つぶやきと写真 / Observations and Photographs

Ramblings 1 (Kita Kyushu, 01 June 2024)

One month in and feeling not too shabby. 2500 km pedalled. Over 20,000 metres climbed. Mainland Japan southernmost and westernmost points reached. A third of the way covered. Now ready to head north-east.

Over the last few weeks I’ve come across new fauna: a racoon on the road which, after a stare-off, sloped away dejectedly into a ditch; a couple of snakes on the mountain roads which slithered away from my front tyre just about in time; large, colourful butterflies which fly over the seas from Taiwan and Okinawa in May to escape the heat, and a fawn which, frantically trying to control its hooves on slippery tarmac, quickly scrambled back up into the steep mountain undergrowth.

Bush warblers continue to offer their encouragement from roadside trees and hedges as I dig for the extra reserve on uphill climbs. The croaking of bull-frogs in the paddy fields has been left behind. Herons and egrets in the paddy fields always entrance me with their languid take-offs into flight as I pass by them. Sea kites abound, circling and diving around the coves and small fishing ports. The incongruity of such a large bird having such a shrill cawk surprises me each time I hear it. The cock pheasants, suddenly raising their heads from their resting places on the borders of cabbage fields and flapping their wings as they emitted a short three-syllable sound (pheasant morse-code, perhaps, for keeping others away) have appeared once, but not again.

The farming landscape has changed coming south. Much of the farming appears to be on the scale of small-holdings. The size of fields are small, a reflection of the geographical features, certainly, but one can imagine that the boundaries between the fields have not changed much in appearance since feudal times. Farm machinery is small and functional. Rice paddies, of course, as well as cabbage, onion and aubergine fields are common. Certain regions are renowned for their citrus fruits. Green tea plantations spring up here and there. Tomatoes and corn are being grown under cover. More recently I’ve also passed wheat and barley fields, tobacco fields, and melon farmers. In some areas, there are small beef-cattle holdings, six or seven cows kept inside barns. Many farmers appear to have given agricultural land over to solar panels.

Food, in taste and variety, never disappoints. Even a simple pasta salad from a convenience store is very good. Bento (lunch-box) shops offer well-balanced, cheap, hot meals. The fish and shellfish are excellent, of course. There are vegetables of all kinds, raw, braised, grilled and fried. Chicken yakitori (skewer-kebab) restaurants, which offer pretty much every part of a chicken, are easy to find. You can have raw horse meat, served with grated root ginger, and raw chicken meat, if you like. The local drink changes from Sake (rice wine) to Shochu (a white spirit generally made from barley or sweet potato) further south. In the UK, breweries have traditionally varied significantly across regions; here beer has historically been commanded by the four big breweries. The regions take pride in their Sake and Shochu, with sometimes just a few kilometres separating different tastes – not dissimilar to wine.

I wrote before about the patience of the drivers and the quality of the road surfaces. This still stands. I’ve even played a silly game as I cycle along, wondering if the drivers of certain makes of car differ in their behaviour towards cyclists. Hardly. Drivers of Toyotas, Nissans, Suzukis, Mazdas, Subarus, Daihatsus and Hondas all give a wide berth. Perhaps not the make but the type of vehicle? Who gives the most space? Drivers of large lorries certainly come out best; drivers of “people carriers” and local town buses seem more reluctant to wait to overtake or cross the lines in the middle of the road.

There is one villain here, though. The elderly lady in a Daihatsu mini-truck (along with its Suzuki cousin these are ubiquitous in the rural areas). She shunted me from behind down a tunnel in Shikoku. Fortunately a grazed knee and a few other scratches were all that resulted. I continue to feel watched over.

Road surfaces remain well-maintained, even in the most desolate rural areas where broken-down houses and derelict small business holdings are common. One surface, however, I dread. Concrete, scarred vertically at intervals of two centimetres or so to allow water to drain downwards. Necessary in the mountain areas, yes, but not a reassuring surface for bicycle tyres on steep downhill roads.

Clearly, the Japanese and the British share many traits of a proud island race. Generalisations plentiful, perhaps, but there is a certain, natural scepticism of people and things unknown, wrapped up with a quiet, yet insatiable, curiosity about novelty and change. That dichotomy is then coupled with an inherent reserve and politeness which often needs a metaphorical can-opener to open up discussion.

The sharpness of my own can-opener is tempered by my mood, sometimes sunny and bright, sometimes less so. Natural tiredness, the day’s headwinds, or a “on-the-house, one-for-the road” glass of shochu from the previous evening have all blunted the blade, only for it to be sharpened by a beaming smile, a generous gesture or a genuinely-interested question.

There are constant reminders that Japan sits on the “Ring of Fire”. One is never far from signs indicating the nearest earthquake evacuation centre and, along the coastal roads, the nearest tsunami evacuation centre.

A fascinating museum in the GeoPark area of the Muroto peninsula in South-East Shikoku tells the story well. Facing the Pacific, the Muroto peninsula sits just off the Nankai trough where two of the earth’s tectonic plates meet, with one being forced under the other. These movements cause the Muroto peninsula to keep rising above sea level. In this area Japan has installed the DONET (Dense Ocean-floor Network system for Earthquake and Tsunamis) to monitor earthquake activity and relay information back to a central hub. It is this, and other similar systems, that drive alert warnings (high-pitched beeps) sent to mobile phone users across Japan before an earthquake occurs in their vicinity.
One other arresting fact at the museum was that the small fishing communities on the East of Muroto are “engaged in a net fishing collective”, wherein each household has an equal share of the profits of the catch. I like to think that also stands in some of Britain’s further-flung communities, fishing or otherwise.

Not just earthquakes and tsunamis, though. The city of Kagoshima in southern Kyushu sits to the west of Sakurajima, an island dominated by an active volcano – one of around 108 across the Japanese archipelago. Sakurajima has a population of around 5000. Activity is monitored continuously, of course. The last major volcanic eruption was in 1946, but the one on 12 January 1914 – the first “historical” event I have found to have occurred on my birthday – spewed out 500 million tons of volcanic ash and pumice. The lava flowing east filled the sea between the island and the adjacent peninsula, connecting them for good. Coming from the south-east, that lava “bridge” took a good 60 km off my distance.
One local described seeing Sakurajima on coming back from trips away as bringing a feeling of ease. I repeated this to other locals and they concurred. I can understand how a local landmark will bring a sense of ease. But an active volcano? Not yet.

Of course, the Japanese onsen, the hot spring, is one advantage of this Ring of Fire. The former Latin student in me likes to imagine that this communal bathing (customs and behaviours aside) is not that far removed from a Roman bathhouse.

One lunchtime, I arrived at a guesthouse early, anticipating rain in the afternoon. I could drop my luggage but not myself, so I went to a nearby onsen. There I lazed for a couple of hours, slipping between different temperature baths and resting outside on a sun-lounger, just out of the drizzle. The fence was high enough to avert prying eyes in, but low enough to give a magnificent view out to the nearby mountains. The chap two beds away from me was snoring. It was two-thirty on a Sunday afternoon. “Heiwa”. Oft-felt as I have cycled down to the south of the country but emphatically underlined here. A country at peace.
Sadly, however, over-worked muscles respond best to cold and ice than warmth and heat. Aching quads on hills the following day has often been the counter to an onsen’s restorative powers.

Enough for now. Allow me to finish by proffering a heart-felt “Thank you” to all who have made donations to The Brain Tumour Charity and to The Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research.

Andrew Perons
Kita Kyushu City, Kyushu, Japan. 01 June 2024.

Ramblings 2 (Hakodate, 21 June 2024)

Last time I wrote (01 June) I was in KitaKyushu, at the top of the southern island of Kyushu. This time (21 June) I am in Hakodate, at the bottom of the northern island of Hokkaido.
Between them lies the island of Honshu, stretching, long and thin, from north-east to south-west. The island of the ancient and modern Japanese capitals and administration centres: Nara, Kamakura, Kyoto and Tokyo.

For some reason many of the travellers I’ve met and cyclists I’ve seen have been heading in the opposite direction to me. I had noticed this earlier in Shikoku. Headwinds at the start notwithstanding, I feel vindicated in my decision to go clockwise. Getting ahead of the rains had always been my “race against time”. I am now far enough north to have allayed that concern. The rainy season in the middle regions of Japan was announced a few days ago, a week or so later than usual. Reports from Kyushu in the south speak of torrential rainfall and heightened risks of landslides and flooding. Just today, NHK (the BBC of Japan, I suppose) reported that the Meteorological Agency is “calling on people to be vigilant against flooding in low-lying areas, lightning strikes, and gusts including tornadoes”. I am glad I was cycling there a month ago.

I have, again, met some wonderful people during this stage of the route. For brevity’s sake, here are a few.
The barman-turned-guesthouse-owner in a small onsen (hot spring) town who educated me in the local sake and shochu. The guesthouse owner in a mountain village who good-naturedly answered my questions (in a near unintelligible local dialect) about the old horse’s saddle on a chair and his makeshift pond for raising carp. The head of a party of elderly gents in a local restaurant who, more than a couple of sheets to the wind, came to talk to me as he was settling his group’s bill. On hearing my story, he pushed a ¥1000 note into my hand. Then, pouring his friends out of the back room, he acted as a toll-gate, exacting ¥1000 from each of them as their donation.

One recent evening, however, stands out for its roundness, its fullness of so many of the good things I have encountered.
I have arrived in a reasonably small city in the north of Honshu. I look up somewhere to eat and decide on a small restaurant just down the road from my hotel. I walk in. One counter, five stools. A lady of a certain age looks up as I ask if I can eat there. She stands up and, apologising, clears away the raw stalks she has been paring on the counter. I ask what they are and she tells me “mountain vegetables”. “But I didn’t go out and gather these; I bought them”, she says. “Bears are around.” There is no menu. No price list. I ask for some sake to fill the moment while I take stock of the situation. She brings me a small bottle, with a beaming smile. It is all up to her. The first dish comes. Bracken stalks, in a miso and vinegar sauce, with karashi, the hot Japanese mustard. The next dish is another plant – “jyunsai” with grated ginger and the raw yolk of a quail egg. This is slippery, difficult to eat without picking up the small dish and practically drinking it. The Japanese call this consistency “nebaneba”, one of the many onomatopoeias that fill the language. After that comes a shellfish – a type of whelk – its crunchiness countered by thinly sliced cucumber and kelp.
Another customer comes in. She sits him down next to me. We all talk. He is my age. He has been up since four o’clock this morning to practice baseball with the town’s over 50s team before going to work. They have matches once a month. He also plays over 50s soccer. He tells me about the town and teaches me a little local dialect. He eats what I have eaten and asks for a tofu dish and a grilled fish. I am served the same. We drink some different local sakes. We finish with a rice dish, which has ingested all the flavours of bamboo shoots, carrots, fungi and burdock roots mixed in with the rice over the least twenty-four hours. Three people, unknown to each other, getting on famously as we exchange our stories of the moment over local produce for a couple of hours.
I ask for the bill and then protest, politely, that she is charging me too little when I see the nominal amount on the small slip of paper she shows me. She refuses to hear my protest. I don’t press further and thank her.
My natural inclination when I enter into this type of unknown situation is one of care, prudence, even, perhaps sadly, mistrust. How many times that inclination has been proven to have been misplaced!

Warblers, whom I mentioned before, continue to sing their encouragement as I dig for the extra reserve on the mountain roads. Whilst I am no twitcher, I am able to recognise, as they flit beside me and dart across my path, the distinctive black and white wagtails and the green finches, with the beautiful yellow stripe on the underside of their wings. Herons and egrets continue their strutting and roaming of the paddy fields; along the rivers cormorants spread their wings to dry them before their next fishing trip; sea-kites continue to patrol the bays and coves. Further south I pulled hard on my brakes to allow one dozy snake to slip away without being rolled over. Outside Kyoto, along a river path, I saw a large grey dog, with a ruff of hair around its neck. It gazed at me, steadily, from 50 meters away and then slunk away up the river bank, unperturbed. If there were wolves in Japan, I would say it was a wolf. But there are no wolves in Japan any more. Although, curious, I did find somewhere that they are being reintroduced. Given that, I’d like to keep this as a sighting of a wolf, but little doubt it wasn’t.

My route has taken me into and through large port cities with all the heavy traffic they bring, but also, thankfully, away from tarmac and onto shingly farmer’s tracks and mountain paths. One day, after crossing a couple of low mountains, I came out into a village where I surprised a couple of elderly ladies, raking up debris. Stopping to talk, they asked me where I’d come from and then, if I had seen any animals. “No”, I replied, asking what animals were around. “Wild boar, deer, monkeys, racoons”, they said. “How about bears?”, I asked. “Not yet”, said one. “They’ll be coming out over there soon”, pointing in the direction I was heading. North.

And so, soon after that, I went into a camping shop and bought a bear-bell. It is typically Japanese “cute”, with a smiling bear’s face carved into the crown. It is also typically Japanese “functional”: the clapper can be unscrewed to allow it to drop down from the crown and into the bell’s body. When hung, the clapper has no room to swing and so makes no sound. A bell with an on/off switch.
Now I can’t say that I’m convinced about the efficacy of this little bell. But I also know next to nothing about bears. So I have taken, and will continue to take, all the advice I can glean. Apparently bears will shy away if they hear sound. Bells are common among mountaineers. I have also come across people cycling with radios blaring. My little bell has been jangling merrily on the remote roads since I bought it and I’ve “turned it off” in more built-up areas. I have not seen a bear yet.

And yet, just today, I was attacked. I had come off the ferry in Hokkaido and, stopping at a T-Junction, noticed two crows swooping and diving around me. I waved my arms and hissed at them. They then spotted another cyclist on the other side of the road and moved to swoop and dive over him. Once he had gone on 100 metres or so they came back to me, now moving after the traffic light had changed. Fifty metres down the road, I felt a bang on my helmet as one of them struck. I carried on and they retreated. Catching up with the other cyclist, I could see he was visibly shaken. He lightly tapped his head and threw up two fingers – “struck twice”. I asked him if he was OK. No words. Just astonishment. Open-mouthed, dumb astonishment. I, too, was shaken. Hitchcockian scenes in Hakodate city.

The scenery remains stunning.

And what else? Well, open-back mini-trucks busy themselves up and down the country roads, carrying farmers to their fields and produce to local markets and stores; tiny tractors prepare for rice planting as they plough the land, ankle-deep in water; land, when not given over to rice, glows golden with wheat or barley, or is covered with large, domed, plastic sheeting, inside which all types of vegetables and fruit are being grown. Piles of coniferous tree trunks wait for their metamorphosis in the yards of timber merchants. In the villages, honesty boxes spring up here and there – a reminder of times long gone in many other societies.

I will end with one more story. Cycling through one village on the Sea of Japan, I passed one chap who was turning sea-cucumbers in the sun. I have eaten these raw, sliced thinly and pickled in vinegar, as part of a New Year’s spread, but had never seen them sun-dried. He had never eaten them this way either, he told me, chuckling. “We boil them, dry them in the sun and then sell them to China for ¥10,000 per kilogram”. His chuckle gained momentum. “Their nickname is ‘Kinko’.” Kinko. Literally “Moneychild”. His chuckle burst into a roar of laughter as he turned and went back to his work.

Enough for now. Allow me to finish by again proffering a heart-felt “Thank you” to all who have made donations to The Brain Tumour Charity and to The Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research.

Andrew Perons
Hakodate City, Hokkaido, Japan. 21 June 2024.

Ramblings 3 (Yokohama, 01 August 2024)

It is now a week since I closed the loop and arrived back home in Yokohama, a few kilogrammes lighter than when I set off 84 days ago. 

7493 kilometres cycled. 51,480 meters climbed. One chain replacement. One brake-fluid top-up. One puncture. One broken spoke. One tumble. No injuries.

The last month, circling clockwise around Hokkaido and coming down the north-eastern seaboard of Honshu, has been enervating and exacting in near-equal measures. 

After sleeping off the crow attack in Hakodate (see previous post below), I set off to round the southernmost point of Hokkaido and edge up the west coast. On the left, the ground fell sharply downwards, two hundred metres or so, towards the scraggy seashore; on the right, the sheer slopes of forested mountains steered steep ravines under the road’s bridges. Black and white wagtails, camouflaged against the tarmac, sprang up ahead of me here and there. A blue rock thrush, proudly displaying the vivid contrast of its grey-blue plumage against its rusty brown stomach flew with me for a while. Here was the longest tunnel of the entire trip—3360 metres—and yet only three cars passed me inside it, one from behind, two from the opposite direction.

Roads stretched endlessly into the distance, straight and undulating, reminiscent of the Roman roads in Europe. This, with the lighter traffic, meant I was able to spend more time “on the bars”, leaning forward with my weight on my elbows rather than my hands. Muscle memories of that crouched position made me feel as if I was riding a horse again. I was taken back to the cross-country courses and hunter trials of my teenage years. Crouched forward, I would breathe words of encouragement into my horse’s ears, urging him on to cover the ground as fast as we could, all the time ensuring we were in control for the fences and slippery corners. After getting through a particularly difficult combination of fences, or over a jump into water, for example, I would pat his neck, congratulating him and urging him on again. 

And then I became conscious that I had begun talking to my bike, sounding alerts ahead of uphill climbs, offering encouragement along stretches of bumpy, flinty pathways, lavishing praise for getting to the top of a steep or long climb. My bike was not one of the horses of my teenage years, though; she became the Shetland-Welsh Mountain cross pony we had bred at home; the twelve-hand mare I had ridden through my early years. 

An orderly panorama of agriculture took over the landscape as I moved inland to Sapporo and northwards. It was arable, mainly: white and purple flowers of potato crops spread endlessly into the distance, wheat fields glowed bronze in the sun, tractors tedded the cut grass, drying it before the baling process would leave enormous rounds of white or black polythene-clad hay bales dotting the fields. Where not given over to these three main crops, the land was filled with beet, onions, carrots and azuki beans, and wind farms. North of Sapporo there were more dairy herds, Holsteins mainly, a few Swiss Brown, settled in their pastures, verdant forests and mountains their backdrop. 

After reaching Cape Soya in the north, I turned eastwards, along the Sea of Okhotsk. Small herds of deer looked up from their grazing, sniffed, gambolled a little and then sped away. A family of five, grazing on a strip between a sea cliff and the road, started as I passed and then ran alongside me for a few hundred metres, just a stone-throw away. They turned, jumped over the guardrail, crossed the road in front of me and headed off to more open pastures. A magnificent few moments. 

On wet days the Okhotsk coastline was invisible, horizontal rain coming off the sea and stinging my eye-balls. On dryer days, with the wind up, the foaming white waters thumped and crashed against the northern shoreline. Towards the east a white-tail eagle, much larger than the sea-kites that had circled above the bays and coves throughout my trip, soared above me, bringing into sharp relief the rugged beauty of the region, its remoteness. 

Further on, as I cut inland, I saw in the far distance what I thought to be a pair of red-headed cranes along one of the lakes. I was delighted over the next few days when I had closer sightings of another three pairs of these beautiful, large birds, their slow, deliberate movements filled with serene splendour. 

Charlie (the fox) was never far away, hunting furtively in the fields or near the road’s verges, curious, alert and quick to recede from contact. One adult male, forlorn and bedraggled in the north-easterly-borne rain, stood still as I passed, clasping a large bird’s wing (perhaps crow or seagull roadkill) in his jaws. Eyes downcast, he glanced dolefully up at me as a domestic dog does when asking for mercy after a moment of mischief. In the late morning sun a day later, two cubs pranced around playfully on the grassy patch in front of an abandoned house. 

At the guesthouse in Nemuro in the east, I asked for recommendations on restaurants. One, specialising in fish, was always very busy; you might need to book, I was told. I showered quickly and headed out. Sliding open the slatted wooden door and ducking my head under the horizontal curtain, I saw it was pretty much full. I asked if they had space for one. Three faces from the behind the counter looked at me: a large man, with an egg-shaped head, bald as a coot, brandishing a long, thin blade, and two women, one curious and half-smiling, the other stern-faced and inscrutable. It was she who demanded in a school-mistressy manner if I spoke Japanese. “Yes,” I replied. She gave an almost imperceptible shrug and responded, a little brusquely, “Over here, then.” 

I was directed to a corner at the counter and brought a menu by the friendlier of the two women. I asked the chef, as he hammered the shell of an enormous whelk, what he recommended. He asked if I was happy to let him decide. Of course. He handed me a plate of slices of raw salmon, herring and whelk, and of a local pinky-red coloured fish, “kinki”. I asked for a spinach salad and some sake. The lady with the half-smile, now broken into a fuller one, brought them over and stopped for a chat—where I was from, what I was doing. Easy pleasantries. 

A little later the other lady asked me over the counter if I knew the Bay City Rollers. Memories of singing “B-A-Y, B-A-Y…,” and a group of us doing our best acrobatic feats in a saddle over trotting poles at pony club camp in the 1970s came flooding back. “Yes,” I said. “I’d love to go to Edinburgh,” she replied. The wall had come down. Her parents had moved to Hokkaido when she was a young girl. The chef was her younger brother. After I had paid, she walked me to the door. “Take care,” she smiled, handing me three sun-dried herring, a specialty of the region.  

Turning my back to the east, I headed again towards the mountains. On one long cycle path, signs instructing the need to watch out for brown bears sprang up every kilometre or so, some with recent dates of sightings appended. I blew my whistle at regular intervals, hoping not to surprise Japan’s largest mammal rustling around in the nearby undergrowth. It was a magnificent stretch, slightly uphill for fifteen kilometres or so, away from traffic and running alongside the dense forest. Further along mist turned to rain and then gradually thickened until, at the top of the highest mountain pass, fog left visibility at around ten metres. Rear lights flashing furiously, I gingerly made my way down the steep decline, conscious of the potholes and tarmac loosened through the winter frosts. 

The Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum greeted me towards the bottom. It was the third such museum I visited in Hokkaido, the Foundation for Ainu Culture and the Ainu Association making sterling efforts to protect and preserve the indigenous Ainu culture and improve the social status of the Ainu people, down-trodden and subjugated by migrant Japanese over the latter half of the last millennium. Their story is akin to many other indigenous peoples subjected to more powerful external forces—land, resources and trade ties wrested away, language and customs suppressed to the point of extinction. The Museum of Northern Peoples along the Sea of Okhotsk displays some magnificent artefacts, showing how the Ainu have customs in common with other northern peoples across the Arctic circle. The “attus” cloaks, made from weaving thin strands of stripped tree bark into a beautifully-adorned garment, and the salmon-skin boots, layers of natural waterproofing, stick vividly in my mind. A people which traditionally lived with, rather than off, the land; a people proud of their heritage, adapting to modern society, calling for respect towards their ethnic customs and traditions. 

My route was leading me back to Hakodate, the port city at which I had arrived in Hokkaido and from where I was to sail again, this time to Oma in the north of Honshu. At Lake Toya with Nakajima island sprouting out of its centre and Mount Usu, an active volcano nearby, I bade farewell to the guesthouse owner as he puffed on his cigarette while I packed up my bike. “There are a lot of tunnels on your way,” he said. “Call us if you need anything. We’ll come and help you.” I thanked him and set off. He was right. Tunnel after tunnel for the first seven kilometres or so, and then I was by the coast again. Rounding Uchiura Bay, I followed the main roads through to Hakodate. Road surfaces were less well-maintained; pot holes in some places, loose tarmac in others and, more treacherous, thin, one-inch-high ridges just a metre in from the roadside sprang up occasionally from under the tarmac. Lorries roared past, eager to get their loads to the ports in Hakodate. The need for extra attention and care was taking away the joy a little. My energy was being sapped. Clearly I was ready to cross back to Honshu and get onto the home-straight.

Along that final stretch in Hokkaido I heard the crack of a spoke breaking. The wobble in the back wheel became steadily more pronounced over the next day and, after arriving at the ferry terminal in Hakodate, I took action. Turning the bike on her back and holding an alum key against the rear rim, I span the wheel, tightening and loosening the other spokes until I was satisfied I could carry on. A Google search revealed a bike shop 140 km from Oma. I phoned and asked if I could use his equipment. I would arrive in two days. Monday, a National Holiday. “I’m closed that day,” he told me. “Ahhh…,” I replied. “I have a replacement spoke. What I really want is a truing machine and a good pump.” He caught the disappointment in my voice. “If you can come at 09:00, I’ll take a look for you,” he said. Opening up one’s shop on a scheduled day off. Generosity to a tee.

Appointment made and partial repair completed, I boarded the ferry, looking forward to supper at a Japanese inn on the other side of the crossing. I was not to be disappointed. A retired chap touring northwards on a huge motorbike with sidecar sat next to me. Next to him was a retired couple, travelling by car. They had crossed on the same ferry from Hokkaido as I had. Each of us sat cross-legged at individual low tables flourishing beautifully-presented dishes: raw tuna, bonito and octopus head, a large poached scallop, a fillet of grilled mackerel, a small clay pot of dashi (stock) for cooking thin slices of pork, cabbage, leek-like onions and mushrooms, a seaweed marinaded in vinegar, pickles, rice, miso soup and a slice of water melon. I cracked open a can of beer I had bought on the way to the inn and relaxed into the friendly traveller conversation that ensued, tales of food and drink, routes and recommendations, wildlife and weather. 

Onwards down the north-eastern seaboard of Honshu. The first day, covering the 140 kilometres to the bike shop, was wonderful. I was back on Honshu, away from the major roads of the latter stages in Hokkaido with their headstrong lorries and uneven surfaces. Now I was on sparsely-trafficked country roads; passing through deciduous forests, dappled sunlight shone through the canopies of Japanese elms, hornbeams, chestnuts and maples. Sparkling streams burbled on one side of me here, on the other side of me there. Each pedal stroke released another bubble of the pressure that had been building up. I tapped the side of my right brake lever a couple of times—“patting the pony”—and let out a joyous “Yes!” 

Halfway through the day, with the wobble starting to come back in the rear wheel, I tightened up the spokes. Slightly lame, perhaps, but I knew I would make it. By 09:40 the next morning, my new friend and I had swapped over the front and back tyres, laced in a replacement spoke, tensioned and trued the rear wheel and brought the tyres back to full pressure. I was ready for the final haul down the north-east coast of Honshu.

Crossing over the prefectural border into Iwate I headed for the last milestone, the easternmost point of Honshu. Roads traversed mountains, high up over the ravines below. My natural tendency to vertigo made me feel queasy and drew me towards the road centre-line as I passed over the long bridges. Spectacular scenery, punctuated by the ups and downs of the Iwate coast. More deciduous forests as well as row upon row of cypress trees, standing bolt upright in austere uniformity, like soldiers in military ranks, ignorant of the chainsaws which would later strip them of their magnificence. 

The easternmost point was on a hiking trail. Leaving my bike, I set off on the 7.4 km return tramp along the coast. As I approached the cape, my stomach clenched, my eyes swelled and I caught a large lump in my throat. Memories of my father, my sister, my brother raced through my mind. Now, approaching this final milestone, with only 600 or so kilometres to go, it dawned on me again how smoothly things had gone throughout the trip. I had no shadow of a doubt that I was being watched over.

And then, heading south-west, came different emotions, ones of awe and haplessness, of melancholy and despair. I was passing through areas along the coast destroyed by the tsunami following the Great Tohoku (East Japan) Earthquake in 2011. 

On the Iwate coast, the tsunami had completely flooded the first four storeys of a five-storey block of flats, the water reaching the floor of the fifth storey. The building, set back from the sea, its innards ripped out, stood disconsolate, bereft, a harrowing reminder of that cataclysmic day. 

A little further along the coast a pine tree, its many surrounding brethren uprooted and washed away, stood in empty solitude, a striking symbol of natural life surviving natural destruction.

Onwards, up and down, up and down. A day with an elevation gain of 1340 meters, the next day of 1410 metres, the next of 1410 meters again. This would have been far tougher ten weeks ago. The heat starts to increase. Just a few days earlier in the north of Honshu the early afternoon temperature was 24°C, a perfect temperature for cycling. Now, a few hundred kilometres further south, it is pushing 34°C. 

Four days, four hundred kilometres to go. Two shorter days with climbs. One longer one, mostly downhill.  A final push through Tokyo to get home. 

The heat is beginning to take its toll. Liquid, and more liquid. Another rice-ball. More liquid. Another pasta salad. More liquid. Another azuki bean bun. 

A final stop for liquid, this time the amber kind. The coolness from the chilled cans seeps through the cotton bag on my back, cooling me over the last kilometre. 

Up the final rise through the local vegetable fields, cicadas sounding their raucous mating calls from the trees. High summer in Japan. The last short stretch of shingly gravel. Past the cars in the driveway.

Back. Safe and sound.

Allow me to finish by again proffering a heart-felt “Thank you” to all who have made donations to The Brain Tumour Charity and to The Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research.

Andrew Perons
Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan
01 August 2024