Every time I am thinking about getting a complete custom bike, Hufnagel Cycles’ website is where I would always go to and drool about.

One day…I’ll get one.

http://www.revolights.com/

My last bike ride with the team in Obu City in this exchange was to Toyota. Yes, the city where the car manufacturer originated is also home to a vast area of natural beauty.

My voice was completely gone from a cold on the Tuesday before so I was a bit off on the day of the ride. But when you play, you play hard.

It was a relatively short ride compare to the last 2. That’s good news for me.

For lunch I had the best beef stew ever~ YUM!!!!

This majestic Ginko tree provides a great complimentary colour to the red and green landscape. The trip left me wanting to do more bike rides, but that will have to wait till next time.

I worked in many marathons but this is the first time I am in one, not as a runner, but the leading vehicles. Most marathons use motercycles which I often think it affects the head runners with their fumes. So it was touching to hear that Obu’s marathon invited me to join Aisan Cycling Team‘s Suzuki san as the bicycles leading the race.

The marathon is a 1/4 length of the standard marathon. We are to right ahead of the runners an maintain a 10km/h speed. It was quite hard to keep the speed and the front runners were very fast. They were no more than 20m behind us. We circles around the course and near the end we had to negotiate through the children race, no doubt it would be difficult for the front runners too. We got back in less than 30 mins. The last runner was not far behind. Kuno Koshin san finished in 19th place in around 50 mins. If I ran I would take twice as long as his speed…

Suzuki san gave me his windbreaker as a present with the new Wilier sponsor on it and signed my cap. It was a wonderful experience!

Last week I went riding in Kyoto, the place where I originally brought my touring bike.

I left Obu by JR and then took the Shinkansen to Kyoto. One very different thing about taking a train with a bicycle here is you have to put it into a bicycle bag. So it takes a bit of time to disassemble or reassemble the bicycle.

Initially I planned an 80km ride, but there were so many things to see along the route I can only managed half.

It’s a lovely experience and the city makes slow riding fairly easy. I wish I could ride around for at least 3 days rather than rushing to get back.

Here are some pictures of the ride.

I am really going to miss this. Riding with good food and interesting things to see along the route to explore. This is what makes riding in Japan such a pleasure.

Kuno san took us to Gamagori and visited different places along the route. There were less stops than our last ride to Chita Hanto.

First stop was the Kariya Children Traffic Safety Park. It reminded me of the traffic safety park I went to in Hong Kong in year 2. I think Australia have them too, but I can’t be sure. We weren’t allow to go into the Go-carts, so just have to make use of the best we’ve got.

As we were riding along the route we passed a number of fields filled with Cosmos.

We passed the foot of Mt Sangane to Gamagori and stopped the park before Takeshima. Takeshima is an island of bamboo and shrines. Unfortunately our schedule did not allow us to cross over and have a look.

We had lunch at a unagi restaurant. Yes, more eels! People here say eels are power food. I can’t disagree with that as we got on the saddle again.


As we rode north again I was gearing up for the headwind that is expected in this region. It didn’t come. For the first time on a flat terrain I couldn’t keep up with the guys in the front. They were flying in the windless condition.

We made a brief stop at Kariya for another group shot.

Here is a composition of some of the riding scenes.

Finally of course the usual feeding frenzy after a good day od riding

I was invited to go to Cultural Division’s Trip to Kyoto. This is one of my favourite cities and opened an opportunity for me to discover it with the locals.

We caught the Shinkansen from Nagoya and got there in under 40 minutes (about 110km in distance). Imagine how long it will take us to travel from Melbourne to Castlemaine.

First thing to do when we got there was EAT! It is a bit much for morning tea but these two dishes would be the best things to have after a long day and wash it down with beer.

Straight afterwards we headed to Arashiyama, the mountains are just beginning to turn yellow and red. I hope in early December it would look more spectacular.

In Kyoto there are many people on their bikes and also there are also rickshaw. As we were walking up to the a famous Haiku poet’s residence. I spotted an unmanned rickshaw with a very nicely illustrated stool.

I don’t know anything about this Haiku poet, from what I can gather his residence is heritage and provides an insight to visitors of the place and landscape that would have inspired this poet.

As we walk down back down I cannot resist the temptation of the amount of tofu soft serves scattered around the area. Tamamura san asked me to choose a place, so I thought the foul-safe shop would be one that sell only tofu dishes. Funny enough just off the side of it is a shop that sells white and black tofu soft serves. It seems this place boost about the concentration of beans in the ice cream. Tamamura san here is demonstrating that the soft serves are so thick it can turn upside down without any crying faces. As I was happily eating this a flashback of the time Jacq and I tried to make soybean milk went through my mind. We were frustrated that the soybeans that were used had very little taste. Jacq said a few times, “This is not beany enough!” Well, this time however, it is very very beany.

That night we went to town and had a very traditional Kyoto dinner. All the dishes were very beautifully presented. It was not something that I would be able to eat if I was on my own. The white miso soup here is probably the best miso soup I have ever tested. I can hear Jacq’s voice again when I was tasting the soup, “Just taste that buttery goodness”.

Fortunately for me, the sizes of the tradition dishes were too small for the hungry travellers. So Tamamura san took us to the tsukemen place I asked him about earlier on in the day. Tsukemen is ramen separated from the soup. The noodles are dipped into the soup when you are ready to eat it. So the noodle remains firm and chewy for longer.

The next day we were focused on the main event, Jidai Matsuri. This festival celebrates important people in different eras of Kyoto. Luckily I watch enough Japanese TV to know who’s who and roughly what they did. It’s quite embarrassing that my Japanese history has a better foundation than my Chinese history.

The weather wasn’t the best and many photos had the glare attack.

Soon after the parade I went solo to other locations. First was to the Kyoto Uni for one of their T-shirts but it closed. Then I went to the to Yoshida Jinja, Daitokuji and Imamiya Jinja. Near Imamiya Jinya is the famous Aburimochi, potentially the mother of the modern Japanese sweets. I was surprised how much I enjoyed them despite of their appearance.

There is no cat cafe in Obu but I heard there is one in Nagoya. I might check it out before I go. Tokyo and Osaka probably have the most cat cafes in the country. For now Lou, here is an unusual maneki neko.