Oldies Gap Year

Curiously enough the Japanese don't use "sayonara", as it basically means a final goodbye! Our complete Japanese trip So we have only a day left in Japan. Tomorrow we pack the bikes up ( more on that later) and get the bus to Hiroshima airport, then to Tokyo and from there to Bangkok and lastly Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. We have spent the last 6 days or so in Hiroshima, mainly because the weather has been somewhat autumnal, which in this part of Japan means wet. Fortunately its allowed us to get a few things sorted out and do a bit of planning for Thailand. First problem to overcome was a very poor bit of planning on my behalf, which was to assume that we got 90 days visa exemption in Thailand. Oops - it's only 30 days. Fortunately we can extend this, but the old saying that assume makes an ass out of "u" and "me" holds particularly true. Our bikes came out in bike cartons that I begged from Halfords, who, bless them, always ha...

I used my artistic skills of a 9 year old to illustrate the above map to show how far we have come from arriving in Osaka on the 11th September. All of the scenery has been spectacular, but the area of the north coast adjoining the Sea of Japan particularly so. It's not all been plain sailing though. We have had our share of rain, causing us to have to camp in an abandoned camp site whilst the rain and the wind passed through. Fortunately we were able to camp directly beside what used to be a covered barbecue and had a dry area to store panniers and be able to cook. One soggy tent This was taken by an Australian couple who had taken the train out to the beach that day. Yesterday in particular though was an absolute soaker. We started in relatively light rain, and initially it seemed quite pleasant. As it does though, it gradually got worse until you realised that it was pelting it down. This was bad enough, but Japanese roads seem to have an odd c...

I’d like to say some interim thanks to you for having us over these past two and a bit weeks. You have been overwhelmingly welcoming to us. You haven’t minded in the least where we have camped. You have laughed with us when we make gaffes. You have come up time and again and made conversation, and whilst google translate is a good tool, you have been patient when the message hasn’t quite got through. You have even brought us breakfast in the morning when camping out in towns. You have lots and lots of convenience stores which are always a welcome site when we are hungry, and we have started to expand our repertoire of things to eat, including, recently, the red bean filled pancake which I am glad to report was delicious. Thanks to your population holidaying mostly in July and August some of your most beautiful locations have been quite deserted. Even where we have met people in these places, they have again been friendly and inquisitive and always wanting to know where yo...

“What if there are bears? asked Sian when I mentioned that we would be doing our first wild camp. Turns out that when she had googled the idea it had lead her to “10 tips for wild camping”, which of course mentioned bear spray, bells and other bear scaring devices. Essentially most of the bears are in Hokkaido ( Japan’s most northerly isle) but it still hasn’t stopped her being a little more nervous in the dark. It also hasn’t stopped me doing bear jokes, such as mentioning that the everpresent kites circling around are in fact leading bears to humans, much like the honey bird in Africa leads humans to bee’s in return for a bit of honey. So we left Kyoto post typhoon, which as it happens turned out to be a real anti climax. As good Brits, we had panic shopped in the supermarket and got some supplies for dinner in and decided to hunker down in the B and B whilst presumably rooftiles got ripped off and all shops closed down. Except that the Japanese are made of far sterner stuff a...

A bit of a long one folks, so hang on in there! We are currently in Kyoto awaiting the passing of typhoon Talim which should clear by Monday. Currently raining, but we are holed up in a lovely   new Japanese style guesthouse about 2km from central Kyoto. So the picture to the left is checking in the gear in Tokyo's Haneda airport. Which should have been a straightforward affair, which to be fair it was until we got a call back once we got through security. A very apologetic JAL lady escorted us back through security where we had to open the bike boxes to show an official. Apparently the x ray scan had showed up something containing oil, which I suspect might have been the multispeed Rohloff gear hub. Anyway, they were satisfied, and the same JAL lady, still apologising profusely ( such is the Japanese way) escorted us back through security, and then bowed deeply to us before disappearing. On arrival at Osaka here. It look us about 2 hours from getting the stuff off the b...