Monday, August 30, 2010
One of those quick posts with a map and no pictures
Map:
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And maybe a couple of bonus pictures after all. Not much to say here as of yet, Matt still has some Kyoto pictures he's holding on to, and we'll undoubtedly take more over the next couple of days. Hey, it's almost September?
-One of the nicer free campsites. I was about 5 minutes too lazy to catch the sunrise..
-and a bike path.
More to come..
Friday, August 27, 2010
Tottori Awesome
....
Map:
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The theme, as ever, has been a combination of muderous heat and numerous climbs. A few highlights from along the way:
-Meeting a courier on the way out of Kyoto. He'd actually been to Toronto to participate in the Courier World Championships or something, and knew a couple of Toronto's prominent couriers...kinda neat
-More excellent seashore camping,
-Meeting a gentleman doing the same trip as us, but on foot! Due to my inability to remember names after hearing them once, I can't remember if his name was Yamazaki or Tomozaki, but he asked to be called "Zack" which was pretty sweet. We Zacks just don't stay in one place, yknow...
-Beatiful quiet rural valley, reached of course with the blood and sweat drawn over numerous climbs. In a sign of the relentless passage of time, we're starting to see the rice crops being harvested - a sad sight, for not only does it mean our trip is drawing near its conclusion, but also that the scenery will be much less nice with endless green fields giving way to stubbly harvested yellow everywhere.
-And finally, truly one of the most beautiful sunsets I've ever seen. My worse-than-amateur photographic skills hardly do it justice. Picture a perfect red sphere - as though taken right off the flag - slowly sinking below the horizon. Trademark whining and sarcasm aside, every now and then you experience a moment that reminds you just what a privilege making a trip like this really is.
The goal is to be in Hiroshima on the 30th of August. Hiroshima had always been - not the end point of the trip, but rather the goal; thus is it very exciting to be nearing it at last. Our route after that will depend on such delightful considerations as remaining time and money, but the trip thus far has been fantastic, and thank you all for continuing to read us!
Monday, August 23, 2010
The View from the Top
Some notable moments from the trek here:
-The pass over the Japan Alps, the name of which escapes me. At 1780m, it might be my highest pass summited, and was certainly Matt's as well!
-The aforementioned view. While screaming down the other side of the pass, we actually passed some more wild monkeys, and regrettably scared them off while a Japanese cyclist was trying to photograph them. Sorry :/
The campsite on the other side of the pass was probably the best yet - minutes from a great restaurant and onsen, and high enough altitude for it to drop below 25 degrees at night. When you can slog up a pass that high, and then get a bath and a meal and a good night's sleep, you feel like you may be doing this the right way.
-24 hours, 110km, 37 degrees and several climbs later, all of that good feeling had diminished when we reached our intended campsite only to find it closed. And being thunderstormed on. This turned out alright however. We got clean in the downpour, took shelter in the wash station, and camped for free on soft spongy grass.
-After a murderous climb, which resulted in an excellent onsen but non-existent campground, we found an impromptu site in a ski area parking lot. Free, but we were feasted on by black flies. "Mushi ga, watashi o tabemashita." My japanese translation of "Bugs ate me."
-Our final day before reaching Kyoto found us at a campsite on the shore of the..big lake that's near Kyoto. Another name escaping me. A lake to swim in, a 7-11 within walking distance, and a bike path to follow the next morning, and the going is easy.
More Kyoto pictures to come soon. To Matt's Mom (and all his other various fans): Now that Matt knows that being photographed is expected of him by his loved ones, he may concede to be photographed more often. (It will also help that I found a fresh memory card for my camera and can start taking surprise pictures of him again.)
Sunday, August 22, 2010
One does not simply coast in to Kyoto
The story of the past few days has been climbs - lots of them! - which are good, and extreme heat, which I am forced to admit, is crappy. When people said the heat would be bad here, I thought "how bad could it be?"" Important lesson: whenever you find yourself asking "How bad could it be?" stop, and reconsider your decisions. It's been around 36 - 37 degrees for the past few days, with one roadside thermometer even showing 40. In terms of causing your clothes to require washing immediately, and preventing sleep, this extreme heat may even be more inconvenient than rain!
Anyway, enough typing, on to what you've all been waiting for - the MAP:
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What, you thought I meant pictures? Those will be up soon.
Also, I popped the button off of my only pair of shorts, went to 7-11, bought a sewing kit (because of course they had one there) and sewed it back on myself. This is a huge accomplishment, and the final feather in my cap as an international, independent bicycle tourer.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Interesting Post Title
Whatever the cause, as I write this I truly have no idea what day of the week it is. I know the date, but only because I can see it on the screen. The past couple of weeks are pretty much just a jumble of random people and places in my memory.
Not that I'm complaining or anything as that's part of the fun of it all, it's just a long way of saying - sorry that everything I'm about to post is in entirely random order, and completely unorganized.
Now that that's out of the way let me say it's been a good... couple of weeks? six days? Well, it's been a good undetermined period of time.
Since we last posted a real update from Akita we've been through Niigata and now are in Matsumoto until tomorrow morning when we leave for Kyoto which should take about five days.
The ride from Akita to Niigata was pretty nice. Over almost entirely flat ground we made good time and didn't have too much trouble The scenery was nice but once you've seen one rice field... y'know. My new bike rack did in fact arrive as planned and doesn't appear to be made out of bamboo or anything so we're glad that's dealt with.
One memorable evening was the night before we arrived in Niigata. In what seems like a rare occurance in Japan, we had a clear sky during the sunset, and happened to be camped right on the beach, allowing us to watch the sunset from beginning to end.
As the sun sank below the horizon, we were shocked to see that there are actually stars visible from Japan. Generally it's been too cloudy to see much of anything, but it was a beautiful, warm, bug-free night and we were able to sleep in an open tent under the stars. If every night of camping was like that we would never have to stay in hostels.
Niigata itself seems like a nice enough place but there wasn't too much to do. It's primarily a beach town and as our only full day there was full of rain, there wasn't much point in heading to the beach. So we did what maitenance we needed to, tried a couple new restaurants, bought umbrellas and packed up for the trip to Matsumoto.
The trip through to Matsumoto was a little more scenic. As we turned away from the coast and made our way inland, the highways along the coast are replaced with roads through mountain valleys and along bridges over rivers. Japan really is a beautiful place.
Probably the only downside of the riding was that it fell on the days that it did, as it was during the time of the Bon festival - allow me to quote Wikipedia:
"Obon or just Bon is a Japanese Buddhist custom to honor the departed (deceased) spirits of one's ancestors. This Buddhist custom has evolved into a family reunion holiday during which people return to ancestral family places and visit and clean their ancestors' graves, and when the spirits of ancestors are supposed to revisit the household altars. It has been celebrated in Japan for more than 500 years and traditionally includes a dance, known as Bon-Odori."
Sounds nice enough, unfortunately for bike touring it means that every road is absolutely packed with cars, every hotel and camp site is nearing capacity, and every graveyard is lined with cars taking up half the lane opening their doors unexpectedly. But without the bad how would we know the good, right? It made the few times we found a dedicated bike path all the better.
At one point in the ride, we opted to take a mountain pass rather than another long stretch of tunnel and were rewarded with the sight of some monkeys crossing our path. I only managed to get the camera out in time to catch this one - who I can only assume was trying to determine if I was food or not.
The fun of seeing monkeys and reaching the top of the pass was quickly forgotten as we discovered that the road down the other side was actually closed, or something. We can't actually read most of these signs but I think they're pretty self explanatory.
So while Zack went ahead to check it out on foot, I spoke with a Japanese man who had pulled up in a car behind us. He explained (I think!) that there was a rock slide the previous year that had damaged parts of the road, and so it was closed for repairs.
I asked him if biking it would be ok, and he just shrugged, which was good enough for us. We proceeded slowly and made our way down the mountain. Other than some constuction materials here and there, we were happy to find that it was actually completely safe, and having the road to ourselves was a nice change of pace.
We continued on and made our way to a campsite a small distance outside of Matsumoto. We somehow managed to again find ourselves in the middle of a festival - all we knew was that there was going to be a fireworks display of some kind. Our tent however was set up for convenience and not fireworks viewing so while we initially planned to not make too much of an effort to watch them, we were invited by a fellow english speaker to join him and his group of friends at their camp site right on the lake.
We stumbled around in the dark until we found their camp site, and while most of them floated out onto the lake in a rubber boat to watch, Zack and I opted to stay dry (for once) and watched from the shore while speaking with a Japanese man named Kazu - a cancer researcher who smoked a pipe, which I found a little confusing.
We ended up being really glad we had taken them up on their offer as the fireworks were easily the best we've seen. The campsite was at the bottom of the mountain we had come down and was mostly surrounded by other mountains, allowing the noise from the fireworks to echo far into the distance. Each explosion was so loud that no matter how you tried to prepare yourself it would still startle you, and then you could listen to it echo endlessly through the hills.
On top of that they had a speedboat that was setting off water fireworks, which were (oddly enough) fireworks that they would set off right on the surface of the water, which allowed you to see the fireworks themselves, and their reflection in the water as it rippled away from the explosion.
As the fireworks finished, Kazu's friends came back to shore and we talked and ate for a couple of hours before Zack and I headed to sleep. It was a fun night, and definitely more interesting than our typical nights of camping which usually consist of one of us saying,
"What time is it?"
"Uhh.. Only 7:40"
"Why is it so dark?"
"Where's the bug spray?"
"Oh forget it, it's raining, I'm just going to go to sleep."
So after all that we're now in Matsumoto. As usual this has taken way longer than I thought it would, it's late and we're a twenty minute ride from our beds so I'm going to do this last part in record time.
We saw a castle, some samurai frogs (cue chrono trigger nostalgia), Japan is too small for Zack, the internal organs were good, Zack won an octopus, and this Internet cafe is really comfortable.
Before I go, we love reading your comments! If there's anything you would like to hear more about, or anything you find especially interesting... feel free to comment!
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Oh, that typhoon
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Quick update really, more later once we're settled in.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Typhoon? What?
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If anyone out there enjoys google maps as much as I do (unlikely) I try to mark our camping spots as exactly as I can, so zoom in there and see if you can see any tents! Also, that mess of blips around D was us killing time a day before we could get in to our hotel.
The riding for the past few days has been generally good, if brutally hot. One would think that when the sun sets, and the temperature drops from 36 to 27 degrees, it would be a relief. One would be wrong.
In any case, here are some features of the trip thus far that I don't think I've got to yet:
-A standard convenience store meal. Yogurt to keep the intestinal flora diverse, cold buckwheat soba noodles (good on a hot day), donuts for dessert and a nice cold bottle of chilled green tea! No sugar or anything, a nice drink.
-Huge manga libraries! Pretty much every hostel we've visited, as well as many ramen shops, have boasted enormous collections of manga. I'd probably pay 30$ a night in Canada to be able to hang out at a house and read that many comics for hours on end..
-Coffee in a can. Ice cold and packed with sugar, makes it very drinkable. From vending machines of course.
-Pudding in a can! The texture was absolutely dreadful, like drinking curdled milk, but it tasted great. Also available from vending machines.
-Individually wrapped slices of French Toast! For that heavily bastardized taste of home.
-Choco-bannana! This thing was actually pretty gross, moreso when I realized there was no real bannana inside. Though I do appreciate that only one side is coated in chocolate, saving your fingers from getting all melty-chocolatey.
And I suppose since most of these pictures have been of packaging, here are a a couple from outside:
-Riding thru the rice fields, and
-Along the riverside here in Niigata.
Tomorrow, onwards once again, towards Matsumoto and Kyoto!
Friday, August 6, 2010
Could Be Worse!
It's been happening every year for somewhere in the area of 300 years, and has become quite popular. As a result the city is completely full of people, so much so that we were forced to stay in a place that was quite a bit over our normal budget for two nights because literally every hotel and hostel was completely full.
It's hard to really explain what's going on, and getting a good picture can be tough due to the massive crowds of people, but basically after lighting paper lanterns and setting them afloat down the river that runs through town, groups of performers light and hoist up these lanterns.
It's actually pretty impressive, and looking down the steet a few kilometers in the distance to see hundreds of them marching along to the constant beat of taiko drums and wood flute melodies is quite amazing. Even moreso when you realize that each one weighs about 50kg and is usually being balanced on one hand, or the head of one person. It's also about 50 million degrees and extremely humid.
Other than the fesitval, Akita has a few small tourist attractions that we figured we would check out while we had the time.Ok, just one tourist attraction - and that's it up there. Since we had only used up an hour we decided to go see The Last Airbender, in Japanese. It was pretty dreadful, I think I'm actually glad I couldn't hear the english dialogue.
We spent the rest of our time here picking up a few supplies, and wandering the streets at night. With the festival going on there are plenty of people everywhere, often in traditional Japanese clothes so just people watching was interesting enough.
While it was a pretty fun place to rest, I think I've seen everything in Akita twice at this point, so I'm happy to get going. Here's hoping my Japanese hasn't completely failed me, and I actually did order the correct part for the bike. I guess we'll find out this afternoon!
Our next major stop is Kyoto, which is a place I've personally always wanted to see. Hopefully the nice weather we've had while being here in Akita holds up once we get back on the bikes!
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Stuck in Akita
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Starting at Cape Oma, we were treated with a day of rain and fog, which necessitated a change in routes. I had originally intended to take us to the interior of the Shimokita Peninsula thru a mountainous, relatively uninhabited valley, but mountainous scenery doesn't quite seem worth it when everything is obscured by clouds!
So, we elected to take a second ferry, saving us several days of travel, and strike for the west coast where we would hopefully be able to run south away from the constant bad weather.
Conditions remained mostly the same, with low clouds during the day and rain at night. However, once we were past the worst of it, Matt's front rack broke!
So, we're now holed up in Akita (known for its attractive women, at least!) waiting for a replacement to arrive at an otherwise surprisingly well stocked bike shop. Thus is the state of the union!
We're here until Saturday, it looks like, after which point we will once again head south. The rough plan is to head inland towards the castle town of Matsumoto, over the Japan Alps, and then in to Kyoto.