Cherry blossom road

Summer riding

Well we've been on a number of rides since the last entry, but we haven't taken so many pictures on them to do a proper entry about any one ride. Instead, I will just post what pictures we have taken recently and comment on them.



Here is Kao at the Shichirigahama beach.
This was the destination of our ride one day when we did take pictures.


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We went from Fujisawa towards Kamakura and turned South where the Shonan monorail crosses. The map direction begins there. Then the road will go up to Kamakura-yama (Kamakura-hill) which is quite a steep hill to climb. It was the first time we were there so I was too preoccupied with finding the way to take pictures. After the climb, it was all downhill to the Shichirigahama area.



Here I'm riding through the nice path (with no cars) that leads to the ocean front.



You can see the ocean where the road starts to go downhill.



I've crossed the Enoden train tracks and is just a street away from the ocean front.

Kao was taking all the pictures until now, but then I took the picture of her which is at the top.

Shichirigahama isn't all that far from where we live and we just wanted a short casual ride, but the Kamakura-yama was more hilly than we expected.



Another day, we went to the Tsujido beach to take pictures of ourselves. Here's Kao on her bike.

It's been long overdue, but we'd been meaning to make a "We've moved" card for sometime and so we needed material for that.



If you look at this picture closely you might find it a bit strange. That's because it's actually made up of two separate shots. I photoshoped it to make it look like we are standing next to each other.



Here's me on my bike. Kao likes taking pictures of me, but I don't think I'm as photogenic as her.





And a couple of more shots by Kao of surfers riding bikes along the beach. This is a quite typical scenery along this beach. I would say that more than half of the people riding bikes in the area are usually carrying surfboards.

I spent my junior high and high school years in Southern California where surfing was very popular and I tried it as well, but I really was no good at it so I have no desire to try it again, but I think it's quite a romantic sport and I like being around it while riding along the beach.

Japan has had one of the hottest Summers in recent history, but it's finally beginning to cool down a bit. It's quite an adventure to ride the bike under the blazing sun, but it should become a bit easier now. We should be able to go on longer rides without having to worry about heat stroke or sunburn.

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.

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.

Shōnan

Shōnan is the name of the region we've moved to. It is not an official term, so there is mixed opinion about exactly how large an area the term describes. What's for sure is that where we live in the city of Fujisawa is in the dead center of what is considered Shōnan.


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In the map above all the coastline area included, the cities of Hiratsuka, Chigasaki, Fujisawa and Kamakura are all generally considered as part of Shōnan. Although it's not an official geographic term, it's widely used to describe the area. The term Shōnan might conjure up images of Sunny beaches and the ocean for most people. It's definitely a popular Summer destination for the inhabitants of the greater Tokyo area. I thought I would write about it since it's destined to be a term we will use very often from now on.

I will share with you some pictures of different parts of Shōnan that I have ridden to on my bike.



Most recently, yesterday morning in fact we rode to the nearby Enoshima where I took the picture above. Enoshima is a small island off of the coast. It is a very popular tourist destination and it's very scenic for sure.



Here's another picture from Enoshima. This is the very backside of the island and there is a cave you can see for a few hundred yen. (We were too cheap to pay to see it)



This is the beach front of Hiratsuka and in the distance you see the mountains of Hakone and Tanzawa. If the sky was clearer, you would see Mt. Fuji beyond there. This scenery pretty much continues from a little beyond near Enoshima to Hiratsuka.



This is Kugenuma beach just West of Enoshima. It is one of the most populated beaches in the Summer. I took this photo before the Summer vacation season began in earnest, but these temporary shacks are called "Umi no Ie" which roughly translates as "House by the sea" are places where beach goers can go to lounge around, eat, drink, take a shower, and keep valuables in lockers while dipping in the ocean. Kugenuma is littered with these Umi no Ie during Summer, so locals tend to stay clear and go to more quiter beaches in other areas.



This is the view of the ocean in Oiso. Oiso is the city West of Hiratsuka. I rode there a little over a week ago. That is so far the farthest I've ridden since I'd moved here. Going from Fujisawa, you cross the Sagami River from Chigasaki to Hiratsuka first and it starts to feel more rural and then when you get to Oiso, it feels even more rural. I saw a lot of sport cyclists in this area. I found that it was much easier and pleasant to ride there as well. I didn't ride by the ocean in Oiso, so I don't really know what the waterfront area is like, but I stopped to go toward the ocean here and snapped this picture. Unfortunately, I couldn't ride any further so, I couldn't get closer to the ocean, but the water looked really beautiful there. I will try and ride by the ocean next time.



Shōnan isn't just about the ocean. There is all kinds of cool neighborhoods and shops and there's a lot of historic sites as well. This particular picture is the old school shopping street in Kugenuma Kaigan. We bought some fresh Tofu there.

Anyway, there is so much to explore. My bike still isn't ready yet, but when I do get it, I will be venturing all over Shōnan and will share with you what I've seen.

The journey to a new bike

So, as I wrote in the last entry, I am working on a new bike for myself. Above is what's left of the previous bike; handlebar, stem, levers, saddle, seatpost, crankset, bottom bracket, derailleurs and chain. I had meant to bring the wheels which is the next most important (and expensive) part of a bike after the frame, but I had no way of bringing them with me here. So, this is all I have left and I started thinking about building a new bike with that.

After some thinking, I started entertaining the idea that maybe getting a custom frame could is a real possibility. I had been looking at sites of various Japanese frame builders and came across this one which is the builder Nakajima, but they also sell Toei frames.



I had seen this Toei Commuter a couple of years ago while walking around Tokyo. It's a very nice bike and it seemed to have a good reputation among their owners. I thought it would be a good frame to consider as it is very reasonably priced for a custom frame at the starting price of 87000 yen ($995 US at writing of this entry) and the waiting is much shorter than it is in the US. I wrote an email to Nakajima while I was still in Portland to inquire about it and maybe get the process started early, so I could have the frame done sooner. Unfortunately, he never responded to my email.



After I arrived in Japan and I had mostly settled down in my new place, I started again to try and put the new bike together. On the Nakajima site, it said that the Toei frames are now taking about 7 months, so at that point, that seemed too long as I wanted to have it before this Summer was over. I started looking at the Nakajima bikes which didn't look as good to me before, but there were pictures of more recent ones like this one above looked OK, nice and simple. So, I called Nakajima and had a talk with him. This was really the first time for me to talk to a builder with the intention to possibly buying a frame. I was quite unsure of how to talk about it and I had a lot of questions, but he seemed really uninterested and almost seemed to want to talk me out of it which he succeeded after he told me the wait was 1 year.

I had looked into other builders as well, but none were as cheap as Nakajima or Toei, so I gave up on the idea.



Then I looked at the semi-custom frames by Panasonic like this one above. You can order this frame in 3 sizes (460, 510, or 550) and in any of 28 colors you like and it will be finished in 14 days! The only thing I couldn't tell was what the wheel size is. It kind of looks like they could be 26 inch, but even if that was the case, this seemed like a good possibility, so I went to a local Panasonic dealer to ask about it. I was quite ready to go ahead and order it, but I asked just in case if they had other steel frames that were similar. It was a good thing I asked because they indeed had something even more reasonable.



Yes, that's a Surly. All of you in North America are probably quite familiar with the Surly brand. They are quite a popular brand in Portland for sure. I'd never been super attracted to Surly's myself and I'd been thinking my next bike will be a Japanese brand, but this Surly frame was much cheaper than the Panasonic and with all the parts I still need to buy to complete the bike, I can use all the savings I can get. Many of you keen observers probably noticed that the bike is the Surly Crosscheck and not the popular Long Haul Trucker. While I have no intention of racing cyclocross, the LHT will be for the 26 inch wheels in my size, so I opted for the Crosscheck which are made for 700c wheels in my size. The only misgiving I have with this frame is that the bottom bracket is slightly higher than normal making the center of gravity higher, but I think I will get used to it and with this frame, I can be much more confident going over rough roads which there are plenty of around here.

Anyway now, the shop had ordered the frame for me and it is waiting for a few more parts to arrive before being built. They are building new wheels for me instead of getting pre-built ones as the kind of wheels I wanted weren't available and the parts for the wheels seem to be taking a long time. I called them today and they said it will be 1 or 2 weeks still. I was hoping to get it this week, but I have to be patient.

Anyway, so after looking at more exotic possibilities, I will end up with a very ordinary Surly bike. I'd been riding Kao's Trek ever since I'd been here and it's pretty good, but not quite right, so I'm really looking forward to getting my own bike and dialing it in and riding it all around this area which is quite a haven for cycling in this part of Japan.