The hams plan to ride in japan.

[Spanky_Ham]

Second day up the Tonegawa



Sat the pig down last night and asked why that day sucked so much.... No real answer, so we planned that tomorrow we would break the day into 3x3 hour lots with no final destination and if it went to shit, we could pull the pin at any time.


Put the mirror away and got to bed after a lot of calories.


Got up early, and it was a bit cold... But nothing 20 minutes cycling couldn't fix.


Up the Tonegawa which is Japan's longest** bike path.... And the first 30km flew by.... Easy


Then, there was work being done on the massive levies that this path runs along... And the diversions were sometimes well marked... Others.... Yeah, not so well marked.


On a third attempt to get around some works we came across another dead end, but ended up seeing two kingfishers which in the sun were just amazing.... and the pig agreed, if we hadn't been poodling around, we never would have seen them.


We also saw a Japanese ferrety thing, it jumped out of the long grass before jumping back in and we hope we got that on video! Hope hope hope....

Also saw our first mamushi snake that we ushered off the bike path to avoid it getting squashed. The riders behind me were freaking out, but it was so beautiful.

Met a stellar mate who rode in our draft for about 40km ( this fat arse, and the panniers give great draft apparently ) and then gave us great directions before he pulled off to head home...


The last 30km was just great..... Along side the bubbling river on a superb bike path.... A quick check of google showed a hostel nearby, which we successfully navigated too ( about 1km before we got there, the road went over a train line... Grind up and weeeeeeee down.... But then we saw it.... A fook off steep short ramp and we had got a heap of speed on the way down... Got the front wheel over ok, but the rear hit it hard... Both panniers { Oddjob, look away} were ripped from their bottom connections and sent the bike into a bar slapper.....with the panniers adding to the pendulum affect sliding the rear tyre around the footpath.... Fuck the pig... Just, just kept it together)


Now, sitting outside the hostel, it has a bar and cafe do we don't have to move from here.... But, what a great day.

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[Mattyp]

Met a stellar mate who rode in our draft for about 40km ( this fat arse, and the panniers give great draft apparently ) and then gave us great directions before he pulled off to head home...

Typical roadie... rather than offer to give you a tow for a bit, sits behind the poor bloke lugging a 30kg bike across the country and tells you how good the slipstream is back there.

 

[Dales Cannon]

If I recall correctly the Tonegawa, if it runs from Nikko, is where I took a photo of a sign which says do not piss in the river. I will look for said pic.

 

[Spanky_Ham]

Typical roadie... rather than offer to give you a tow for a bit, sits behind the poor bloke lugging a 30kg bike across the country and tells you how good the slipstream is back there.

Poor guy looked a bit worn out by the time I overtook him, so happy to have him draft me for all the directions he gave... The watts burned were well and truly saved by his directions. And, hey, we were just in such a great mood....

And the number of bugs the pig ate today definitely added up to some serious protein calories.

S

P.s. this hostel is awesome!

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[pink poodle]

Japan loves a swing at the moment. Iwatake ski field recently turned off a chair lift and converted the top platform into a giant swing. You need to pay for your epic insta shots, but...the fucking lift was a good one!

 

[rockmoose]

Is a fucking lift for lazy rooters?

 

[pink poodle]

Is a fucking lift for lazy rooters?

Not that I would ever engage in a risky piece of shall we say public displays of affection, but I have heard .... Gondola cars are easy, chairlifts are complicated but not impossible.

 

[nzhumpy]

Not that I would ever engage in a risky piece of shall we say public displays of affection, but I have heard .... Gondola cars are easy, chairlifts are complicated but not impossible.

I wouldn't even consider getting the todger out halfway up a Japanese mountain in the middle of winter on a chairlift.

 

[rockmoose]

Not that I would ever engage in a risky piece of shall we say public displays of affection, but I have heard .... Gondola cars are easy, chairlifts are complicated but not impossible.

Spooning on a poma?

 

[pink poodle]

I wouldn't even consider getting the todger out halfway up a Japanese mountain in the middle of winter on a chairlift.

The coldest I have ever been on snow was here in Australia.

Spooning on a poma?

T-bar! The lifties look at you funny when you load up back to front, but it's the only way to ride with your special someone.

 

[Tubbsy]

I've moved this great thread out of the poisoned well of Off-Topic and into the Travel section.

It's also earned you an entry here.

 

[Spanky_Ham]

We sat down last night to type up the day's adventures, the hostel was really quiet....
Got two lines in and two Japanese guys arrived and all that went out the window. We chatted ( using the pigs crap Japanese, and google translate { it produced some well messed up translations both ways- which made us all laugh like we were drunker than we were})

Both the Japanese guys and I had never met before, one was a truck driver, the other worked in construction..... We all shared the same group bedroom ( different beds of course, but shared those snores and farts)

Back to the where I left off...

The final assault on the Tonegawa cycle path.

Since we had booked another night at the hostel, we left the bags and headed out..from from our ( apparently shit calculations) we had a 100km to go and it should be all uphill. Channeling all the hill training we did with @rockmoose we set out to fooking smash it.....

Only to come to a sign in the middle of the path that said....
End of Tonegawa bike path.....

Fook

It had a little thing to use your phone to record this momentous occasion and we did.... Then, well..... Ate a banana and thought..
That was anticlimactic


Then an old mate rocked up and we started chatting the day away....so, after a bit of learning about the local mountains and weather.... We meandered up to a waterfall that google said was ok.....


It was pretty freakin nice, so peaceful and relaxing... Then an old guy with a mid 90s Sony camera appears out of no where.... Fookin mountain goat! He was here there everywhere... At one point he climbed down to a place that I thought.... If he slips, do we just run and pretend we never saw anything?

Crap, phone's about to run out of juice.... We'll charge for a bit and come back......

BRB

S

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[pink poodle]

I've moved this great thread out of the poisoned well of Off-Topic and into the Travel section.

It's also earned you an entry here.

Such slander! The off topic section is not poisoned...and it's more blown off course than off topic.

two Japanese guys arrived and all that went out the window. We chatted ( using the pigs crap Japanese, and google translate { it produced some well messed up translations both ways- which made us all laugh like we were drunker than we were})

This is one of the things I love about minshuku and ryokan travel. The Japanese can be very sociable of an evening. A few sake and a translation device can be a lot of fun. Last season there was also an evening of guitar and empty sake bottle based rhythm and blues. Oh baby baby!

 

[Dales Cannon]

Such slander! The off topic section is not poisoned...and it's more blown off course than off topic.


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This is one of the things I love about minshuku and ryokan travel. The Japanese can be very sociable of an evening. A few sake and a translation device can be a lot of fun. Last season there was also an evening of guitar and empty sake bottle based rhythm and blues. Oh baby baby!

I do better with my pidgin Japlish that using those fucking translators though I guess things have improved. I recall early days asking the mama at a mama bar if her @#%%$% was tasty... I have no idea why it substituted the Japanese word @#%%$% for yakiniku but there you are. Though I should have realised that asking it to translate a Japanese word in an English phrase into Japanese in a Japanese phrase was prone to error. Earlier that trip it had explained that a cat's meow sounds in English like hospitalize hospitalize which was far less of an issue.

 

[Spanky_Ham]

Well, after returning to the hostel and the above mentioned hilarity occurred, we hit the shared sack early and snored and farted the night away...

In the morning we woke up to discover someone sleeping in the shared kitchen with a great snore going on...

The previous nights new friends were up early as well and after an exchange of social media/ Strava details the pig loaded up and headed....

Back along the path he'd just been...and it was glorious.... Until, there was a part where we thought.. haven't seen this before and the quick glimpses of the river running beside us showed we were going upstream....

Fook, that wasn't in the plan... No stress, no real plan... Just roll.

Then puncture three made it's appearance, the front felt a little.. apongey, then we pulled over ( out side a bicycle store) and repaired a tiny hole in the front tube. For those playing at home, yeah, tubeless is awesome.... Tubes.. simple as Fook.


On we rolled with no real final plan....

Then we noticed a reptile.... place. Now, the pig and his ( massively supportive wonderfully accepting wife) do WIRES rescue and rehabilitation for lizards and frogs.... So, visiting one of these places will always leave the pig sad... There's no two ways about it....

But....

With nothing else on the plan we stopped by ( they have a good YouTube following apparently) and talking to the staff, they did have the animals best interest in heart.

They had some Indonesian blue tongues and when I showed them pictures of wifey with out two wonderful kids.... They shared knowledge and their love of all things reptilian.

Still, maaaaaaa prefer them in the wild....


We tried to stick to the arakawa cycle way, but fooked up again... Leading to a less then happy experience.

We got a message that there would be two social rides with friends in Tokyo, Saturday and Sunday..
So we hoofed it back towards Tokyo....it was glorious.... Good speed ( The Crystal Method playing on the aftershockz) and a new goal.

Then, at 2:45, the fookin wind hit.... Gusting headwinds / cross winds that when your on-top of an exposed river levy that's narrow and has narrow gates to get through....

We "just" avoided running over a little danger noodle who stood their ground and had a little go at the pigs sleds tyres.... Can help but smile at that....

But.

Pig got a little angry... The mental game was on. Then we got to a choke point (Japan is full of them, river crossings, mountains, road works).. and google maps was just pissing us the fuck off... The new construction has is take a massive route change. And google wasn't helping..


A few times we were talking back "turn left, then turn left" Aahhhhhhh fuck off you stupid fucking phone..And the only options from google were to teleport through a rice paddy or along a non existent path.

While a constant headwind just fucked us up...




Finally, we made a really old, cheap hotel where we are loading up with calories, electrons and beer..

Let's hope tomorrow is worth the pain


And yes, it is worth the pain...

S

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[pink poodle]

I do better with my pidgin Japlish that using those fucking translators though I guess things have improved. I recall early days asking the mama at a mama bar if her @#%%$% was tasty... I have no idea why it substituted the Japanese word @#%%$% for yakiniku but there you are. Though I should have realised that asking it to translate a Japanese word in an English phrase into Japanese in a Japanese phrase was prone to error. Earlier that trip it had explained that a cat's meow sounds in English like hospitalize hospitalize which was far less of an issue.

I rely a little too often on the body language as I was never a good language student...but I can copy the body language of a Japanese man who is really into a conversation well enough to deceive myself way past my spoken language level.

 

[fjohn860]

Loving this journey @Spanky_Ham with all the updates and experiences.

I've learnt one surprising thing I had no idea about and that is that Japan has venomous sneks. Amazing.

 

[Spanky_Ham]

Well, today was a 'day off'

We rode a little bit into central Tokyo to meet with friends and have a social ride.

After a week of cycling alone ( and we did meet people and cycle with them during that time) today was another chance to cycle with a close group of friends, have a laugh and not think to much about it.

Don, the Don of half fast Tokyo took us all on a wonder ride around Tokyo, with a stop so we could all wave at Paul who is still in hospital, and grab a few beers before we went out separate ways.


Met some new members, saw a pinion gear boxed - gates belt drive awesome touring cycle that one of the riders was piloting.

We got to 'drive' Japan for a short time and for a day off, clocked another 90 odd kms.

Sorry, that's not as exciting as usual, but even the pig needs some.... Time off....

We have another social ride tomorrow then... Well, not too sure..

Where to go next with only a few days remaining?


Suggestions will be seriously considered.


S

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[Dales Cannon]

Matsushima? Onagawa? If you train to Sendai?

 

[pink poodle]

Train to Yudanaka and then ride up through Shiga Kogen and Jōshin'estu national park and across into Gunman over Yokoteyama. You may wish to make a stop over in the Shiga Kogen Plateau for a touch of luxury and an onsen. It is very high altitude (you'll ride past the highest chair lift on Japan, along the highest road in Japan, which is closed for winter and a few more months on top) and received the first snow a few weeks ago.