Arrival: PDX to Narita: our taxi is waiting!
In the fall of 2007 we toured Japan for 5 weeks, by bicycle. From our home in Portland, Oregon, we flew in to Narita airport (the country's principal airport, about 40 miles east of Tokyo), and cycled from there to Fukuoka, at the western end of the country. Other than to take a taxi to and from the airport at both ends and for several ferry crossings between islands, we cycled the entire distance - about 1400 miles.
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We arrived in Narita on October 7th, just as the final typhoon of the season was winding down. Our first night's stop was at a ryokan in Narita, about 10 miles from the airport. We decided to take a taxi to our room, leaving our bikes still packed in their travelling bags because the plan was to have them mailed for us from our first hotel to the end point of our trip. The taxi ride was cosy, to say the least. I wasn't certain we could get everything into one car, but no problem - a bike in the trunk, another (along with all of the luggage and the smaller passenger) in the back seat, and the larger passenger in the front worked fine - especially for the larger passenger.
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Rachael and I have done a fair amount of overseas touring over the years, primarily in western Europe. This was our first visit to the orient though, and we had more apprehension over what we might find than we'd felt in years. We hoped and expected to see many wonderful things, but had fears of typhoons, frequent downpours, cultural embarrassments, stressful or hazardous cycling conditions, and unrecognizable or unpalatable meals.
We were particularly worried about navigation. To prepare ourselves as best we could, we equipped ourselves with bicycle-mounted GPS's and mapped out our entire route in great detail before we left: down to the specific streets, and right to our hotels. I'm convinced that our trip would have quickly broken down in chaos and frustration without these, in a land where we couldn't read or even sound out the characters.
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Happily, all of our hopes and few of our fears were realized, and we had a wonderful experience. We had a few very wet days but in general had terrific weather. The roads proved to be on the whole nearly as safe as we've encountered on other tours, and the Japanese people proved to be wonderfully open, helpful, and tolerant of our minimal understanding of their ways. The cuisine was quite unfamiliar; and even though we both had unfavorite dishes (particularly at breakfast) that didn't look like food to us, on the whole we had some fine meals and were pleasantly surprised. And, to top it off, we had a perfect trip mechanically - no equipment problems, and not even one flat tire.
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I ask because we're planning a trip from Sapporo to Fukuoka starting mid-September. So far I'm using Japan Cycling Navigator for routing. There's an awful lot of climbing, and I'm considering ways to flatten it out a bit. The Japan Romantic Road looks great, so I would keep that on the itinerary. Other suggestions?
6 months ago
Yes, we based it almost completely on the Navigator, although we bought an atlas of detailed maps to help with the planning, and bought our first GPS devices and a CD of the map of Japan (this was well before RideWithGPS and readily available online maps) because we were sure we’d get hopelessly lost without them.
There weren’t many deviations. One was that we started from Narita instead of Tokyo, so we improvised a route from there to Noda where we linked up with the Navigator route.
Another was around Nagano. We went to Obuse (a recommended side journey), but we turned south to Matsumoto (which we loved) without going into Nagano itself. And from there we found our own way to Takayama, avoiding the high road through the Alps - south to Narai in the Kiso Valley, and then west from there. There’s a long, difficult tunnel (on Highway 19 I think) that we walked through on the sidewalk, but I would take this route again. Narai was amazing, as was everything west of the tunnel. I could probably do a credible job of sketching out a map for you for this section if you want.
The one section we followed but hated was the inland route from Onomichi to Hiroshima - a terrible road we were happy to get through alive. I see that the Navigator has added an alternative for this stretch, through the islands of the inland sea and then catching a ferry into Hiroshima. I would definitely do this instead.
I hope you go through with this, and blog it. This might have been the most interesting of our tours, certainly in the top 5. I’ve always wanted to go back to Japan - especially to see more of Kyushu and Shikoku, We had a detailed route for this mapped out and lodging identified for that at one point, but backed out - but at this point in our lives I think we’ve waited too long.
6 months ago
Great tip regarding the Onomichi-Hiroshima segment. We'll definitely try the alternate route, although it does cut off half the Shimanami Kaido. Usually by that point in a tour, we're more interested in taking the roads less traveled anyway.
I know what you mean about waiting too long to return to Japan. We're going to train as best we can for the constant climbing, but it's still going to be a big challenge whether we're in shape for it or not.
6 months ago
6 months ago