Thus far, we are about 150 kilometers from tokyo. We are currently in a hot spring town called Ihoka. The hot spring center (more like a YMCA of chilling) cost about $7 to get in and is huge.
To get here, we left the tokyo area on thursday and biked to Saitama. It was pretty hectic biking in Tokyo traffic, but most of the drivers stay clear of you, so it’s not that big a deal. However, even one mistake by either one of us or driver could be fatal. In fact, we’ve already had a couple hairy situations at intersections…perhaps we mob too hard from time to time.
One of the strangest interactions we’ve had so far on the mish involved some drunken Japanese people at a ramen place we went to two years ago. An old man touched russ’s arm for some reason or another. Perhaps he’d never seen a foreigner before. In any case, the ramen was great. Obanburumai! is the name of the place.
Due to the tall chu-hi cans and sake being mistaken for water earlier in the evening, our camel backs were not rejuvenating us, but getting us quite drunk. soon after the ramen feast, we looked for a river spot to set up camp. Heat, humidity, and an army of moths made it a poor sleep, and the sunrise hangover even worse.
On the next day, we met a biker named Akira who showed us the way to our next destination, which was to a town on the border between Gunma and Saitama province called Maebashi. Since he was going on a 150k bike loop, we tagged along with him for about 3 hours. We then biked another 60k to Maebashi on main roads. The heat was so bad we had to stop numerous times to prevent overheating. The best stop was at a place called Coco’s, which is like Denny’s but with japanese hamburgers and curry as well as an all you can drink soda buffet. We just had some mango ice and soda, putting much of the soda into our camelbacks. Needless to say, it was worth about 4 dollars.
Our spirits were high after sugary drinks and air conditioning, and we attacked the road at a strong pace. Maebashi was still 40k ahead of us, but with sunglasses from the 100 yen shop we trudged through the sun. Our shirts were getting destroyed, and Kurtis reckons he’s never been sweatier in his life. Just as we began to leave the saitama, psuedo-tokyo, flat uninteresting spans of commerce, the scenery changed and we were greeted by the mountains and rivers of Gunma.
A doming rice bowl and a secret spot under the main bridge in Maebashi put us right to sleep to restore Power; and a great breakfast with the leftovers started us off again. We aimed for the hotspring country, but somehow ignored the fact that mountains=hills. 9k is hard normally, but uphill with weight (90 degrees F with 80-90% humidity) just about killed Kurtis, and maybe Russ also.
Having biked for three days now, we have decided to rest on the fourth, eating many rice bowls and ramen. From there, we will plan our next destination.
Biking Across Japan Standardly 