On the Subject of Mountains, Tunnels, and High Speed Trains

“If I’m an advocate for anything, it’s to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else’s shoes, or at least eat their food, is a plus for everybody.

Open your mind.

Get up off the couch.

Move.”

– Anthony Bourdain

Distance Cycled: 1644 km

Picture this: You’re in a Seicomart. It’s a convenience store, like a 7 Eleven. In addition to all the things you would expect to find next to the cash register – cigarette lighters, breath mints, etc – they have ears of corn. Fully cooked, buttered ears of corn. All standing up on end, in a plastic jar type of thing. The same way you’d stick markers and pens in an old coffee mug.

I had to do a double take.

“Is that corn?”

I hesitantly poked it with the tip of my finger, just to see if it was real.

“It is corn! I’m f@cking getting one!”, I said to no one in particular. The guy behind the cash gave me a look that said, “Yeah! Get some!”, and nodded with deep approval as I grabbed an ear.

And that’s how I came to be gnawing on a big cob of corn outside the Quick-E-Mart.

This was moments before a raven took a giant shit on one of Rachel’s panniers. It was like someone upended a container of yoghurt from 30′ in the air. All runny and disgusting. We quickly washed it away with a blast from a water bottle, but Rachel was not impressed.

“You should climb up there and take a dump in his nest”, I suggested.

She shot me a look and mumbled, “Why is it always me….”

Oh well, I thought it was a good idea.

Anyway….Ladies, Gentlemens, and other practitioners of the human condition. Welcome back to our tidy little corner of the Wide World of Webs. We’re currently sitting in the city of Niigata. That’s in the prefecture of Niigata, in case you’re wondering. We’re over 1600 kilometers into this little adventure and roughly halfway through our trek around Japan. I’m happy to announce that we’re taking a wee break to rest our bodies. Over the last week we pedaled from the east coast to the west coast, crossing over the mountains that make up the spine of this country. It was tough going, crawling from sea level to over 2000′, but it felt good to tackle a challenge, and the views were pretty sweet.

It was refreshingly chilly up in the mountains and we had to bust out our fleece sweaters at night. Once we made it back to sea level however, the heat and the humidity returned. As we make our way south along the Sea of Japan, we’ve noticed things starting to change. We’ve begun to see small lizards skittering across the paths. We’ve ridden through some large stands of bamboo. And venomous spiders are now on the menu. An extra incentive to make sure we check our shoes after leaving them outside the tent overnight.

The last 2 days of riding have been especially pretty. The road hugged the coast, passing through quaint fishing villages and many, many tunnels.

We camped out one night on a beach and were treated to a beautiful sunset.

I’m not sure what it is about Japan, but the sunsets here are way more vivid than you would expect. People will look at this photo and think I’ve bumped up the saturation, but that’s not the case. At home we would only see sunsets like this when there is smoke in the air from forest fires. There are no forest fires burning here, but maybe there is pollution in the air from neighbouring countries? I’m not sure…

One thing we stumbled across was a TDK factory. If you’re of a particular age you might know the brand name from floppy disks or cassette tapes. Turns out that TDK discovered ferrite, which is a magnetic material, and it’s used in just about everything that’s electronic: hard drives, cell phones, televisions, you name it. There was a museum, so we took some time to check it out. As a couple of techies employed in the broadcast industry, we enjoyed the tour, especially since I’m old enough to have worked on magnetic tape VTRs and CRT monitors.

  Various shrines and other religious iconography continue to pop up around the countryside. This statue isn’t of Buddha himself, but of one of his good friends – Kevin or Jerry or something, who interestingly, if we translated the Japanese plaque correctly, was a huge fan of the Wu-Tang Clan. Who knew?

As I mentioned, we’re taking some time off to rest the bones, so we’ve decided to stash the bikes and bags in Niigata and take a bullet train into Tokyo for a few days.

The bicycle is most definitely alive and well in Japan, and the free parking outside the train station was impressively large.

Since our bikes are a bit specialized and not your typical Japanese mamachari, we stashed them in an underground garage for ¥100/day. Well worth the price for the peace of mind, plus, the old guys running the place thought it was super cool we were cycling across their country. If anything, we’ve found the Japanese to be exceptionally friendly and great to interact with, especially considering that we have zero (and I mean zero) grasp of their language.

We’ll play tourist in Tokyo for a few days before jumping back on the bikes to continue our ride south. We’ve got about 6 weeks before we have to catch the ferry to Korea, so there are lots of miles to go.

Hugs and kisses,

Rachel & Steve