Sounkyo – Higashimokoto 88 miles At 3,388 metres, the Ginga tunnel leading out of Sounkyo was a beast of a tunnel. A safe tunnel one might add though, one to which welcomely allowed a plentiful amount of sidewalk space for the casual tour cyclist, always a bonus. This did however mean cutting out a small…
Category: Travel
Hokkaido Summer: Waterfalls & Grizzlies
Sounkyo The 1,984 meter Mt Kurodake can be tackled in two ways, hiking or cheating. Be in so it was my day off out of the saddle I decided that it would be in my best interests to opt for the latter and cheat my way to the mountains summit. I‘d achieve this by firstly…
Hokkaido Summer: Farm Porn Uncensored
Furano – Asahikawa 46 miles Furano is famed in summer for its fields of lavender, and with the season’s sudden change farm labourers were out in force maintaining the crop in readiness for the hive of tourists that would shortly follow. Being slightly too early I would miss out on the lavender at its peak…
Hokkaido Summer: The Takikawa Midnight Sun
Takikawa – Furano 41 miles I awoke to the sound of a natural cuckoo clock, the skylark’s reeling also soon following suit from where he had left off the previous night. I was surprised by how well I’d slept on my first night back under the stars. Being broad daylight already the night had quite…
Hokkaido Summer
Sapporo – Takikawa 62 miles Despite the coming of the cherry blossom the weather the week prior to my departure from Sapporo had been a cold, wet and windy disgrace. A hostel guest that had just recently returned from the north would tell me that it was the coldest place he had ever been to…
Christ On A Bike
22/04/2014 Hachinohe – Lake Towada It was now a Tuesday and I was a day late for the resurrection, yet Christ’s grave looked undisturbed and I had an inkling that he was still sleeping. Which I thought to be rather rude considering how far I’d come to visit him, yet alas he is Jesus Christ…
Touring the Sanriku Coast – I
11/04/ 2014 SENDAI TO ISHINOMAKI The notion to be pragmatically angry at a botched night’s sleep, especially a paid for botched night’s sleep would I genuinely feel have been warranted. But as soon as I was packed and on the road muscling my way through the inner city traffic and out towards the coast I…
Down in the Land of the One-Eyed Dragon
In the 17th Century there lived a Daimyo with balls of steel, a guy so hard that when he came face to face with the smallpox as a juvenile he plucked his own eyeball out giving him the nickname of the “one-eyed dragon”. That Daimyo’s name was Date Masamune, and as he grew he became…
Tokyo to Tokyo 