill , I rejoined R 400 and with a bit more walking and a nice down hill I came to the turnoff for R 346 which was 98 % down hill and safe to ride. It is amazing to me that people live in here , at this time of the year it is very beautiful but I could easily imagine it with 4 mtrs of snow or more in winter making getting out for supplies very difficult or impossible. Finally I came to another turn off which according to my map was a short cut across to the historic village of Ochijiku , a local standing on the corner told me this was the correct road to take but warned me it was very tough, long and winding but I thought how bad can 16 km really be and proceeded up hill . By this time it must have been nearly 30 deg and I was forced to dismount once more and the switch back climb became too steep to ride. Half way up I came to a fantastic fresh water spring , so sat down in the shade to rest , filled both my 2 ltr drink bladder and tin cup and was suitably revived for the remainder of the ride towards the village of Ochijiku . I rolled into the main street past tourists out for a day trip covered in sweat and dust and looked for a place to eat some cold soba noodles which is a village specialty . These days the village caters for tourists in a big way with every house converted into some kind of shop. This area is a part of the famous Nikko highway, back in the old days when people traveled by foot or horse to get to the Samurai castle town of Aizu they most likely passed by here, maybe they had soba noodles for lunch as well. The place I chose let me park my bicycle outside, the main street is made of dirt and cars, motorcycles are banned from entering it but luckily they did not mind a cyclist walking up to their front door. The soba noodles were pretty good and the old lady who is the owner gave me a free glass of local wine. I had already ridden 70km by the time I had lunch and left at 2.30pm for the last climb up to the dam and decent into Minami Aizu where I was going to stay at a riverside campground. A bit more walking was needed to get to the top but as the locals said it was only 30km into Aizu I thought it could not be too bad. The view of the dam was nice but the decent was far worse than I experienced the day before, not only was it about 10% downhill , the switchbacks continued on forever . I was lucky it was dry as I could not have made it in the rain, I was really working hard to stay in control on such a long steep winding decent but somehow made it to the bottom with mishap. After getting into Minami Aizu I soon found the camp ground and after checking in I asked were their showers were located only to be told they did not have any, but they said there is a nice onsen nearby which sounded perfect, then they said unfortunately its closed today . So after a 100km ride which was pretty tough I was unable to take a shower and settled to try and wash myself in the tiny camp bathroom instead before cycling a few blocks away to the coin laundry as I was running out of clean clothes, it did feel nice drinking a beer and eating chips while waiting though and on my return to the campsite I cooked up another instant pasta in a typhoon, maybe I should have brought the wind shield after all . The next day was to be a rest day exploring Aizu Wakamatsu so at least I could sleep later than normal.
After a fantastic sleep I woke up at sunrise which was about 5am and started packing up my tent and loaded my bike, while I was doing that I had a coffee which was a great way to start the day, but the local mosquito population was also keen on break fast namely my arms and legs whilst packing my bike, I tried to fend them off but without success and was happy to ride away from them at 7am downhill and back onto R 290 towards my goal for the day the town of Tadami in Fukushima Prefecture. As stated I started off each day with a coffee , instant Cafe Latte is pretty good and simple and usually ate Soy Joy which is a kind of fruit snack bar for breakfast whilst riding, until I could find somewhere to buy something else to eat - this way I did not have to carry a lot of food on the bike. Breakfast was in Tochio at a 7/11 , it would have been great to eat Tochios famous Aburage which is a kind of giant fried tofu but at 8am all these shops were still closed. Riding out of Tochio it was 30 deg by mid morning and made the climb up and over the pass into Unoyma really tough but my choice of 33T - 16T gearing was perfect for the climb and was pleased to say I did not have to walk any of that section. I made up my mind at the start of the tour if my current speed dropped below 10km I would get off and push instead. As you can see from the above photos the scenery was awesome, all this was new country to me as I had not ventured this way before and soon found myself at the start of a long tunnel ! In japan they love tunnels so if you are planning on touring here bring or buy a set of front and rear lights and use them in all tunnels, cars and large trucks drive very fast through them, sometimes there is great lighting, sometimes hardly any at all, sometimes water is dripping from the roof which can be a bit scary on a bicycle !. Even a car travelling at normal speed sound like the bullet train approaching - best advice is use both your lights and get through the tunnel as quickly as possible to stop and turn your lights off , if there is a wide footpath in the tunnel use it instead of the road. Some tunnels are quite short such as 50 mtrs long but on this tour the longest tunnel I rode through was 2666 mts long ! I soon came to the turn off for traffic heading into the mountains for Fukushima and just up the hill I came to Irihirose where there was a pond , rest area and a couple of shops. The banner advertising soft cream looked to good to refuse so stopped for a while while enjoying a fantastic mango flavored soft cream , refilled my 2 ltr hydration bladder for the long haul up and over the mountain, answered lots of questions from curious tourists about were I was going and set out . Little did I know this was to be one of my hardest 80km rides of my life , it was beautiful, long & winding and just never seemed to stop. I would say I rode about 90% of the road before the grade became far to steep to cycle and was forced to walk for at least an hour or more in 30 deg heat towards the summit. From the above set of photos you can see the type of road I was travelling on , a lot of sections were so close to the mountain that snow shelters had been built to cover and protect the road, but even so there was a lot of construction going on repairing landslides which would be fairly common in such high altitude . From time to time in the Japanese countryside you come across fresh water springs hence the reason for the tin cup attached to my handle bar bag, there is nothing better than a nice cool drink of spring water and its safe as well. When my 2 ltr bladder of water became warm it was easy to refill it with cold spring water instead. Upon reaching the summit I took a couple of photos of the border signs and entered a long tunnel which lead to one of the longest and most terrifying downhills of my entire life . I was sure there was enough material on my Avid BB7 disk brake pads to get me through this tour, but with constant braking for well over an hour on steep sometimes 10 % grades I was beginning to wonder !. I saw plenty of evidence of cars or trucks that had lost control and skidded into the barriers and took as much care as possible to control my speed below 40 km per hour which was difficult as my hands were screaming to let go. Further down there were a few flat sections but overall it was a demanding downhill on a fully loaded touring bike , now I can see why very few cyclists have ridden this route. Even though it was very remote there were quite a lot of traffic, mainly large trucks and motor cycle riders. The view of the lake below was fantastic and finally with aching forearms I stopped off at the dam car car which had toilets and a restaurant, far below in the valley I spotted my destination for the day , the town of Tadami. After another steep switch back decent to the valley floor I rolled into Tadami Village at 2pm after 7 hours of almost not stop cycling. Tadami was really nice and it was not long before I located the campsite which only cost 700 yen even with no advance booking. I was able to check in quickly erect my tent and with some good local free maps and advice I considered what to do next. First of all I need to figure out what to do for dinner, even though I was totally worn out I new I needed to eat a big dinner and as the two only eateries in town did not open until 8pm that was out of the question as I had a long ride the next day. So it was off to the supermarket to buy supplies. It was located out of town but well stocked so I purchased the following
items : 1 x portion of microwave rice, 1 x Bag of liquid curry, 2 x fried pork cullet sticks, 2 x fried potato cakes, 2 x 500 ml cans of beer ,1 x can coke , 1 x packet of dark chocolate It must seem like a lot, but considering my lack of energy I needed and consumed all of it , the coke and chocolate were quickly eaten outside the supermarket before the ride back to camp, were I took a nice hot shower and proceeded to cook my monstrous dinner. It felt great to be clean and well fed and then by headlamp consulted my maps, after speaking with the camp office staff early I decided to take a slightly shorter more direct route the next day which turned out to be the best choice. Because of my mosquito bites I only ended up getting about an hour sleep which was not so good. Well as I had been to Snow Peak HQ not so long ago I knew that taking off early from Niigata City was not a great idea as the volume of cars on R 1 that parallels the Shinano river early morning does not make for pleasant cycling so I set off at 10am instead. This time I made far better use of the river bank cycle path and around lunch time I had reached the foothill town of Tagami where I stopped for lunch at a 7/11 , these places are great as you can buy almost anything you need to eat and drink plus most of them have a western style toilet. I spent a total of 323 yen but ate a 4 pack of butter buns, snickers bar and drank a 500 ml OJ which was pretty filling considering it was so cheap. The weather on this tour was influenced by a typhoon which caused much hotter temperatures in Oct than normal. The day started out at 28 deg , so much for a cool Oct tour !. I made my way along the foot of the hill from Kamo to Sanjo in the shade but once out into the heat again it felt even hotter. By the time I made it to Snow Peak HQ it was about 30 deg , I was already sunburnt and a bit tired because of the heat, but soon found a nice shady spot to pitch my tent near the toilet block. One of my customers who had recently purchased a Surly Pug Ops was camping on the other side of the kitchen block and invited me other later for drinks and something to eat. But first I needed a shower, that's when I discovered that my small bottle of liquid soap had emptied half the contents into my plastic bag containing my bathroom kit ( lesson learnt buy a better container for transporting liquid soap ) . To me at that time of the day it was more funny than a disaster and after a shower felt fine. Hi Everyone
For our first blog post I thought I would put up this great video from Scott Felter the man behind the Porcelain Rocket brand of bike packing bags. In this highly informative video Scott details where he carries the items needed on an extended bike packing tour. Use this as a guide as most likely you will come up with your own method as I did, as what works for one person's set up may not work for you, but here Scott gives you a great example of how to pack your bike. Grab a beer, sit back, and enjoy ! |
AuthorHi Everybody Archives
June 2016
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