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THE RISING SUN: SO, WHAT’S IT LIKE IN JAPAN
Lee Rodgers
May 19, 2009
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I was fortunate/unfortunate enough to spend a week in Thailand recently, taking part in the Tour Of Friendship stage race. I say fortunate/unfortunate because I can’t decide if I did myself more harm than good, to be honest. 780kms in 5 days, with one stage of 230km, run in temperatures ranging between 37 and 45 degrees, this was more enduro than race, and a great way to lose a kilo or twelve – daily. I’m awaiting the stage results and a report will follow, and hopefully by then my body will have decided either way whether to collapse and begin digesting itself or not, rather than this teetering-on-the-brink situation that I find myself in currently – one minute I feel great, full of beans, the next more like a sloth with a bad case of attitude. Training is suffering, and that is never good.
Anyway, one of the certifiable plus points of taking part in the Tour of Friendship in Thailand was that I got to meet a lot of nice folks from all over the world, and, as cyclists are wont to do, we got to chatting about our local riding conditions. The guys from Hong Kong moaned about the smog and the lack of real mountains. The guys from Singapore complained about the meager choice of routes and the heat. The Laos team decried the flatness around Vientiane. And the English guys bitched and whined about – well, they just bitched and whined, period. (The London Olympics will have a Bitching & Whining competition, if you didn’t know. The IOC wanted to be sure we’d win a gold medal in something…)
All the complaints brought home to me just how fantastic Japan is for cycling. Now I’m sure many of you who have never been here, and even some who have, will have an image of Japan as a sprawling, super-crowded, neon-lit mega-metropolis in your minds. And there’s some truth to that image – Tokyo really never ends until it hits the ocean to the east and the mountains to the west, and to the south it links up with Osaka through a concrete mass of mess, an ugly, monolithic, biomorphic uber-conurbation that must be truly horrific to cycle through. But, for those who make the effort to step beyond the sprawl and the Lonely Planet must-sees, there’s a completely different Japan waiting to be discovered.
Tokyo Nights…
I live down in the south, on the island of Kyushu, in a small seaside town called Karatsu, about 45 minutes from the very trendy city of Fukuoka. Karatsu itself is famous for its pottery, the finest examples of which are prohibitively expensive, and for its rather madcap, slightly dangerous festival, The Karatsu Kunchi. This four day extravaganza of public revelry involves scantily clad grown men, every one of them worse for wear on the booze, hauling massive floats portraying fish and dragons through the narrow lanes of the town by rope, and bowling over any spectator that’s foolish enough to get in their way. And there are lots of spectators to be bowled over – the town’s population swells from about 60,000 to over 300,000 on the busiest days. Brilliantly, the whole town shuts down for the festival in very un-Japanese fashion, and even toddlers get fed alcoholic beverages. (Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating, but only slightly…)
Karatsu Kunchi
Karatsu Kunchi
The town, unlike many Japanese towns, which are usually nondescript and a bit bland, is quite beautiful, with an old castle perched atop a small hill that overlooks the ocean.
East Karatsu City from the Castle
The town’s also renowned for a 4km stretch of ancient pines, lyrically known as the Matsubara Rainbow.
Matsubara Rainbow
But the real jewels of the area are the roads! They stretch out along the undulating terrain to the west like grey arteries upon the earth, the innumerable valleys and hills offering a myriad of routes. To the south the busier roads run flat along the foot of the mountain range, perfect for time trial training. But the true delights lie in those massive mountains, the perfectly smooth tarmac clinging to the ancient, wooded rock, kilometer after lung-busting kilometer. (The road quality – and diversity - is down to the Japanese construction industry running rampant through the countryside, egged on by local government who use these road-building schemes to provide locals with jobs and to prop up flailing local economies – great for us cyclists, maybe not so for the environment -but that’s another story).
To top it all off, once you get up into those hills you might see three or four cars in an hour, so seldom to people drive up there. The roads are just about rideable year round, except on the highest peaks, and are particularly stunning in the spring when the famed cherry blossoms bloom.
I’m sure there are even better places to ride in the world – the Alps spring to mind for one – but its not too shabby at all round here. I seriously recommend Japan as a biking holiday destination – not too many people speak English, but they are invariably very kind to strangers and very inquisitive, and of course the food is fantastic too. The prices aren’t too bad either, once you get out of the big cities. You can tell everyone you came for the sumo, or for the geishas – because let’s face it, if you told anyone you traveled for the roads, they’d think you were bonkers.
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