Alive and well

Hi all. It's been a while since the last post. We were down with the dreaded flu for a while, but also we haven't had so much to write about. I was thinking about this. In Japan, riding the bike is very popular. In front of every train station or super market, you would see a sea of bikes parked there. Yet most biking remains very local and almost too casual. It's just a way to get to the supermarket a little faster. People don't think about enjoying the activity and riding to further places. One reason for this I think is that especially in the Tokyo metropolitan area, using public transportation like the train and the bus is so easy and convenient. It may be the most well run in the world. You can get to almost anywhere within the metropolitan area with the train or the bus or combination of both. It's so easy and effortless compared to other options (driving in Tokyo requires huge amounts of patience), so that most people don't think about riding a bike further than the nearest train station. We're also a bit guilty of this as we've been taking the train a lot to get places out our neighborhood.

Anyway, so we don't have too much to report, but we have taken pictures here and there, so I will post some of them here.


Kao trying her acrobatic moves riding home from Kawasaki.


rental bikes we spotted at the Misaki port. If these were available at the station, we would've rented them, but they were at our destination rather than the starting point, so we didn't rent them. They look pretty nice for rental bikes though.


Kao riding along the Tama river.


Little boy riding by himself along the Tama river.

Today, we're going to an event called Cycle Mode which I think is kind of like Interbike but one for the general public. If it's just booths of bike stuff, I might skip it, but you can actually test ride the bikes there, so I'll have an opportunity to ride a lot of bikes I'd never ridden before. We'll be sure to take a lot of pictures, so that will be something to report afterwards. I think Mr. Gary Fisher is there. Maybe if we're lucky, we'll run into him.