Tokyo and First Impressions of Japan

Wow, it’s been a hell of a culture shock flying from London to Tokyo! Here’s how the last few days have gone..

Everything went to plan getting to Heathrow and getting checked in. Virgin Atlantic made the whole process very easy, although it helped a lot that I’d done my research thoroughly and could recite all the requirements for flying with a cooker and a bike off by heart! :-D

It was a 12 hour flight to Tokyo, leaving about 2pm UK time and arriving in the morning in Japan, so we flew through the night!

As soon as I stepped off the plane the heat hit me, I knew I was going to be in for some sweaty times ahead over the next few months! I made it through customs etc and managed to find a quiet spot to put my bike together. It all went together pretty easily, but I sure did get a hell of a sweat on, even in the (somewhat) airconditioned airport! It was 32ºC as I wheeled my bike outside to ride to my campsite. I turned on my GPS to realise that I hadn’t loaded the campsite I was staying at onto it, and it wasn’t in OpenStreetMap! Luckily there was free wifi inside, so I took the opportunity to check my emails/fb, do some research on the route, and load it onto the GPS (whilst enjoying the aircon some more!).

It was a 17km ride to the campground that afternoon, in the heat. Most of it was along nice quiet roads through the countryside, past rice paddys.

I was at the campground pretty early, about 2pm. I got set up and settled in and did some reading. I hadn’t really slept on the plane and was crazy-jetlagged, so didn’t manage to stay up past 6pm! It was really hot all night, especially seeing as my tent is a Macpac Minaret- a mountain tent designed for weathering snow storms in the Southern Alps rather than providing a comfortable sleep when the temperature doesn’t get below about 25ºC and it’s so humid it’s foggy! So yeah, it was a pretty sweaty sleep, and unless this weather breaks I don’t think I’m going to be doing a lot of camping in Japan- not good for the budget!
The countryside is pretty noisy over here- lots of bugs and frogs! I even had a couple of frogs on the inner of my tent, between it and the fly!

Anyway, I got up at about 5am, and was on the road just after 6! It was a nice morning, with a bit of fog around, and I wanted to get going before the serious heat set in!
Here’s the campsite at 5.30am!

It was really nice riding early on! The countryside was flat, there was no wind, and it was warm but not unbearable (probably mid-late 20’s). At one point I crossed a reasonably wide river and saw this fisherman in a boat:

Coming into the city I rode kinda close to the Tokyo Skytree, the tallest tower in the world, and the second-tallest structure (after the Bruj Khalifa.

Because I left so early, I rode the ~80km to my hostel before noon. The problem with this was that check-in at the hostel wasn’t till 4pm! So I had some time to kill in Tokyo with a full-laden touring bike!
I managed to find a few parks to loiter in, and I was even able to try my tent out (it was wet from all the condensation and fog overnight). One of the parks had a couple of surveyors on their lunchbreak!

I got checked in and have been hanging out in Tokyo for a few days now, finding my feet and feeling comfortable in Japan. On Friday I went for a walk to Ueno Park, one of the big old parks here. I met a nice Japanese man called Takashi who was interested in chatting to me. We spent a couple of hours together, talking about Japanese and New Zealand culture, Japanese history, and life and travel philosophies. He showed me the Atomic Bomb Memorial Flame, the shrines and temples in the park, and a statue of the Last Samurai. We discussed the spirituality and religion of the Japanese people, and he explained how to tell if it’s Shinto Shrine or a Buddhist Temple and what to do at them. It was one of the highlights of the trip really, and the sort of experience I was hoping to have before starting off on the trip.
Here are some photos from the park.

And here are some other photos from around the city over the last few days.

Last night I caught up a friend from highschool, Mike, who’s been working here in Japan for the last couple of years. It was a great night, getting to some bits of the city I normally wouldn’t have. We started with a visit to a big temple, took a boat down the river and had some cheap food and beer. We then visited a Sento, a public bath-house (which had a lot more nudity than two non-rugby playing kiwi blokes are used to), and finished off with a visit to a part of town with massive electric screens.. Here are some photos!

Today (and off and on over the last few days) I’ve been mainly hanging out, sorting out my ferry down to Shikoku in the south, and looking at electronic and outdoor gear stores (and showing amazing self-restraint to not spend too much).

The plan from here is to take an overnight ferry tomorrow down to Tokushima on Shikoku (Japans 4th largest island) for the night, then head up to Osaka and Kyoto. I’ll then ride SW, island hopping towards Hiroshima and either Kitakyushu where I’ll take the ferry to Korea or Nagasaki where I’ll take the ferry to Shanghai!

And as a little postscript, Japan’s got a ridiculous number of survey marks! I thought I’d share a couple of photos of them…