Well, gather around and let me tell you all about my trip to kyoto. As I said in my last blog, I was going on a rather long biketrip, from Okazaki where I live, to the city of Kyoto. I was going there to see the temples, the old city streets of japan, the geishas, and all other marvelous things there might be. Oh, and of course the Nintendo world HQ. Can't forget about that, can I?

I was going to leave as soon as the holiday started, but bad weather prevented me from going during the weekend, and so I didn't start my journey until the following tuesday. Here is a map showing the approximate route which I took:



As you can see, it was a rather long trek, and I would especially want you to notice the mountain range in the middle. But I'll come to that.

It started of well. I left My home around 10 in the morning, armed with 2 litres of water, chocolate, and home-made sandwiches. I had my ipod filled with all Ian Fleming's "James Bond" audiobooks (from which I've picked up a lot of rather irritating "english" words, like "rather") so I was set for my long journey ahead.

It took me about an hour, when my ass was hurting and my back was coated in sweat, fo me to start cursing myself and seriously consider to turn around. But I had set my goal as Kyoto, and I was going to get there, even if I had to crawl the whole way. So I continued.
It took me about two, three hours to reach Nagoya, where I encountered the first of my problems: The road I've been following, and that I was supposed to follow a good bit longer, decided to not give me any room anymore, so I had to take a small road that ran next to it. Of course, it didn't take long for that road to go of in a completely different direction... It took me an half an hour to find my way again. No problem, just really irritating.

Going through Nagoya took me another three hours. My two litres of water were long gone and I was stopping at every vending machine along the road, buying at least a litre of water every time. I must have drunk ten litres of water during the first six hours of my trip.
After leaving Nagoya behind me, I managed to get myself lost again. I took a left turn where I was supposed to go right, but it was at this time I remembered my phone has GPS. Such a lovely little feature in a phone. With it, after a little backtracking, I was back on track.

By now, I'd been out for over eight hours, and the sun was on its way down. I had just reached the beginning of the mountain-climbing part of this excursion when the sun went down. It was about eight O'clock in the evening, it was dark, and I was going uphill. It couldn't get worse, or could it? Of course it could. It started raining.
I found myself stranded in the rain in an old cemetery, where I managed to ind some shelter. It was a spooky feeling sitting there in the dark, with James Bond as my only friend. Envisioning ghosts everywhere. Fortunately, the rain stopped after half an hour and I could leave the place with little permanent damage.

I continued for two more hours in the dark, surrounded by forest, and hearing weird noises everywhere. Remembering I was in bear-and-monkey-country I decided that speed was of the essence, and I hurried through. The rain was just starting to fall again when I came upon a house on one side of the road, with a garage-looking building on the other. I decided to rest up a bit from the rain in the garage, not wanting to disturb the people living in the house. But disturbed they were, since they had two small dogs, that decided I was far to interesting to not bark about. Their barking eventually made the people living there take a look at what the dog was baring about. They found me, and I quickly explained myself, in my poor japanese, why I was there, and told them I could leave immediately if the wanted too. They thought it would be too dangerous going through the mountains in the night, so they said I could stay in the garage for the night. I thanked them, and tried my best to make myself comfortable. I stayed there for five hours, until it started to brighten up a little. As soon as it was bright enough for me to see the road ahead of me I continued my travels.

It took me the better part of the morning to reach the summit, and when I finally reached it, it was like heaven. Ok, so the view was just mountains and sky, and not even that pretty at the time, but the feeling of accomplishment was divine. Knowing that the worst of the journey was behind me I quickly sped down the mountain, with wind in my heart. Oh, so wrong I was...

Going up the mountain had taken me, not counting the five hours I'd stopped, about 6 hours. Going down the other side took me a half. Riding downhill was a bliss, and reaching civilization, and vending machines, again was even better. I've had almost no water since starting uphill, and I was parched. After resting for a little, and filling up my water supplies, I continued on.
From now on there were only populated areas in front of me, and well built roads (by japanese standards) so I felt I should be able to finish the last stretch rather fast. I was a little worried about the sun, it had been getting warmer and warmer, and I noticed my arms getting a little red, but I felt that, even though I'd forgotten about suncream, I would reach Kyoto pretty fast, and it wouldn't be that bad. There I was wrong again.

As I was following the road signs pointing towards Kyoto, my bike decided it was tie to give up and die. The back wheel suddenly stopped working properly, sometimes when i pedaled nothing happened, and the rear brakes also had died. To add salt in the wound the signs stopped pointing at Kyoto, and I naturally thought I'd reached Kyoto. My phones batteries had died the night before, so I stopped at a bookshop and bought a map of Kyoto, thinking that I could pinpoint my location by finding the road number, and looking for landmarks marked on the map, like gasstations, and railways. Naturally, I couldn't find where I was.
At this point my arms and face was already bright red from the sun, and hurting quite a bit. I tried keeping to the shades moving here and there through the city, trying to find the big road that led to Kyoto that I knew should be there somewhere. I spent around three hours there, until I found myself back on the right way. It took me another stop at a McDonalds, where I had to boot up my computer and hope that google earth had enough of the maps surrounding Kyoto in its cache for me to be able to look at them offline, for me to find my bearings again.
I managed to get back on track again, and finally found myself in Kyoto.

Half an hour later I reached my hotel. I checked in, took a shower, and went straight to bed. The trip had taken me about thirty hours and left me dirty, sunburned, and dead tired. I woke up the next morning in pain. The sunburns were pretty severe, I was red all over my face and arms, and the skin on my face, especially my nose, was hard like parchment. I went out to a nearby store and bought a pack of cooling gel bandaid-thingies, with menthol in them by the smell of it, and I spent the rest of the day lying in bed with these on my arms and forehead.
When the evening came I decided I needed to eat something, and since the sun was down I'd go out and find a kebabplace. I looked one up on the internet, and went there and ate. I realized during this small excursion outside that I was in no shape to do any sightseeing during my stay, so the net day I checked out, and took the first shinkansen train back. It took me about an hour to get back home.

My bike is still in Kyoto...

Well that was my failed trip to Kyoto. Hope it was entertaining for you, it certainly was for me. Except for the last three hours or so. And the stay itself. But other than that, it was fun, and I'd do it again someday. Not in the summer maybe, and with a better bike, but I'd like to do it again.

Signing off.

私が夏の休みに自転車で京都へ行きました。その旅行は失敗しました。