Out and about. Motorcyling. Stuff.
Last month a large group of us got together for our annual toy run in Kanagawa. I did a brief write -up on RideApart.com if you want to have a quick look.
I’ve done a few ride reports for the toy run on here previously: 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and indeed 2017 made it our 9th continuous event!
Thanks as ever to the kids at the childrens homes for having us, and all those who rode in, or donated gifts.
At the tail-end of Golden Week this year (May 5th to be exact) I took part in Touge Express’ 2017 Coast to Coast Twistybutt, an invitational run across Japan from the Pacific Ocean to Japan Sea purely via the mountain pass roads or ‘touge’ as they’re known. 500Km of turns with the occasional short local road connecting them.
If you were on a straight road, you were probably on the wrong road.
So where is the tale of this crossing? I did write one, but it’s not here, it’s on a real motorcycle website, so thanks to Chris and everyone at RideApart for bringing tales from the touge to the broader world – they’ll be all the better for it!
The Twistybutt – Japan’s Iron Butt Challenge
We were up in Shiga Kogen (Nagano Prefecture) again a few weeks ago for yet more snow fun, and decided to go and see the famous snow monkeys in the hot spa pools of Jigokudani Park, since we were in the area and hadn’t been before. There are a million or so amazing photos of these monkeys around the internet so I won’t post any of my own of them, but instead, a couple of the valley running through part of the park to give you an idea of what it looks like when you take a step back.
The park is actually a ~1.6Km walk from the car park area to the monkeys, and requires a fee of ~800yen per person to get in to see them, so be aware. The walk up is through a beautiful valley side though, a long, winding, if somewhat icy track, which is quite relaxing. At the base of the stairs which mark the final few hundred metres, there’s a group of old traditional houses and a steam geyser – and the occasional naked man in an outdoor bath (routenburo) if that’s your thing!
You can see above where most of those amazing photos actually happen. It’s not always this crowded though, if you take a look at the webcams when they’re live, it’s often fairly empty. It is of course well staged – the monkeys are fed by the park staff to encourage them to come down, though guests are understandably discouraged from feeding the monkeys. As someone who has had a close face-to-face encounter with an adult male snow monkey in a carpark on a previous snow trip, I can vouch for not getting too close.
Also of interest to me was a group of old, and somewhat battered looking motorcycles down by the track, some Honda (Super) Cubs and an old CD90, all muddied up and with chains on for the snow, ice and mud. They look like they’ d seen some fun for sure. They seem to be used for running basic deliveries, and I dare say they’re probably road legal, but sadly there were no owners around I could ask. Definitely the types of vehicles you want for this terrain.
A modern motorcycle has a number of safety systems built into it to help the rider stay safe, but we all know you’re also at the mercy of the other person and the universe in general. Insurance helps for sure after the event, but what if you need that little extra protection avoiding an accident?
Here in Japan we can also call upon the gods, and get ourselves an O-mamori [守り]. These are small amulets, commonly looking like small bags, which are purchased from shrines, and intended to bring good fortune or ward off evil and bad luck. The bag usually contains something which has been blessed, for want of a better term – I don’t know what’s in mine since part of the deal is that you don’t open it.
I had an omamori bought for me from a local Shinto shrine, and I now have it safely tied on under my motorcycle seat, to help ward off crazy minivan drivers, Prius drivers, and all the others who seem to forget there are vehicles with less than four wheels. This one then is of the traffic safety or koutsuu anzen variety, and let’s hope it serves its purpose!
There’s a little known requirement that you have to go on a full day out on your motorbike within a week of getting it.
Actually, that’s not true. But it should be true.
To do my part then, I decided to take a day off and ride down the Pacific coastal roads to the southern end of the Izu peninsula, to Shimoda.
I love coastal roads; just riding along, with the vast ocean on one side – hopefully with a sturdy looking metal barrier between you and the cliff down to that ocean – and a rising mountain on the other.
If this sounds good to you, then welcome, and come on down to Routes 134 & 135 on Japan’s Pacific coast.
The day started at around 7am, I’d gotten all my layers on, and warmed the bike up a little too, and then made sure I had a hot flask of tea in my backpack. The sky was a perfect blue, with almost no cloud, bright sunshine, and most importantly at that time – no ice or dampness on the road.
Since I was exploring the new Yamaha as well as the road, I decided to give one of the ‘other’ riding modes a shot – it has A, B and Standard. I’d only been using standard up until now, but decided to give ‘B’ a try as this is intended as the smoother, power-reduced rain mode. I thought that would give a nice gentle start to the day. Indeed it is exactly what that suggests – it’s smooth – it really is a wonderful mode to start the day on. It still pulls, there’s still the torque, but it’s like it’s massaging you into the ride.
The coastal road I take is a toll road, it’s true, but raised up, you get to look down on to the beach and the rivers flowing into the ocean as the sunrise hits the beach and you get to see the sun on the side of Fuji-san, all snow capped, before looking left again at the handful of surfers and fishing enthusiasts casting out from the beach. Part way along this straight section is the Seisho Bypass Service Area (SA). It’s often a big meeting spot for motorcycle groups, but as I approached it I didn’t see a single bike unfortunately, so I passed it by this time. When I’m riding alone, if I see some people in there, I’ll sometimes stop off for a chat and exchange route ideas and good stopping points – but not today!
There was something of a cross-wind on the road, but unlike the old Honda, this was much less tiring (and chilling) thanks to just the small amount of fairing and screen on the Tracer, and the bike held its speed more consistently.
Once you get a little past Hayakawa at the west end of the road, the twisties start kicking in, rising and falling around the cliff edges, switching from cliff cutout roads, to short bridge sections seamlessly. It’s fun. Again, there’s a choice of free roads with a little more traffic, or toll roads, with a little more flow. Be aware some of these toll roads are not ETC/NEXCO ones, you need to stop and pay, a bit like the Izu Skyline.
The road takes you down past coastal towns like Manazuru, Atami and Ito, but as I rode along I saw a couple of small signs for some place called ‘Hosono Highlands’, which sounded interesting, so I turned up an already narrow road, up into the hills, where the road gave way to a narrow, barely paved forest track, past some camping and cabin areas, before popping out into a clearing with what looked like some brand new parking spaces – the Hosono Highlands!
I parked up, and was having a nice cup of two when a couple of cars pulled up coming the other way, and out jumped eight retired people, who made a bee-line for the bike and we spoke for about ten minutes about why we were all here – they had planned to come up, to see the highlands, whereas I was there almost by accident. We also discussed whether Japan still makes good motorbikes (they do), whether English is difficult to learn (it is), and after a swift toilet break, they jumped back in their cars and left. One of the drivers had commented the road extended further up in to the the mountain, past a golf course, to the wind turbines I could see higher up.
It looked like a nice road, so after pondering the view, I decided to go up a bit further. For about a kilometre it a was fun, cracked road surface, steep inclines and corners, with autumnal leaf-fall and branch debris here and there, so it took some concentration.
Anyhow, I came around a corner into a shady wooded area and saw what looked like a run-off stream actively flowing across the road. Not so unusual in the hills around here, but only when I was too close to it did I realise from the reflections that it was actually solid ice.
Pants.
All I could do was make no change to my speed or direction and hope I was balanced enough to get over. Fortunately it seemed I was, though for a second or two I could feel the ice passing under the tyres, but my momentum carried me over. I decided to get off and take a look at how this thing had duped me, and sure enough the water had frozen in rivulets rather than as a flat sheet, and was well over a centimeter thick even at its thinnest point. I decided then it was better to GPS mark the road, and come back to do it in the Spring, rather than have less luck further up!
Fortunately, those leaves and such at the side of the road had virtually no ice on them, and so it was quite simple to walk the bike back down that way, bypassing the frozen stream. It was disappointing, but that road will make a nice addition to a future day out on warmer days.
Back down to the coast road, and more great views and soon another small road, this time down to a beach, which, given that it was about 5degC., was pretty much deserted. However, given the blue skies and sunshine, if you didn’t know that, you could think from a photograph it was a wonderful Summers day.
It’s called Sotoura Beach, and when the weather gets a little warmer, has quite a good crowd down there. On this day though, it was just me, and some fisherman repairing nets in the small harbour nearby.
(Note that in a few photos my bike looks like it is on sand – it isn’t – I walked out to check the area and found it was actually an old asphalt car park with a very thin layer of sand and gravel on it.)
After another cup of tea just looking at that blue ocean, I pushed on just a few more kilometres to my lunch spot, the appropriately named Cafe Mellow, which is next to a small hotel we’ve often stayed at, called Ernest House.
[As this post is a little long, I won’t fully recount the trip back, which was yet more happy riding, avoiding some bad drivers, and getting to test the headlights out. I’ll also see if I can get a short road video together for it. After 350Km that day, I have to say, I’m really pleased with the Tracer for sure. ]
Happy New Year 2017. This year, for the first time in 9 years, I was back in the UK for Xmas and New Year, and much of that was on the road, so this post is a little late.
New Year was a more UK style ‘drinks at midnight’ affair with the family, and though I was planning a hatsuhinode morning sunrise viewing, heavy cloud and rain put an end to that unfortunately.
We’re now back in Japan, so there are some New Year traditions to sort out this weekend, then it’s figuring out snowboarding trips and potentially, a change of motorbike.
All the best to everyone for 2017.
A few weeks ago we were down at the beach near Enoshima, where it was the closing hanabi of the Summer festival season – yes, in October. I think it’s one of the last formal fireworks events in Shonan for the year, and it attracted several thousand people, on the beach and the strip of grass and parks between the beach and the main coastal road.
The whole thing went for just under an hour, a little longer than normal, but not as long as some of the big ones around Japan. The atmosphere was great though; there’s just something relaxing about being down by the beach, sitting around and watching fireworks – and quite a few people were finishing off BBQs.
When the fireworks finished, in an impressive finale, there was a generous round of applause. It was also good that had quite a few designs I hadn’t seen before, and there were fewer ‘character’ based ones like Doraemon, which I find a little cheap.
I should say, I’m awful at taking pictures of fireworks, mainly because I’m, you know, busy watching them instead of getting the camera right. Instead of a shakey and blurry picture of fireworks then, I thought I’d put in an equally generic photo of sunset around Fuji from Enoshima I took as we were waiting, and a short video as I was testing out my new GoPro.
To give a rough idea, here’s a 60 second video of the finale, though if you look around the net, there are much better examples!
I’d never been to a motorcycle show, so when the 43rd annual Tokyo Motorcycle Show rolled around this year, I decided I should take the 20min train journey down to the Big Sight venue from my workplace, and see how it was.
To set expectations, this isn’t a top tier bike show like EICMA, there aren’t usually major new bike announcements made there, but they are generally well attended, and showing the latest announced models from most of the major manufacturers, and many boutique brands which means there are lots of motorbikes! Enough said.
So into the show. Big Sight, the upside down pyramid in Tokyo Bay, with a giant hand saw in front of it. It’s a good venue all told and it was easy to the find the way on to Halls 1 & 2.
Inside, the show filled two of the four main halls, and there was a decent crowd on the Friday afternoon, plenty of atmosphere, and a fairly diverse demographic spread of all ages, and yes mainly men, but with a decent percentage of women riders too. There was a ladies focused area, which had a lot of good advice on bike mods and models which emphasised lighter bikes, and seat height adjustments. I notice it also had a much better cafe area than the one near the entrance too. As you’d expect, there were a lot of smaller vendors, magazine vendors, parts vendors, and of course the bike manufacturers from home and abroad.
There were as many cameras as people, and most of the bike models you were able to sit on, excepting some of the more boutique bikes, such as the Italian Vyrus models, which start at 6,300,000yen (~55,000USD) and keep going to over 13,000,000yen. Ouch. But they are very nice.
I spent a little over three hours looking around, and it was worth the 1,400yen. There were plenty of people to talk to and ask questions, and some free samples and stickers, but at least whilst I was there there weren’t too many awesome give-aways.
One stall was promoting their various LED lighting systems, and had a bike all done up with sparkling glass beads, thousands of them. It looked great under the show lights, so we had a look at the stand, and even had a chat with the hard working lady whose job is was to attach the beads by hand.
So what were the highlights?
It was good to see bikes I don’t usually see really, such as the scooters from Adiva, Sym and Kymco – many of which looked very respectable – from the larger American oriented cruisers, European bikes including Norton, Royal Enfield from India, to the local Japanese bikes. All had a presence of one size or another and most of the staff were able to answer all of the questions I had, even about insurance and spares.
It’s easy to point at the Steve McQueen replica bikes, the Vyrus or high end BMW and Honda Rallye race bikes as the most memorable items, but for some reason, I quite liked the more accessible and fun items like modded Honda Super Cub Cross with a side car. Sure, I couldn’t fit in the side car, and I’m not sure what the performance would be like, but in it’s yellow and black, it looked the part.
A slightly belated greeting into 2016, which we’ll be calling Heisei 28. It’s all about the reign of the Emperors, and is designed to confuse me when I come to sort my taxes out next month.
We did the midnight tick-over at home with the family, but for Hatsuhinode – the first sunrise of the year – I was out on the motorbike to meet up with some friends. Since I was riding into the sunrise, I thought I’d get the old GoPro Hero 2 out and do a timelapse:
We met up at a Konbini, and I was able to get my traditional biking breakfast of onigiri, but this one was unfortunately common – grilled salmon (焼き鮭) but still did the trick.
Then it was time to ride back up the 134 through lighter traffic, to meet up with a few more people at the Seisho SA, which boasts a great view of the bay, clean toilets and allows you to enjoy the quality musical coffee machines. I never get bored of this Pacific Ocean road on the bike, and just have to remember to take my turn inland – it’s easy to just keep following this road down the Izu pensinsula.
From there, it was on up to the Mazda Skylounge to take in the view along the Mazda turnpike (now 520yen one way).
At the Skylounge you can guarantee a good selection of people on any given day, and here on New Year’s Day I was impressed to see a steady stream of older people – alone and in groups – come up in taxis, take in the view and perhaps have a drink, then get back in the taxis to wherever they’d come from. For myself I had a cup of tea and decided to try the chili cheese hot dog. In no way traditional, or even advisable, but it did taste pretty good. No photo sadly.
Finally, thanks to Frank for getting a line-up shot and for putting the day together:
Here’s to hoping 2016 continues as well as it started, and all the best to everyone.
It’d been quite a few weeks since I’d been out on the motorbike for a day trip, so when my old friend ‘CS’ offered up the middle day of a 3 day weekend for a trip out in November, I was up for it, and so spent some time staring at my Touring Mapple book and Google Maps to see where we could put in a few hundred kilometres.
As I’m all about style and culture, I had decided we should meet up on the infamous 246 road before moving up into the mountains of central and western Kanagawa Prefecture. The meeting place: The Eastern Gods Truck Station. Well technically it’s the Toushin Truck Station, but the literal translation of the kanji sounds a lot better in my opinion. Yes, it’s a truck stop – a fair sized one too – with a restaurant, showers, some rooms, and of course ample parking for large trucks, and a smaller area for vans. We parked up in the latter car and van park, CS’s Triumph Tiger 1200 dwarfing some of the vans, whilst everything dwarfed my CB400.
A cup of tea and a catch-up later we were on the 246 for a little while before heading north on the 412 and then moving onto the 413 and pushing west. The 413 is a decent road – well surfaced, the odd narrow portion, with plenty of twisties to play on. For the most part you’re going along valleys, but at elevation, so expect some dampness and mist, especially on an overcast day like we were on. It was at this point I discovered the mist loved settling on my visor and stubbornly refused to roll off, so I need to sort that out.
About half way along, we came across a rest area near the town of Doshi, and sailing past all those people in cars who like to queue for parking spaces, we parked up in the bike area which was packed with bikes and bikers – men, women and children of all ages, with all manner of bikes, trikes and quads. It was a good place to take a break, with people queuing for various hot snacks or grilled chicken, pork, vegetables , some tasty looking grilled fish, as well as a shop selling powdered radish roots, fresh veg and other things there was no way I could fit on my bike. In the end I had a bottle of hot lemon juice from the the vending machine. A missed opportunity in retrospect – I should have queued for the grilled fish.
Back on the road, more twisties, but then a slower section in traffic around lake Yamanaka. I always like the lakes around Mt. Fuji, especially for the novelty ferries. I didn’t take a picture, but Yamanaka had the giant swan ferry on the water as we rode past.
Another missed food opportunity here: we went past several nice local places and pulled away from the commercialized lake area,and only when we were stopping for some fuel did we decide we were hungry, by which point our only real option was the nearby Royal Host. It’s perfectly acceptable as a place to eat, but as a franchise, we’d usually avoid it.
As CS has a GPS system, he oddly likes to make use of it, and due to this, it likes to run him a merry jaunt on occasion. This time, instead of taking us to a small tea house on a mountain road I had spied on Google Maps, it decided we really wanted to sit in more traffic around the outskirts of the larger Kawaguchi lake in a market stalls area where it continued to confidently claim the tea shop was always 3 minutes away,.
After fifteen minutes, we called it out, told it we weren’t happy, did U-turns and followed my direction following my paper map. That was better. Or at least it was better for a while, since on the 137, we were to look for road 708, a svelte mountain road where this legendary tea shop would be waiting for us. Unfortunately CS was a couple of cars in front of me, and he missed the turn. This left me bombing up the road thinking I was way behind, arriving at the beautiful tea-shop and realising it was just me. Long story short, CS did finally locate the place, and it was worth it.
It’s called Tenkachaya (天下茶屋), as in, ‘whole world under heaven’ tea shop. They also make and sell senbei rice crackers. There’s no parking as such, and the collection of cars and bikes basically hug the sides of the road. Inside it’s all wood, modestly lit, and very relaxing. The staff were really friendly, and explained what was available in the shop and on the menu. That’s when we noticed we’d misunderstood something. They do sell tea – indeed they give you a complimentary cup when you sit down – but their speciality is a blend coffee. I had to have one, and yes, it was very good. Also, the senbei were sweet, sort of lemon flavoured, and the staff advised us to break them in their plastic wrappers before eating because they could probably stop a bullet. They do taste rather good though, so we bought some as omiyage to take away too. It’s by itself really on that 708 road, which the tunnel making it far quicker to get to and from the lake, but it is worth the ride/drive up for a rest stop and to take in the view.
After that good rest we started winding our way towards the Chuo expressway, joining at it’s southern starting point, and following it east. There was plenty of traffic – perhaps people returning Sunday night to avoid the read traffic insanity of the Monday return, so we ended up filtering for a couple of kilometres before stopping before the Hachioji junction where we parted ways. My route would take me onto the newer Ken-O extension south. I like the road as it’s not so busy, there’s plenty of distance between junctions, and even though there aren’t yet service areas, it’s a relaxing ride though I should note, there’s no street lights along some sections, so with just me on my bike, even with the headlight on, it felt oddly isolated.
The only notable thing on that final stretch was that all the auto-payment arches (ETC) were broken on my exit ramp, so I had to stop and get off my bike, get my bike seat off to give the chap on the gate my ETC card so he could manually check it through, then put it all back together. I’ve never had to do that before. Odd really.
All in all a good day out.
(An aside here: the lake is called Kawaguchiko. That ‘ko’ denotes lake [], and though most signs in English say Lake Kawaguchiko, it’s technically Lake Kawaguchi I think).