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.