79. From Qingdao to Nanjing

My first challenge to the authorities occurred on the outskirts of Qingdao. I pedalled past the no-cycling signs onto the wide-shouldered highway that led to the new Jiaozhou Bay bridge that spans over 20 km across the bay and onto the Shanghai road. As I approached the toll-gate, the uniforms tripped over themselves to get out of their booths and block my entrance. Arms flailing they cornered me and crossed their forearms indicating there was no way on Confucious' green earth that I was going to get past. A young, spectacled girl emerged from behind the taller young men and started to explain in good English that bicycles weren't allowed to cross the bridge. I pulled out my map, explained where I was going and asked for an alternative route, the only option being to cycle around the entire bay and add an extra 50 km onto the journey, which I was hoping to avoid. There was much discussion and questionning. Where are you going? Shanghai. No way! More discussions and pointing at the national road on the map that I should have been following. Well this way is much quicker so you can go this way but don't tell anyone. And with that I passed by the barrier and was sent off with waves, smiles and shouts of good luck onto a brand new highway across the bay.

With my first thirty-day visa ticking away, a tailwind and the tabular agricultural rice baskets of Shandong and Jiangsu provinces stretching ahead of me to the south, the cycling was fast and easy and I covered almost 800 km in the first six days cycling. Even the busy highways were fine to cycle on, with generally a very wide shoulder and plenty of other people pedalling along and acoustic motorbikes gliding silently past with their battery-powered motors. Less silent were the buses and trucks that use phenomenally loud air-horns to plough their way through the lesser mortals. And everywhere I was met with stares and sometimes smiles. One evening in the town of Guanyun, the owner of the binguan where I was spending the night, treated me to dinner with the family and insisted I kept pace with the stiff rice-based spirit he kept filling my glass with. After an hour's interrogation through an online translator about my income and my views on communism versus democracy we drove down to the People's Square, narrowly missing many cyclists and pedestrians enroute. In light of the full moon the city's plaza took on a serene look, the bland unpainted concrete softened by the street lights and the rubbish hidden in the shadows. People were dancing and a couple of brave souls tried to teach me before realising it was a lost cause. The hotel owner was very enthusiastic and as he grabbed whichever lady would dance with him, I wandered over to a group of traditional musicians who had a huqin and sanxian (Chinese lute) and a lady was accompanying them.

In Chuzhou, the birthplace of the darling revolutionary Zhou Enlai, my arrival apparently appeared on the radar of the local authorities and within an hour a couple of plainclothes officers were standing by a tree opposite the hotel I was staying in looking pretty suspicious. As I returned to the hotel I was cornered by a serious looking man in his fifties and a young girl who spoke flawless English and I was asked to show my documents with all the details carefully noted along with questions about where I had come from and where I was going.

Leaving Chuzhou the following morning there was no sight of the police and I headed south out of town along the Grand Canal, the world's longest at almost 1800 km and a waterway that opened up a link between the Yangtze and the Yellow river, the latter in the thirsty northern central plains and the river itself is now so stretched that it fails to flow to the sea over 200 days a year. While barges still ply the canal in their droves with loads of coal, gravel and sand predominating, the canal is also the proposed means to transfer water from the Yangtze up to the northern urban centres of Beijing and Tianjin in a controverial scheme that is a continuation of ambitious hard engineering projects to solve environmental limits that the rapidly developing eastern provinces keep breeching. The pace of growth in the towns that I have passed through is astonishing, with most of the urban areas looking like a stage set in the works. I stop for lunch of noddles and eggs and not for the first time in the past few days has my money been refused, the owner asking for a photo instead.

On the outskirts of Yangzhou I get lost and end up arriving at a little village in the dark where the three guesthouses refuse to rent a bed for the night to a foreigner, that they are not registered to host. While most places I have approached are happy to take a chance, no one would here and so I get directions for Yangzhou again and head off on a thirty kilometre night ride. On the way into the city, three young guys on motorbikes pull up and offer to bring me to the hostel I am looking for and an hour later and with 213 km on the clock for the day, I get a dorm bed for 20 yuan (2 euro) and meet the only other traveller staying in the hostel, Italian Alessandro, and we go for a meal of noodles and grilled vegetables at a nearby place where the young owner chats to us in English, while we compare our first impressions of China.

The next day I cross the Yangtze river by ferry and ride to Nanjing, the former capital of China. I spend a couple of days thinking about the routes ahead, trying to decide whether to go west or south and compromising by going nowhere, taking another day off to wash the dirt and dust off Rocinante and ponder the memorial for the Nanjing massacre when the Japanese army killed an estimated 300,000 people in 1937 during their occupation of the country.

Nanjing, China

Pedalled: 51,544 km

78. The slow boat to China

China emerged out of the morning fog yesterday after crossing from Incheon on the Korean penninsula and arriving in Qingdao eighteen hours later. The majority of the passengers were traders involved in bringing an eclectic array of items from cartons of Yakult to machined steel pieces across the Yellow Sea. Boarding took a couple of hours and at both ends I was told I couldn't cycle the couple of hundred metres to the boat but would instead have to squeeze onto the overloaded bus with the loaded bicycle. People helped out though and found enough space to part for the bike. Once aboard, most people broke up into small groups playing cards and by ten o'clock lights were out and most drifted off to sleep. Arrival in China was relatively painless. I think I had enough stereotypes of officialdom built up that I fully anticipated a laborious and thorough grilling but instead an almost smiling lady stamped my passport after carefully reviewing it and then I was waved through customs and exempted from having to xray all the gear once again. Marvellous. The first foray around Qingdao proved that alas while people were very friendly and eager to help, like many previous places, they don't like to admit defeat with my alien pronounciations and gesticulations so I was sent on several wild goose chases around the city before I narrowed down the area I was looking for.

Qingdao, an old Germanic concession, whose chief legacy is the internationally famous Tsingtao brewery, is a popular spot for both domestic and foreign tourism with its promenades and sandy beaches. I caught the tail end of Golden week, an important holiday period, when one of the largest annual human migrations takes place as many of the 1.35 billion head on holiday or home to visit family and friends. The first two days have been taken pretty easy, exploring the streets and pots of Qingdao and enjoying the friendly people as well as their impressive ability to overcharge. The variety of food reflects the size and diversity of the country although my appetite was tempered somewhat by an article I read on the boat yesterday about the recycling cooking oil industry in China whereby an estimated ten per cent of all used and discarded cooking oil in the country is rescued from sewers, reprocessed (which I am not sure what that means), and then sold back at bargain prices to restaurants and food stalls. The Great Fire Wall also seems to be blocking access to my regular blog site so updates have to be sent unedited and pictureless via email for the moment. Thanks for perservering.

Qingdao, China

Pedalled: 50,786 km

77. Seoul searching

Leaving Busan, I pedalled north to the cities of Ulsan and Gyeongju that together form a large urban industrial region in the southeastern corner of the country. The latter city was the original capital of the Silla kingdom, lasting almost one thousand years, it was one of Asia's longest dynasties and some of the most important archaeological remains and temples are found within the city and the surrounding hills. Most notable was Bulguksa temple, one of the most famous Buddhist temples in the country and regarded as the crowning achievement of Buddhist art and architecture from the Silla period.

Bulguksa temple - the Blue Cloud and White Cloud bridges

With Chinese visa considerations in mind, I decided on a shorter, more direct route to Seoul than the meandering route up to the northeastern corner that I had originally intended to follow. Autumn had arrived as a stowaway on board the ferry from Japan, evenings now warranting a fleece or two and on the fifth night of camping in South Korea I found the fly-sheet had frozen inside and out with condensation and dew. It's hard to believe that it was just a couple of weeks since I was complaining to myself about the heat at night in the tent in Japan and now I am putting all the clothes I have on again. While there was only one day of rain in South Korea, with the rest being blue sky days, the yellow orb has lost its power and now merely serves to provide light rather than much warmth to compete against the Siberian winds blowing icy air down from the north. Nonetheless daytime temperatures are near perfect for cycling, still climbing up into the high teens at least and best of all a dry atmosphere with no humidity. Gone are the days of smelling like a wet dog after a couple of nights cycling and camping. Shivering at 3 a.m. in the maize sack, however, I'd take the wet dog days anytime.

Gyeongju lunch

With almost 500 people per square kilometre, one of the highest population densities in the world, choosing small roads off the busy highways was a priority and I spent the first four days from Gyeongju sticking to backroads that traverse the eastern hills, before cutting across to the South Han riverbank that would lead me into Seoul. On the first night of camping I saw several hidden possibilities before deciding to pitch in a park beside a small village. I asked a young girl if she thought it would be alright and she said yes, before giggling and running into the house. The park was kitted out with toilets, shelters and benches and shaded by towering trees. As darkness fell and I sat reading by torchlight before having to build the house and set up the kitchen, a man emerged from the house and walked slowly over to me, bearing eight eggs which he handed to me with a slight smile and bow before turning to go back and watch the television that flashed from behind the curtains.

An old man was doing laps of the park in the morning as I climbed out of the tent at the late hour of seven o'clock. He said something whilst looking at the tent and then let out a big chuckle before resuming his tortoise paced outing. As I packed up, rain drops started falling from the grey sky above and didn't let up for the rest of the day, although for the most part it was fine Irish mist rather than the traditional Asian bucket bath. I escaped the worst of it as I arrived into the small town of Cheongsong, happily spending a couple of hours at the lively little market, eating sweet bean buns and watching a couple serving fresh raw fish straight from the bucket. Point, slice and serve with a good shot of soju. Later the rain died down and I headed on, choosing to pitch the tent inside one of the many open-sided wooden shelters that dot the Korean countryside, for use in the hot summer days, or cold rainy ones too. I wasn't long settling into my sleeping bag, congratulating myself on the peaceful surroundings and roof above me, with only the odd car passing every quarter of an hour on the little-used road I was on. Across the river the lights of a jeep appeared, bouncing over the rutted track, presumably heading for the lights of a nearby farmhouse. A few moments later a very loud gunshot though had me sitting upright and looking over at what they were doing, just one hundred metres away. They had a powerful lamp to spot game and evidently they had just missed their first target, as they moved on up the valley. Over the next hour, several more fully-laden cars and jeeps rattled up and down the valley with their lights searching for prey. So I laid low and hoped the soju-fuelled hunters wouldn't spot any animals popping up near me. Later on a police car came down the road with the lights on and allowed peace to return.

Rural South Korea, like rural Japan, seems to exist in a temporal vacuum in contrast to its hyper-urban settings that the young have been fleeing to since the 1960s in search of work and the perceived better life on offer. Almost all of the relatively small plots of rice, chillis and other vegetables, as well as the plentiful apple orchards, were tended to by hand by their aging owners. In many faces, the lines of hardship run deep, as these people survived the Korean war, which when it ended in 1953 had left both Koreas utterly devastated, with no economic infrastructure, millions of displaced and many orphans. The United Nations ranked South Korea as one of the poorest countries in the world at the time. Yet this Asian tiger has climbed since the 1960s to have the 14th largest economy in the world today. And all this as well as maintaining watch over its side of the most heavily armed border in the world today and a military that ranks, per capita, only after its northern neighbour in size.

 

Approaching the capital from the east, it's possible to traverse the entire city along excellent bike paths that line both banks of the Han river as well as surrounding tributaries, meaning that I only spent about one kilometre cycling along roads in one of the largest urban areas in the world. Earlier in the week I was escorted off the highway as a I circled the city of Wonju by a couple of concerned but sincere police officers who appeared to be much more of a hazard than I was, stopping suddenly in the middle of the highway with no warning lights to get out and tell me I couldn't ride the shoulder of the rather empty highway. Monday was a public holiday and crowds were out on the bicycle lanes in astonishing numbers, mostly lycra-clad and looking like a rebel pedalling invasion as it's the fashion to wear full-face cloth mask with dark sunglasses that are regarded as protection from the sun and pollution. I found my way over to Toki and Park's place in the satellite city of Gwangmyeong. Nestled down the end of a lane with a colourful traditional market that gradually gives way to semi-naked busty girls behind glass doors and neon-lit love motels, their flat has their bikes hanging from the ceiling that they recently rode through eastern Australia and New Zealand on a six-month tour of Oceania. I wash in warm water and then we go out to eat grilled seafood. On the way home we pick the best swimmer from an open tank and he's sliced up unceremoniously, headless and still flipping, into a bag which we take home to eat.

No more dog meat

Seoul, South Korea

Pedalled: 50,734 km

76. Boat to Busan

My lessons on Korean language, history and where to find the best dog meat soup on the penninsula began while I sat in the shade, shuffling my lunch around on its polystyrene plate with my throw-away waribashi. Jun had spotted a cyclist-in-need when I was manhandling all the gear onto the ferry in Fukuoka and came down to lend a hand and a big smile. As we searched for the open floored dormitory third class room that I had been assigned, he asked if I was geologist, collecting rock samples from each country along the way. When we found the lodgings, fellow passengers were marking their territory with thin mattresses and setting up defensive fortifications with their suitcases.

Jun and I retired to the rear deck with my lunch, watching Fukuoka slip away. Jun was on his honeymoon it turned out, a week's cycling around typhoon whipped and drenched Kyushu. Unfortunately his wife had gotten a bad cold and was resting in their quarters. They were on their way home now, close to Seoul and where I will take the ferry to China from and Jun invited me to visit them when I am in Incheon. When I was done eating we began with the language basics and the cycling essentials - toilets, food and camping options. Jun is a couple of years older than me and works as a sound engineer in Incheon international airport. Like all South Korean men he had to do three years military service before he turned thirty-five, and he spent his time in the late nineties in the navy. He lost friends last year when the North Korean military sank a South Korean gunship, killing 46 sailors in an unprovoked attack. The event was one of the more serious of many that has brought the two long-term adversaries close to all out war. The threat of nuclear weapons and historical involvement of the US, the former Soviet Union and China, however, has always meant that compromises and forbearance won out over desires for revenge for an all out battle on the penninsula that was divided in a deal between the big boys after the Second World War. With the capital of the democratic South lying only 40 kilometres below the so-called demilitarised zone, Jun said that current predictions are that in the event of the North initiating an attack, Seoul would be destroyed in less than five hours. Jun was clear that the presence of the US military in South Korea is essential to the Republic's survival, despite many South Koreans being opposed to their presence.

Back once again on the right hand side of the road in pulsating Busan's Friday night traffic, it was clear that Japan's typically mild-mannered driving habits were a memory. Red lights are merely suggestive and buses and taxis pull up without giving much warning as motorbikes using either the road or footpath depending on which one they think they can squeez along. I found my way to the apartment building where my South African host, Marguerite, lives with several other teachers from many English-speaking nations, including Ireland. My introduction to Korean cuisine and nightlife was swift and fuelled by Korea's national rice-based spirit, so-ju, a vodka-like potion that could be used just as effectively thinning paint.

Busan, South Korea

Pedalled: 50,077 km

75. Genki days

On my last two nights in Nagasaki I was futon-surfing with Asuka, a medical student who had just returned from an African trip. One evening we talked about some Japanese issues and she disagreed with my comments on Fukushima being a potential threat and also felt that the Japanese "had paid enough" with regard to World War II and it would be better if we could just move on from the past. Unfortunately though I think that it will require first a full acknowledgement of the extent of Japanese war crimes during the Second Sino-Japanese war and WWII before people in the respective nations involved will be able to heal and move on and Takahashi Tesuya at the University of Tokyo agrees: "in order for Japan to regain the trust of East Asian peoples, it is important for it to make clear its responsibility for the past, so that it can actively fulfill its role in the construction of international order based on just peace". Perhaps then, as he points out, can Japan more legitimately expect an apology for the war crime of the atomic bombings from the US.

Three of the most important issues regarding atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial army during the Second World War concern the 1937 mass rape and massacre in the former Chinese capital of Nanking, the issue of forced sexual slavery during World War II involving a couple of hundred thousand so-called comfort women, especially from Korea and Japan, and the covert biological and chemical warfare carried out by Unit 731 between 1935 and 1945. As the extent of these of these issues has become clearer, they remain as stumbling blocks to improving relations with China and South Korea as well as several other nations. The Allies assisted in the covering up of evidence of some of these war crimes in the aftermath of Japan's surrender as their was primary focus was on curtailing the spread of communism. During the 1980s and 90s, controversy surrounded the issue of government-approved history textbooks for high school students in Japan that failed to discuss the actions of the Japanese Imperial army in a critical manner but most of the history books used today contain references, although sometimes brief, to the above events. 

Genki is word of the week. It translates as energetic, exciting or full of life. "O genki desu ka?"(How are you?"). Response... "Hai, genki desu" (Yes, I'm well).

The last two cycling days in Japan from Nagasaki to Fukuoka were not always genki as Typhoon No.15 resulted in a tremendous headwind, that at times made it difficult to keep Rocinante moving forward. Around noon yesterday the odometer reached the fifty thousand kilometre mark but I was too busy trying to avoid getting blown in front of a truck to notice until I was sheltering a few kilometres down the road. Gradually though the wind died down and the rain eased off as I came in along the coast to Fukuoka, the end point of Japan and the embarkation point for the ferry to Busan in South Korea this coming Friday morning. In the meantime I am staying with Anita, a friend of my cousin's, who had an amazing dinner prepared when I arrived in last night.

Bar the obvious broken limbs, Japan has been an amazing experience and I've met many great people along the way and thoroughly enjoyed my time here. The past couple of weeks cycling along the quieter roads of Shikoku and Kyushu have been wonderful. Here are a couple of photos from the Japan album that I have uploaded here.

Fukuoka, Japan

Pedalled: 50,055 kilometres

74. Pilgrimage to Nagasaki

There was light drizzle falling yesterday as I came into Nagasaki. I passed a Harley Davidson garage and pondered for a moment the irony of opening a business to such an All-American dream vehicle in this city that was literally wiped off the map, or at least the aerial photos, when the Fat Man was dropped on the city on the 9th August 1945, the second atomic bomb to be dropped in war. The first was three days previously in Hiroshima, when the US decided to use its recently developed atomic bomb to force the Japanese military government and Emperor to surrender, thereby they argued saving the lives of countless American GIs in an invasion of Japan, in last act of World War Two. They also undoubtedly wanted to test their new weapon and provide justification for the two billion dollars invested in the Manhattan Project that oversaw the development of the bomb. Japanese cities that had been selected as potential targets for the atomic bombings, were left off the regular US air force bombings that had already destroyed many of the urban areas including Tokyo, as a clear sheet was desired to see the extent of damage that a bomb would cause. Nagasaki was a secondary target, in fact, when Major Charles Sweeney took off in a B-29 Superfortress from Tinian in the west Pacific but Kokura city had to be abandoned as the primary target when visibility failed to improve.

Nagasaki had long been an important link with the outside world had been founded, in fact, by Portuguese in the mid 16th century and became an important Roman Catholic centre in East Asia until the Shimabara Rebellion in 1637 sought to ban foreigners from Japan under a national isolation policy. Dutch traders were allowed to remain and subsequently Nagasaki gained a reputation as Japan's window to the wider world outside and became a centre of study of European science and art. By the Second World War Nagasaki's industrial importance, in particular ship building, ensured it a high place on the target list that had been drawn up.

Nagasaki Peace Park

The death toll from the bomb was between 70,000 and 80,000, including several thousand conscripted Korean workers who took many years to get recognition in Japan for their losses, most dying in the initial impact, although the effect of the radiation exposure continued to affect many people for years to come. Six days after the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan announced its surrender.

Every year the mayor of the city issues the Nagasaki peace declaration that calls for the abolishment of nuclear weapons and for the countries with nuclear weapons to move towards the conclusion of the Nuclear Weapons Convention. This year's declaration referred to the Fukushima disaster and asked "Have we lost our awe of nature? Have we become overconfident in the control we wield as human beings? Have we turned away from our responsibility for the future? Now is the time to discuss thoroughly and choose what kind of society we will create from this point on."

Nagasaki, Japan

Pedalled: 49,855 km

73. Fuku-what?

Pedalling down the river from Kyoto towards Osaka, a fearsome black wall of cloud began to engulf central Osaka. I arrived in the suburb of Kawachiiwafune with a few hours to spare before the slow moving Typhoon Talas arrived. Ever since the Osakan cyclists I had met in Takayama a couple of days previously warned me about the typhoon, I had followed the storm tracker on the Japan Meterological website and watched as the projection initially shifted to the west but the Kansai region was still in its path. I had contacted Steven and Yuri, family friends who had invited me to stay with them, and they said it was no problem to shelter with them until the weather cleared up. So for six days at the turn of the month, I stayed with Steven and Yuri and their wonderful three year old daughter Juli. Typhoon Talas was moving slowly and dumped a lot of water. While the area I was staying in seemed to miss the worst of the storm, neighbouring areas in Nara and Wakayama prefectures experienced several deaths, lots of flooding, landslides and collapsed bridges, leaving many villages in the mountainous areas accessible only by helicopter. Between earthquakes, tsunamis and typhoons, it would appear that natural hazards continue to question Japan's right to be here.

It is only six months since the Tohoku earthquake and subsequent tsunami that caused almost 20,000 deaths and resulted in the biggest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, when the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant was overrun by the 15 metre high tsunami wave that ultimately resulted in several of the reactors going into meltdown. The extent of the radiation fallout is still being unravelled. Or ravelled up perhaps. The Japanese government apparently adopted a policy of non-disclosure about the true extent of the damage and only reluctantly moved the accident rating from an initial four to the highest rating of seven, Chernobyl being the only other nuclear accident to warrant such a rating in the history of the nuclear industry. While the radiation fallout levels are much lower at Fukushima than at Chernobly, the accident is much more complex due to the number of reactors involved.

Steven and Yuri are the first people whom I have met in Japan who have been openly really concerned about the impact that the fallout will have, as well as understanding ways that they can ensure a minimum of exposure to the radiation, especially for Juli. Steven has been advocating on other environmental issues in Japan in recent years, including dolphin hunting, and he already had a clear sense of the media's failure to properly cover these issues as well as the government's desire to minimise panic and the economic impact of the nuclear disaster. In the supermarket near their house, we see produce for sale from areas affected by the fallout, accompanied by a smiling photo of the Fukushima prefectural govenor and a comment assuring that all produce is good and people are doing a good thing by supporting those areas affected by the disaster. Yet Steven's Geiger counter regularly gives very high readings of radiation from produce from many of the northern prefectures in Honshu.

After breakfast each day, the family takes grounded iodine pills and apple pectin powder that has been found by some scientists to reduce the levels of radiation in the body. They avoid all produce from the affected areas in northern Honshu, including diary produce, and instead get a weekly delivery of vegetables from Yuri's parents garden west of Osaka. One evening I offered to cook dinner and bought the ingredients from the local shop. Yuri was concerned when I arrived back with mushrooms and garlic from regions further north. I had asked in the shop which prefectures the produce came from, it's written clearly in kanji, but didn't recognise the name. We pulled out the Geiger counter and the readings were fine. While many in Japan might regard such measures and level of caution as over the top, they can remember the recent scandal when primary school children in Yokohama city near Tokyo were fed beef from Fukushima that contained higher than government permitted levels of radioactive cesium.

"In the absence of strong and effective political involvement on the part of the electorate,

the governing elite had always been pretty much left to run the country as they saw fit."

Hans Brinkmann (2008) Showa Japan

Japan's docile political environment is well-known and was arguably helpful in the post-war years of sacrifice and austerity when the country sought to build a globally-important economy. In the post-Showa era however, after Emperor Hirohito died in 1989 and the bubble economy burst, the last two decades have seen the country struggle to manage the transition to a very different socio-economic and political environment. A lack of engagement on the part of the electorate, coupled with the conflict averse nature of society, may leave the country ill-equipped to dealing with issues such as the Fukushima disaster, where government attempts to maintain a business-as-usual approach, have left many people feeling frustrated yet unprepared to begin tackling the issues that need to be discussed.

Gohoku, Shikoku, Japan

Pedalled: 49,347 km

72. Over an Alp

Leaving Matsumoto last weekend and waving goodbye to Jim and his family, who had hosted me for an evening, I stopped to fill my water bottles up at a spring in the lane behind his house, beside the local saki brewery. The night before, over a tetra-pack carton of Japan's finest (and the cheapest we could find in the Seven Eleven) I asked Jim, a twenty-two year veteran of cheap saki what the secret was. "They say it's in the water", he said, staring into his glass.

My goal for the next couple of days was to be the literal high point of the northern Japanese Alps as I climbed up and over the Norikura Skyline road, the highest pass in Japan at 2720 metres, and which is a largely car-free road for 40 kilometres over the summit of the granite batholith with only shuttle buses and taxis being allowed on the route through the Chubusangaku national park. 

Weekend traffic was surprisingly busy on the narrow route approaching the turn and the long, narrow tunnels that had been built during the Second World War were at times a little unnerving. I was relieved to reach the turn off for the small tourist settlement of Norikura village and I expected the traffic to thin out as I left the main route but as indicators came on it seemed like everyone was heading the same way and everyone had a bicycle with them too. It turned out that I had arrived along the afternoon before a famous annual bike race that would see over 4,000 cyclists race the last 20 kilometres from Norikura village (1200m) to the top of the pass. The top amateur and semi-professional cyclists were gathering from around the country to participate. Most of the guys I spoke to initially assumed I was some sort of comedy entry. When they realised I had no intention of paying 8000 yen to climb a hill and come paddy-last they explained that the road would be closed for most of the following morning for the race but I could pitch the tent up in one of the fields where competitors were parking and pitching their tents or preparing their bikes for the race the next day.

The following morning I watched the riders set off at intervals in groups of several hundred up the rain-soaked road. As the sun came out and dried the road and the tent I packed up and decided to see if I could pedal up behind the last group rather than wait another few hours until the route opened again officially. I was sure I would draw the wrath of the normally gracious baton-waving traffic controllers but a smile and a look of sympathy at the martyr who they seemed to assume was just a very late entry and off I went. Three hours later (not including rest stops) I crested the summit, having had all 4000 entrants pass me on their  descent to the village, any signs of the mornings event were packed up and long gone. Someone told me the king of the hill had managed to achieve victory in just over 55 minutes. 

Mixing with the young and ancient who had bussed it up to come to climb one of the surrounding peaks, I put a fleece on for the first and only time in August and left Rocinante by the bus stop as I joined some recent arrivals and plodded up to the nearby peak of Maou-dake. Back on the bike and I descended the 60 kilometres to the historical centre of Takayama in the late afternoon, stopping just once outside a shrine in a picturesque village where the old lady that I was sharing the bench with, shuffled into the nearby shop to return with a bottle of Pocari Sweat, Japan's favourite sports drink. I continued on to Takayama and made my way to the local park just as the rain started and found a covered bench where I planned to spend the night. An hour later a group of eight university students cycling from Osaka up to Niigata arrived along with headlights flashing, as surprised to see me as I was them and we shared the space for the night, swatting blindly about for mosquitos as we fell asleep.

Osaka, Japan
Trip distance: 49,033 km

71. Wasabi weather

After two days of waiting for a break in the rain, I finally left Tokyo at midday on Monday after a quick visit to the Japan Post office. I had decided to relieve Rocinante of a few extra kilos of odds and ends that my panniers had inherited when we had packed Ellie's gear up and which I wouldn't need in Japan and I sent them to Anita, a Canadian teacher in Fukuoka, who had kindly agreed to mind them for me. The lady in the post office wanted me to write the address in kanji at first, which I started copying from the piece of paper where Sparky had written it down. Halfway through what I thought was an admirable, if somewhat infantile attempt, the lady frowned at my illegible artwork and decided I best just use the Roman letters.

Escaping Tokyo on a bicycle, like many large cities, is not as difficult as it might seem. There were a number of options including several bike routes following the main rivers, a perfect way to get up to the cooler mountains to the west and I was able to photocopy some detailed bicycle maps which Yukiko had lent me. With the rain delay and more forecast I had already abandoned the idea of a northeast detour to the shrines and temples of Nikko as the prospect of camping wet and wild (not the cool kind) wasn't appealing given how hard it is to dry the gear out again unless the sun makes a guest appearance through the overcast sky. So with some last minute futon-surfing requests I had places to stay for the first couple of nights.

I took the busy Route 311 for 20 km from Sparky's apartment in Setagaya and headed north to get on the Arakawa river route, with only one collision when I misjudged the mind of an old, possibly drunk man, who weaved into me just as I came up alongside him. Once I found the pathway that ran along the top of the southern levee that kept the Arakawa river separate from the adjacent properties on the floodplain, I was soon out among rice paddies and golf courses.

Fifty kilometres upstream I came to Kumagaya city and stopped for the night with an American couple, Eric and Kyde, who had moved to Japan last May. Like many native English-speaking gaijin (foreiners) working in Japan, Kyde is an ALT (assistant language teacher) who works alongside local Japanese teachers during English lessons. In the immediate aftermath of the recent disaster an estimated half million foreigners left Japan, leading to the somewhat disparaging term of 'flyjin' being coined. After a great evening with Eric and Kyde and their friends, I left a drizzily Kumagaya and switched over to the Tone river and headed up to Takasaki city. I stayed with another couchsurfing host, Jaimie, and had a great night there as well. Sunset in Honshu at the moment is just before 7pm so it will be an early night in the tent. There are plenty of camping options though along the river banks and in quiet corners of public parks.

Yesterday I left the flatlands and began the first of several days crossing the Japanese Alps. After about 12 km climbing and 184 corners along the densely forested Route 18 I reached Usui Pass (1203m), which has been an important route across central Japan since the 8th century. A few kilometres on I came to Karuizawa and sweated my way up some more hills to Hiromichi and Yukiko's mountain house in the forested slopes above the town where friends of Yukiko, Tomohiso and Koji, welcomed me in. Both of them are doing day and night shifts in front of their laptops writing up their PhDs. Koji had four historical tomes beside him, each in a different language and three different alphabets - Russian, French, English and Japanese. We stayed up late, fixing the world over a beer.

Today it rains. I have found a shorter route over the mountains to Matsumoto which I plan to take tomorrow and will make it in one day rather than two. So today I can walk downtown and keep an eye out for the emperor who is in town apparently.

My favourite condiment here -Japanese horseradish, or wasabi - grows best in the stream beds of the nearby mountain valleys of central and northern Japan although these days the country has to import a lot to meet the high demand. Outside of Japan, what is often passed off as wasabi is in fact a mixture of regular horseradish, mustard and green food colouring which is much cheaper to produce and a lot less subtle. Traditionally the wasabi root was grated on a piece of dried sharkskin although these days ceramic is often used. Recent research has found a number of health benefits from setting your nasal passage on fire including anti-cancer, anti- inflammatory and anti-bacterial properties. So pile it on!

On the far side of the hemisphere Ellie's splint came off yesterday but it still may be a couple of months before she'll be cycling on it without pain.

Karuizawa, Japan
Pedalled: 48,416 km

70. Going solo

In the original plan, before Buddhist lucky charms had their wicked ways, Ellie and myself were to be joined by my cousin Mark in the first half of our Tour de Nippon, from Tokyo to Osaka via the Japanese Alps. A mysterious leg infection had already hospitalised Mark in Denver before Ellie and I had crossed the Pacific and he had to cancel his travel plans a few days before we were to meet. Two Sundays ago, Ellie and I loaded our bikes and followed Hiromichi and Yukiko, our hosts in the Shibuya area of Tokyo, who I had contacted through the Japan Cycling website and who had very generously put us up for several days and fed us all sorts of wonderful Japanese dishes, along the busy Roppongi-dori on our way out of Tokyo. Coming downhill beside Shibuya train station there was a moment of indecision about whether we could cross a junction and we all had to brake unexpectedly and Ellie's front pannier caught my rear while, twisting her front wheel sideways and sent her into an arc over the handlebars and down onto the road, breaking her fall with outstretched hands but still hitting her head, her helmet saving the brain surgeon from too much work. Unfortunately, however, bad news was confirmed in the nearby Ohashi hospital when the xrays taken of her arm revealed a radial head fracture near her left elbow. There was initial discussion about surgery being required but on subsequent visits the senior orthopedic doctor determined that a splint and possibly a cast for about a month followed by phyiscal theraphy treatments would be sufficient.

Yukiko and Hiromichi very generously gave us back their house key as they headed off on their annual holidays and in contrast to our first busy week applying for our Chinese visa and cycling all over central Tokyo, our second week was spent either reading, sleeping or watching one of the many DVDs on space exploration that Yukiko's friend had thoughtfully loaned to us. Both myself and Ellie feel qualified now to pilot any of the Apollo missions blindfolded. After a few days of discussing our options and doing battle with insurance companies, it was decided that rather than waiting here in Tokyo for Ellie's arm to heal while our recently issued Chinese visas were ticking away, Ellie would return home to sunny, riot-ridden England to mend for a month or two, while I continue on through Japan over the next month, before crossing into South Korea. I wonder what the Foreign Office travel advice would have been for England if the trouble were in another country!

And all because we failed to pay proper heed to the fortune that Ellie received at the Zojo-ji buddhist temple the day before the accident, that was largely very positive except with regard to travel, where it advised to "Try another time"!

Zojo-ji temple and Tokyo Tower in the background

Tokyo, Japan

Distance pedalled: 48,160 km