Mumbreeze goes to Oiso

Last Friday, we rode to Oiso. I've probably mentioned Oiso briefly here and I had ridden there a few times by myself, but this was the first time we rode there together. I wasn't sure if Kao would be able to ride all the way there or not, but we took it easy and it wasn't a problem. For the purpose of this entry, we'll start at the Tsujido station which is a major train station near our place. From the station we headed South towards the ocean and then took the Shonan Shindo (Shonan New Way) and went towards the ocean. The picture above is the bridge that crosses from the Shonan Shindo to the Hamasuka beach.


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From there, we rode along the beachfront for most of Chigasaki.



That's the "C" monument of Chigasaki Southern Beach.

From there we crossed the Sagami River into Hiratsuka and rode along cars on the Highway 134 all the way to Oiso.



This is the Oiso beach. It is supposedly Japan's first public beach. It's actually a tiny bit of Oiso waterfront, but the rest of the coast is hard to access because of the highway and the beach isn't sand.







This beach is definitely not as hip as around Enoshima as you can see these old style "Umi no Ie", but I really like the rural atmosphere of Oiso.

After the beach, we rode into town.



It's mostly quiet and residential.



We stopped at a Curry restaurant called Chairo (color brown) and had lunch. Curry and vegetable plate was very good. After that we rode the Taiheiyou Jitensha-do (Pacific Ocean Cycling Road) which runs along the coast, but right next to the Highway 1 which blocks most of the view of the beach and the ocean. I don't know why they didn't build it on the other side of the highway.



Oiso for the most part though is easy to ride though.



I snapped this picture while waiting at a signal. This may not look like much of a bike lane, but this is actually pretty good. Usually the white line is much closer to the sidewalk and so you have very little space to ride. A lot of the times, you end up riding in these gutter things which are much less smooth and has drains every 10 meters or so. Here. you have a bit more asphalt and the gutter is nice and smooth and it's fairly seamless in between. It may not be the perfect bike lane, but I felt a lot more comfortable there than on most streets with car traffic here. There is quite a bit of bike traffic, both sporting cyclists and locals riding around town, so cars seem to be used to them as well.



We rode back after that, riding along the beach when we got back to Chigasaki. Kao faired much better than I thought although she didn't drink enough water and was a bit dehydrated and had a headache after. I bug her to drink enough water, but I didn't check how much she was drinking. I'll have to get on her case even more next time.

Fujisawa Yamato Jitensha-do

Last week, we took the local cycling road called "Fujisawa Yamato Jitensha-do" (Jitensha-do means cycling road) from Fujisawa where we live to Yamato which is about 15Km to the North. The cycling road runs along the Sakai River. We have been riding along the Hikichi River quite often as it is quite near where we live and it too has a cycling road, but it's in bits and pieces with lots of gravel in between. I hadn't heard about the Fujisawa Yamato route until I found it on a Japanese cycling blog. It seemed like quite a nice and long route, so we decided to give it a try.



Some parts of it was overgrown with plants and that made the path narrower, but for the most part, it was quite nice to ride. I didn't take the best photos as I was just enjoying the ride, but I think it's the best cycling road I've been on in Japan as of yet. It's maybe almost as good as the Springwater trail in Portland. It was quite refreshing as most places I'd been riding are very nice, but still most streets lack any kind of real consideration for bicycles.



Yes, I'm loving my Surly.



We met our friend in Yamato and had a nice talk with her in a family restaurant (Japanese equivalent of Denny's) where you can order a "drink bar" and drink all the drinks (non alcholic) for like a dollar.

Then we made our way back to Fujisawa, but made a little detour to the Iida Dairy Farm.



It's the self-claimed smallest dairy farm in Japan and they sell ice cream and cheese cakes there. We had a nice gelato and met with the cows who live right in the back.





We got a little rained on, but by the time we were near Fujisawa, it cleared up. It was a very good ride.

I wish I had taken better pictures, but if you check out this page, you can see what it's like. The text is in Japanese, but if you are curious about other rides in the area, the site has reviewed quite a number of them, so you might want to check them if you're thinking of riding in this area.

Meet my new bike!

Yes! That's my new Surly Crosscheck.

I took the picture right after I got back from the bike shop, so the saddle is still lower than what I normally ride with.

That was yesterday afternoon. Since then, I took it for a little ride along the nearby Hikiji River and then today I went for a longer ride to Oiso. I can say with all sincerety that this is pretty much the bike I wanted. It is really solid and can be ridden over all kinds of stuff like gravel and sand without having to worry if I might slip or damage the bike. I took a bunch of pictures and I think this entry will be very much tech oriented, so if you're not into that, I'm sorry, but please let me indulge as I am still so happy to have this "new" bike.



This was along the Hikiji River yesterday with rice fields in the back. I've raised the saddle and put on the rear rack. You don't see too many people using rear racks here other than on mamacharis. Also, you might have noticed that this bike has a kick stand. That wasn't standard issue, but I knew that almost everytime I park the bike, it will come in handy, so I had it put on at the shop.



The tires are the Schwalbe Marathon 700 x 28. These are pretty wide tires for me, but there's a lot of bumps on the roads around here, so these are much better than skinny tires.



The rims are Salsa Delgado Cross. The shop guy picked these which was a surprise, but I know of Salsa as a maker of mountain bikes and components, so I think these will be plenty tough.



Avid Shorty cantilever brakes. One thing I wanted on my new bike were cantilever brakes. I wasn't unhappy with the performance of the sidepull brakes on my old bike, but I never liked the complexity of them. With cantilever brakes, they are simple and you can see exactly how they work and so they are easy to take care of as well.



As you can see, I've got quite a bit of stack under the stem. On my old bike, I had less, but it seemed with this frame, I needed this much to achieve the same position. I'm not sure if the top tube is low on purpose as this is a cross frame. If I was to build a custom frame, I would probably have the top tube a bit higher, but the bike rides just fine as it is, so, I'm OK with it.



The kickstand. Not sure the make, but this works great. You can adjust the length of the leg by turning the striped collar. There are almost no bike racks anywhere you go in Japan, so the bike needs to be able to stand by itself. Bike theft isn't as much of a problem here especially in this more rural city of Fujisawa, so you don't need to lock the bike to something else as you would in the US.



Anyway, this bike and I are definitely gonna go explore all over this area. I'm really looking forward to it and I will be reporting on our trips for sure. I haven't thought of a name for it yet, but if you have any suggestions, I'm all ears.