If the house is on fire, this would be the only piece of furniture I’ll save.

There is something magical about this chair. Even when you don’t sit on it there is an urgue run your hand on it.

Thank you to Maruni and Mr Fukasawa for creating such loving piece of furniture.

There where many great posters there and I wish they can all get printed so I can buy some of them.

Congratulations to Gregory with the winning design!

To see all the submissions, click here.

Credit: All My Eyes, Tomish

http://www.shiseido.co.jp/e/art-house/

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