Futatsui – Oga Peninsula 74 miles I awoke to heavy rain. Not having the patience to linger in my tent I packed up camp and headed to a nearby 7-Eleven for breakfast. With coffee and gyōza in hand I took a seat under the eaves of a nearby school gymnasium and waited for the rain…
Tag: Japan Cycling
Hokkaido Summer: Cosplay by the Lake
Lake Shikotsu – Oshamanbe 82 miles A multitude of mountains paved the way for the 60-mile stretch between Lake Shikotsu and Lake Toya. With the comfort of clear skies, I made exceptional progress, my only concerns being the weekend drivers who drove by as if they had just been given a day pass to behave…
Hokkaido Summer: World Cup Karaoke Mountain Man
Sapporo – Lake Shikotsu 53 miles Between an 8-hour karaoke binge and England’s next World Cup match, I’d had very little time to rest. Normally, a 4am kick off would have been deemed an unheard of feat, yet I was still running on an excess of alcohol fumes and raring for England’s next humiliation to…
Hokkaido Summer: Back to the Big Smoke
Mashike – Sapporo 74 miles When I awoke I was able to add a new tick to the list of places slept upon my journey thus far: Hostel – ✓ Baseball Pitch – ✓ Park Bench – ✓ The House of Pubes – ✓ Hotel – ✓ Tsunami Evacuation Point – ✓ Refugee Shelter –…
Hokkaido Summer: I Get Wet
Wakkanai For three days I found myself holed up in another one of Hokkaidō’s classic 1980’s themed youth hostels. It was a desolate sort of building that gave off a haunted house vibe; located atop an isolated hill. Wakkanai was still being deluged by buckets of rain and after a while I began to feel…
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 – II
12/04/2014 Ishinomaki – Minamisanriku Today would be a deplorable mess with some half-arsed personal planning doused in a contingent of anti-social roads. Traipsing the Oshiku Peninsula regrettable. Situated just 45 miles away the Peninsula makes it the closest part of Honshu to the epicentre of the 2011 quake and again would make this one of…
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…
A Tale of Snow & Piss
I awoke early from my slumber knowing that today a formidable task lay ahead of me. One that had been lingering in the back of my mind intrepidly for some time. For today I would attempt to tackle the Bandai-Azuma Skyline, my greatest feat thus far. The road traverse’s for some 30km through the Azuma…
The Murder Stone
Nasu to Nasu-dake A thin layer of snow had settled over night giving me the perfect excuse in which to build some snowmen. I hated how cold it was in the mountains yet the sight of my snowmen over breakfast gave me some warmth and encouragement. The 8km climb up to Yumoto Park today from…
Tokyo to Tokyo 