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.