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.

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.


View Larger Map

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.

Starting again in a new place

Howdy.

Sorry for the long hiatus. Life had taken precedence over blogging for the last months.

I am all well and good. I may have mentioned it here before, but I have finally made the move back to my native country of Japan. We have found a place to live in the city of Fujisawa which is about an hour South East of Tokyo by train. It is just West of Kamakura which is the city that used to be the seat of the Shogunate long ago. They call this area Shonan and is quite a popular area for its beaches. We are quite happy to finally be living together and in our own place. (We were living in a family related place before.)



I had actually a couple more Portland posts in mind before I left, but then the move was so consuming, I had no time nor energy to write them. This move was probably the worst move of my life as I barely got out of the place in time to catch the plane. My friend Eric who came to give me a ride to the airport saw that my apartment was still a big mess when he arrived and if he hadn't been so kind to help me pack and clean, I wouldn't have made it. I was quite deluded about how much work was involved and how much stuff I could take with me. I had been hoping to be able to take the remnants of my bike (the bike sans the damaged frame), but there was no way for me to take the wheels as they were too big and I already had so much luggage.



I did manage to take the KT (Kao's bike) with me as you can see in this photo. It is doing well. I've made a few modifications to it to suit the environment here. I will do a post about that soon.

This area is really beautiful with the the beaches, but there are also many rivers and rice fields and lots of green. I thought I would be missing Portland a lot, but this place is so much better than my expectations that I haven't even thought about Portland that much. Our place is only a 15 minute bike ride from the ocean and 30 minutes to either Kamakura or Chigasaki. Chigasaki is a very bicycle friendly city and it is where the pro cyclist Fumiyuki Beppu (he rides for Lance Armstrong's Team Radioshack) is from.



We have been taking little bike trips all over the area and it's too much to write about it all, but I will now resume with regular updates, and I will write more detailed entries from now on.

We currently have 3 bikes among the two of us. One is Kao's KT, one is Kao's mamachari and the thrid one is my Dahon folding bike. We have been sharing KT and the mamachari between us for now, but I have been looking to build a new bike with the parts from the old one. It's taken a bit of time to consider many different possibilities and I've finally decided on something, but I never would have guessed my new bike will be that. It's still going to take a while to put it together, but I will write about that soon as well. I don't know if we might have lost what few readers we had during our inactivity, but if you are still with us, thank you. I think this blog will be much more interesting reading as we are starting a new life in a very beautiful new place.

The Verdict

As I had written in the previous post, my road bike had sustained an injury in the way of cracks in the head tube.



On Saturday, I took the bike to a local bike shop, one that has quite a good reputation, to seek professional opinion about this damage. I did read up quite a bit online about cracked aluminum frames and it looked mostly hopeless, but still I didn't want to retire it without having it looked at by an expert. Maybe there is a chance they know an aluminum welder who can fix it?

Well, the verdict was that there was pretty much nothing they could do other than to sell me a new frame. They asked me if I was the original owner of the bike (I wasn't), so perhaps the manufacturer can replace it it or sell me a new one at cost if I had bought it as new. The final piece of advice was "not to ride it anymore".

I actually rode the bike there and back. The ride home was one of mixed feelings. The weather was super nice, perfect bike weather, so it felt very pleasant, but I was quite sad that this may be the last ever ride on this bike.

I spent the weekend mostly indoors. Ironically, the weather was what I'd been waiting for the last few weeks, so I would've definitely gone for a ride had the bike not been decommissioned. Instead of actually riding, I did so vicariously through watching the Paris Roubaix super early Sunday morning. After the weekend, I felt quite unhealthy from the lack of exercise and keeping irregular hours. On Monday night, I had the worst stomach ache I've had as far as I can remember. I don't think the lack of physical exercise was the only factor that caused it, but I had been feeling kind of unhealthy and in need of some physical activity. For me, because I work at home, I tend to lead a very sedentary life and riding around town for errands on the other bike isn't quite enough exercise for me. That other bike KT (Kao's Trek) is a road bike with Milano bars set up for upright position, so I could put drop bars on it again, but then I wouldn't have the town bike which is much better for short utilitarian rides.

It's such a waste to have this bike that I had dialed in and it was just the beginning of the season to go out for long rides. Well, I don't know about long rides, but at the least, I felt the need for it as it provided me with my only prefered way to exercise. So, I made a quick trip to the local hardware store and fixed the bike!



Well, it's a temporary fix for sure. I have no illusion that I will be able to keep on riding it this way for too long. But at least, I will have it to ride a couple of times a week. Maybe it will last until I move to Japan. The other change I made was to switch the pedals (yet again) to platform pedals, just so that in the event that the headtube cracked, I wouldn't be clicked into the pedals and be able to react quicker. The clamps are quite strong, so I think it will keep it from further damage. Anyway, I will keep an eye on the crack with each ride and if it seems to have gotten bigger, then I will stop riding it.

This is just something I'm doing on my own accord and I wouldn't recommend anyone to do the same if they had the same problem though.

The things I've learned from this are two things. One is that aluminum bikes may not be as reliable as I had thought. I had two aluminum bikes prior to this and I had no problem with them. One I sold to a friend and one I got stolen, but they seemed almost bomb proof (especially the mountain bike) and worked perfectly while they were in my possession. The other thing is that buying a used bike online without looking at it first is risky business. After having had my mountain bike stolen, I knew I wanted a faster bike I could ride longer distances with, but such bikes are quite expensive new, so I went to Ebay to scout used bikes there. I am no expert at Ebay, so I probably didn't look carefully enough at what I was bidding on. I bid on a few bikes and when I finally won the bidding for this bike, I was just so happy that I was able to buy a bike of this quality for probably third or quarter of what it would cost new. It wasn't quite perfect when I got it and when I had the bottom bracket replaced, the mechanic at the shop told me the bike looked like it's been crashed. That was a bit scary and the bike did make mysterious noises which seemed to come from the lower end of the frame, but I never suspected any damage around the head tube. I'm not sure if I just didn't notice it or if there was damage which was hidden under the paint until recently, but either way, I think it was not me that caused the crack. I think it was already damaged when I got it and just got aggravated more as I rode it.

Anyway, so I think I've learned my lesson and I will do neither of these things next time.

In fact, I'd been looking at what options there are in Japan. I saw one place that can build custom steel frames as low as 80000yen (about $860). That sounds pretty good to me. I would have to look into it more, but now I'm actually excited about getting a new frame.

I think just as we humans cannot take good health for granted, you can't take a bicycle's health for granted either. I think some may last longer than others (steel longer than aluminum), but while you have a good working bike, you should really enjoy it.

life is finite, most certainly for bicycles

Just as I was growing more fond of my Special K...

I went for a short ride yesterday to enjoy the rare sunshine and as I sat down on a bench at the Eastbank Esplanade, I shot this video to capture the moving platform and the river.



Then I looked at my bike in the bright sunlight and noticed something quite disturbing.


(this picture was taken after I got home)

Can you see the cracks in the headtube?

First I thought it was just cracked paint, but with a closer look it looks quite a bit like the aluminum under the paint is cracked as well. I did some reading online to see what this entails for Special K and it didn't look very promising. It could be that the days are numbered for Special K. Repairing it may be difficult and may not be worth it as it could be costly and could happen again.

I will have to get a professional (at a good bike shop) look at it first before I decide on what to do next, but I started thinking about all the possibilities.

Maybe get a new frame? The first frame that comes to mind, Rivendell Sam Hillborne, is too expensive for me. The Soma Saga and Velo Orange Polyvalent are much more reasonable, but they will require different size wheels in my size, so more expense is needed. Getting a new frame won't mean just the frame. It will require other parts as what's on Special K may not be compatible with the new frame. Also, it's may be worth it to wait until I've moved back to Japan to get a new frame as getting a full bike there will definitely be more expensive than just the wheels and the parts. I think for now, if there's something that can be done to prolong its life (maybe clamping the tube around the crack?), I will do that, then I will have time to save up and look for a good frame instead of getting a quick fix that may not be the right choice. Anyway, I will go to a shop today and seek out advice. If they tell me, it's too dangerous to keep riding it, luckily I have another bike at my disposal. It may not be a bike to ride long distances with, but at least it will help me in my daily life.