Archiv der Kategorie: 2009

Some photos from the recent ride over Umenoki, Yanagizawa and Dosaka as an inpiration to dive deep into Autumn feelings.

Starting with the Tamagawa valley where it is the most beautiful, between Ome and Okutama about. No speed bumps and barriers can be seen.Rice Paddies before the harvest in the Enzan valley after coming down from Yanagizawa. One could almost see Tom Cruise walking around.Before the harvest still to keep away the crows (not effective in case of German ones) but couldn’t keep away the storm.Ready. Everything neatly lined up on both sides of the field. After the work is done …….waiting for the bus home. It makes me nervous to see only people above the age of 60 working in the fields. Who will harvest all our food in 20 years to come?
… long is the approach up to Umenoki and many drivers have lost courage and given up in the middle of their undertaking.Luckily life has it’s compensations Like the fast viaduct supported run down from Yanagizawa. David will do this one on Saturday I guess.

That reminds me that I wanted to write something about Kosumosu, its absence or more precise about this song „Where have all the flowers gone“ which I was forced to learn as teenager wit my guitar teacher and which came very handy then when demonstrating against nuclear weapons and Pershing rockets in the Seventies and early Eighties. Joan Baez was a very prominent figure at this time and being a big bob Dylan fan in the Seventies I naturally hated her. OK, she had sang in Woodstock but she was much too old and too much this teacher type baby.

Luckily we Germans have the mysterious Marlene Dietrich who re-did the song in German :

“ Sag mir wo die Blumen sind, wo sind sie gebliiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeben.“

the length of the „iiiiiiiieeeee“ expressing Weltschmerz, unbearable sadness and of course dissatisfaction with the stationing of nuclear weapons on unholy German soil.

I once stayed at a hotel in a small fishing village in Iceland, run by a Romanian who has worked at the Tokyo Hilton previously. He showed me the „blue room“ where Marlene Dietrich has slept in the Thirties. She probably has seen better hotels but then she was on the escape from Nazi Germany.

I got five pamphlets about the hotel from the Romanian and was asked to distribute them in Japan „to penetrate the market“.

Later the day I went out with my son on a fisherboat whale watching while Kazuko and our newborn daughter stayed behind at a small cafe at the port of the village. Later Kazuko told me that an older American couple entered the cafe, sat down close to her and Karen. She could just hear the man saying to his wife: „Look, Eskimos!“ before the camera flash went off and took her and Karen frontal.
Marlene, where have you gone?
I was going to see an American company on Monday and while riding up the escalator to the reception on the 2nd floor I could see the office space of another Japanese company selling aromatic scents. Japan has come a long way in terms of cool biz business attire and also sheet metal furniture may be a thing of the past in a youthful and dynamic company setting.

But take a look at the seating lay out – nothing has changed at all.

Put in another long ride today. I started at Hachioji, then moved over to Itsukaichi by Akigawa Kaido and climbed up Umenoki as a warm-up. I thought. This is much too hard for a warm-up, very similar characteristics to the Wada climb: First a slow approach along a river followed by a steep and brutal climb to the top. Much harder than from the North side. Therefore OWI : 1.0.

Along the Yoshino Kaido I rode to Okutama, but then made a turn on route 184 and discovered to my dismay that an identical long tunnel to the one of the 411 road side shortly before Okutama is also existing on the other side of the Tamagawa. Complete nonsense. After a break at the station I gave Yanagizawa Togebaka a try and made it in less than 2:10 hours thanks to the good weather and some tail wind. Being 10 kg less heavy than last year also helps a lot. Please check the Togebaka section.

A quick run to Ensan was followed by …. surprise .. a train ride to Otsuki. Yes, no fruit lines and Sasago horrors today, instead an attack on Dosaka and then home to Hashimoto via Doshi Michi.

A real loop, something that looks like a loop on the map not these balloons with attached strings (as part of the way and return is the same).

Summary: 154 km or riding, 2.800 m of climbing, still massive construction works everywhere and, yes, the absence of Kos(u)mos(u) this year is significant as Tom remarked?
Where have all the flowers gone?
Sag‘ mir wo die Blumen sind …..

Lately I did a lot of mileage by commuting between Yokohama and Tokyo. This should bring me into shape for the upcoming Cycle Messenger World Championship in Tokyo. Actually I like riding in the city as there is always something to see and to discover, as opposed to riding along the Tamagawa or some suburban roads (pachinko parlours on the left, car dealers on the right). But I started missing long climbs.

So Domenic and me agreed to meet early at Ome station and venture out into the highlands of Chichibu and Gunma yesterday. I left the house before 6 AM as the trains to Hachioji are getting very crowded after 7 and I was surprised how cold it was; it felt almost like a day in late October.

Domenic was on the same train when we arrived in Ome and I showed him around. That means, we shopped at Aurore bakery and at the approved 7-Eleven.
Domenic first followed my example to buy a still wa,rm royal milk bread but couldn’t followed my second example to eat it completely within three minutes.

And off we rode.

We followed the standard approach to Yamabushi Toge, stopping at the holy fountain to replenish our water bottles. The bridge next to the small shrine has been renovated and the waterpipe with the holy water has been diverted. Actually, one can not see where the water comes from, theoretically it could also be possible that it is just diverted from the trunk pipeline to Tokyo and not from a natural source at all. One day we have to climb up and check this.

Yamabushi Toge, which we mastered quickly was followed by a fast ride to Chichibu city on road 299, not pleasant but short. We continued then along road 140 in direction Mitsumine and took a short rest at the Laurent 7-Eleven, the last chance to eat something decent before serious climbing was forecasted.

Quickly we reached Takizawa dam and rode up the very impressive loop over the towering viaduct in front of the dam. It has been a while since I rode up there with Ludwig during the winter season, but this time in a very agreeable climate and under blue skies with some clouds as if painted it felt even better.

The road is then followed by a series of new tunnels, constructed 2003, 2002, 2003 and 2001. These tunnels provide easy access to a series of other tunnels which were constructed to provide shortcuts to the existing road which was basically perfect already. There are no villages, no signs of human activities except for road and slope maintenance works until the huge secret mining operations unfolds in front of the eyes of the unsuspecting rider.

Not too many Japanese know this, but from the shafts of this mine, wells are constructed into the belly of the Japanese underworld and since centuries Okonomiyaki sauce is pumped up by ardent workers. A dangerous undertaking indeed and many poor souls died in this effort for the sake of the nation; one can see their graves further up the road and once a year on September 16th, a priest comes and spread katsuobushi (bonito flakes) over their tombstones.

However lately with new trends in eating habits spreading rapidly through the country (Seven Elevens and Maid cafes in particular), the consumption of Okonomiyaki has been greatly decreased and many mines have closed down or reduced operations. This one is the only one still pumping the sticky brown liquid up and distributing it over the secret pipeline network to the downtowns of the two Kans (Kanto and Kansai, that is).

One can still see the old post office where envelopes were sealed and stamps were glued with the help of the sauce and the large wooden dormitories where the workers used to live only 20 or 30 years ago.
The dormitories also looked today like they were hold together by bonito flakes. I tried to convince Domenic that these were a good investment opportunity and probably cheap to acquire. One can convert them easily into luxury apartments and sell them off one by one.

Enough of business, we were there for the elevation meters and steadily we made our way up to Haccho Toge and tunnel at 1,255 meters.. On the top we were greeted by a splendid view of the mountains on the border between Saitama and Gunma.
We then continued to take to same road down to Shigasaka Toge (road 299) and secretly crossed the borderline to Gunma prefecture. Fond memories of my own border crossing 20 years ago lingered in my mind ….. „Goodbye, moon of Deutsche Demokratische Republik, goodbye…“

Once in Gunma, actually a first for me on the bike, we rode along the „whatever“ river on road 462 in direction Honjo. It is hard to imagine, but there are even less people living in Gunma than in Chichibu it seems. We stopped at a vending machine where we probably assured double the summer season income of the village compared to last year by buying three soft drinks.
And finally after many beautiful sights and still below the beautiful Gunma skies we arrived at Waseda Honjo Shinkansen station. While the roads, tunnels and bridges we have ridden so far were completely useless, leading from nowhere to nowhere, the reason why this Shinkansen station was constructed defies every sense of human logic. At least I assume that the huge parking place behind it and the signboards announcing the vague intentions of the urban development board to construct apartment houses there sometime in the not foreseeable future, where erected after the Shinkansen station was finished and not the reason for the construction itself.

A complete mystery that can only be explained by Japanese politics.

As we were wondering all the time by the huge number of construction works. It seems that the LDP cannot wait until the end of the fiscal year in April 2010 to spend the complete budget, but due to the forthcoming change in government has intensified road works by the factor 10 to make sure that all funds are used up before another party takes charge.

A very nice trip in September, with weather like in October and construction activities like in March.
I was home before seven thanks to the Shinkansen network leading me directly to Shin Yokohama. Domenic made it home in time to start his part time job as bar tender in the evening on time.

Exactly what we need four our team at rainy days, however unfortunately already taken off the shelves from Coca Cola / Georgia for reasons incomprehensible to human beings.

In addition we would need a steel version for Tom, an aluminium cover for me and a galvanized one for James. Preferable in orange.

It is raining and Tokyo is just grey and ugly. My mind wandered and I just registered for this one. Anybody else interested?

Today I visited the Cycle Square Kitasando as part of my ongoing research about this and that in Tokyo. To cut a long story short, this is basically a cafe/restaurant around a cycling theme with some extras. If you go there as a (serious road) cyclist, you might be a little bit disappointed as this is not so different from thousands of other places within Tokyo and the bikes on the wall look somewhat forcefully placed. But nevertheless I found it a nice, sunny and spacey place and I hang around forever with my netbook and wrote the previous post. It wasn’t crowded at all, the tables were big and the food and drinks were OK, although on the expensive side.

The highlight hang on the wall of the toilet.
Only open until January next year.