Japan part 1

Many many people have been complaining that I haven't written anything for a while. In my own defence I have been trying. Several times. But whenever I think I will have the opportunity to sit down and do it I end up seeing something interesting or meeting someone new and it just never happens. But now I am in a new country, it's raining, cold, and I can't be bothered to go outside. If that's not motivation I don't know what is.

I first came to Japan about 12 years ago. It was a bit of an odd holiday since I was involved in a music festival in Shizuoka. We were living with local families and were ferried about to different places and didn't have the chance to explore by ourselves (understandable probably - we were all 12-16 years old). The one day we did have free we tried to see Mt. Fuji but were thwarted by cloud. So I always wanted to come back, find Fuji and see the rest of Japan.

Entering Japan was by far and away the biggest shock of this trip so far. I had forgotten just how difficult it is to be in 'developed' countries. Just getting off the ferry was a challenge. I've been held up at borders before due to the immigration officer being involved in something more important (playing counterstrike) or because I refused to pay a 'fine' (sitting around until they get bored is an acceptable method of payment). They wouldn't let us into Japan because the customs computer broke. We were just left to sit on the ferry for ages while they fixed it with a hammer.

Loads of reporters turned up to film and interview people as they left the ship. No idea why. Either there was someone really famous on the ferry or just nothing ever happens in Wakkanai. Probably the latter. By the time we got off they had already left. Maybe for the best, we would probably have given them a heart attack.

In the end we were let off. The shipping agent in Russia had apparently arranged for someone to meet us in Wakkanai to clear Japanese customs. That meant money (we had absolutely nothing between us). So we were taken off to town and into a building that I can really only describe as a bureaucracy office. There were people all over the place furiously throwing bits of paper around so that everyone could put a different rubber stamp on them. Outside I noticed a sign that said 'Post Office'. That makes sense.

Finally we were let out of the port and headed to a youth hostel in town. The owner was a great guy who greeted us with beer and cakes and then took us out for a meal in the evening.

Proper food. I've been looking forward to this.

We had met up with a Spanish guy, Daniel, on the ferry. For one reason or another we all needed to find a garage to get our bikes fixed. The last couple months had taken a toll on them (except for Uwe's KTM which only needed a service). We had been telling ourselves that everything would be OK in Japan. It would be easy to fix everything, every corner shop would have spare parts, all our problems would go away in Japan. Wrong. This was just the start of a very long and frustrating saga.

On my bike the chain was in terrible condition. I desperately needed a new one. We went down to a garage. The guy did a really appalling job of adjusting it and then charged me about €40 for the work. On Daniels bike he spent ages deciding he couldn't do anything about the chain or the headlight and charged him €80. Later that night I had to undo his work just to carry on without the chain snapping.

But on the up side at last we were able to find a proper meal.

I had been waiting 9 countries for that.

Before heading out of town we stopped off at the northern most point of Japan.

In Asahikawa we found another garage. Here I managed to find a new tyre, chain, oil and filters which only cost the same as the GDP of a small African country. They somehow managed to also fix Yans bike which had spent the last several thousand kms leaking fuel all over the road. Maybe we were just lucky to find the only competent, if very expensive, garage in the whole of Japan.

And then we headed off to explore Hokkaido.

Hokkaido is described as being very sparsely populated. Frankly that is the most inaccurate description since pot noodles were labelled as fit for human consumption. In fairness, I had just come from Mongolia and far eastern Russia so my definition of 'sparsely populated' is probably quite different from the Japanese definition. On Hokkiado there are towns every 20km or so - big towns as well. Very occasionally it is possible to find stretches of road without a city built on top of it, but they don't really last very long.

Still, Hokkaido is very pretty.

It's just a shame about the speed limits. Most countries recognise that traffic should move relatively slowly through built up areas. That's only reasonable. When there is heavy traffic, lots of side roads, lights, pedestrians and so on it only makes sense to keep the speed down. But surely outside of town traffic should be allowed to go faster. Right? I mean when there is nothing to hit....

Apparently not. Anybody care to guess what the speed limit along this stretch of road is?

Nope. You're wrong. Have another go.




Still wrong.

So far as we could work out the blanket speed limit across the whole of Japan is 50kph (for people still desperately clinging on to the imperial system that is 31mph). Yep. In towns the speed limit is usually 30-40km, outside I don't think I ever found a surface road that was more than 50kph. Even the expressways are limited to 80kph (50mph). And they also blanket every road with 'no overtaking' lines. In the end I got so fed up with the restrictions I just ignored them. Not dangerously, but I didn't care about breaking speed limits (even double the speed limit is less than the limit on a similar road in the UK) or overtaking across double yellow lines on a perfectly straight road. Not that I advocate breaking the law but I honestly think that on this occasion I was more dangerous keeping within the law due to the soul crushing boredom it induces.

I'm sure this mountain pass would have been amazing with a visibility greater than zero.

The mechanic from the garage in Asahikawa had told us he was competing in the Japanese Enduro Championship which was taking place on Hokkaido the next weekend. So we headed down there as spectators only.

By this point we had spent quite a long time on Hokkaido already, most of that trying to fix the bikes. So we headed down to get the ferry to Honshu.

Sapporo food festival

Spot the Frenchman

Sapporo brewery

The Japanese ferries are something else. Pretty different to the Russian ones. In Russia the people are fantastic but the ferries themselves are somewhat lacking. There is nowhere to tie down the bikes and nothing to tie them down with. In Japan the second you stop moving you are surrounded by 3 or 4 people who properly take care of everything.

Not going anywhere

At this point Yan and I said goodbye to Uwe. Uwe had arranged to get another ferry back to Russia from Fukuoka (at least 1500km away) in just a few days time. So he ran off while Yan and I took a different ferry to a peninsula in northern Honshu and carried on south slowly. We arrived late at night and camped up before the storms hit.

The next day we stopped off at a Buddhist temple built in the crater of an active volcano.

The temple is built on the edge of the lake which represents heaven. Dotted around heaven are 140 or so bubbling springs which represent the temptations of the world. The locals have come to believe that everyone comes to this place once they die. If I had known that before hand I wouldn't have bothered coming in this life.

It is easy to see why this place has gained the beliefs it has. The lake is beautiful and the water is crystal clear and the transition from the lake to the 140 hells is instant. Most of the springs have been covered up with rock piles but the sound and the stink of sulphur is inescapable. But even wandering around hell was strangely beautiful.

And so we carried on. A little bit.

About a week previously I had noticed something odd with the front wheel on my bike. There was a wobble, more noticeable at low speeds and under sharpish braking. I had tried to explain it to the others but they both failed to reproduce it. So I just ignored it. But it had been gradually getting worse and by this point it was like riding a mechanical bull. So it was time for some quick diagnostics.

So the bulge in the inner tube was fairly noticeable. No idea how it happened but since that one was bought in a market in Istanbul for about 35p it was no real surprise it was bad quality. So I bought a new tube, fitted it and assumed that my problem would be fixed.

Nope. If anything it got even worse. So we headed to the nearest large city to find a garage.

Eventually we found someone who managed to diagnose it as a bent rim. Not sure how that happened since the roads in Japan (and even across Russia) were flawless tarmac. I had had a couple of big hits on the front in Mongolia so my guess is that it was just working itself out and had only just become a problem.

And this is where my problems really start. Getting the wheel rebuilt isn't really a big deal. It's a standard size and spoke pattern, as long as I can find the parts it is only about an hours work for someone who knows what they are doing.

The garage in Aomori couldn't do anything so I put out a request for help on a couple of message boards and hoped for the best. The next day there had been no response so I had to make a decision. What I had learnt from the garage in Aomori suggested that staying there was probably not a good idea. Although it was a fairly large city they thought that going to Sendai would be better. Sendai was 400km away. On a wheel that was no longer circular. Even though I had probably already 4000km on a bent rim finding out that it was bent just sort of made it worse. But not really having a choice I had to leave.

The mountain roads through Tohoku were amazing. Perfect quality, great views and very little traffic (by Japanese standards). I didn't really enjoy it as much as I should have since I was worrying about the wheel falling apart.

But we get to Sendai and I restart my hunt for a garage. By the time we got to the city loads of people had replied to my cry for help. So many, in fact, that I wished I had stayed in Aomori. But one thing that did come out of it is that I got a massive list of garages all over Japan, wheel builders included. So I spent 3 days searching every garage in the city. Mostly I get 'no's. The problem was that the version of the Transalp I am riding was never sold in Japan. So most of the time their parts systems can't find the model. When they do manage to find a parts list they insist on getting parts sent over from Italy. Yes, take a Japanese bike to a Japanese garage and they want to get parts sent over from Europe. No amount of telling them that they can use parts from the version that was sold in Japan, they insist on ordering from Italy. Except the factory in Italy would have to make them specially. The best answer I got was 5 weeks to get hold of the parts (maybe) and then another 2 weeks to rebuild the wheel (depending on what other projects they had). The really stupid thing is that rims and spokes are generic parts. I know of a Japanese company that sells a rim that would fit, and a new set of spokes could be made locally in half an hour, but they were having none of it.

I had had such a hard time finding anyone who could do it that when I ended up in the place that quoted 7 weeks plus €500 parts plus €400 labour I was very seriously considering it. Then out of nowhere an old guy wearing a Honda baseball cap turned up. I have no idea who he was or where he came from but he was given a huge amount of respect by the other mechanics. Via the medium of Google Translate I was sort of able to explain what the problem was. He went out to have a look. He spent the next 15 minutes or so complaining that the spokes where so badly corroded that adjusting them was impossible. Then he pulled out a spoke wrench, adjusted the spokes, reset the tyre and for the most part fixed the problem. If I wasn't so grateful I would have been really annoyed that all the other garages were so useless.

I didn't even bother asking about the warped brake disks.

And I was free to leave. Yan had already gotten bored and headed off to Tokyo by himself.

The next day I left Sendai and headed out to the coast.

The stretch of coast south of Sendai was very badly hit by the tsunami last year. And this really shook me. I knew that it was bad from watching the videos on the news. But actually going there brought home just how much of a disaster it really was. I spent hours riding through devastation. Even 18 months after the event the cleanup is not finished. There are still trucks taking twisted metal and rubble into huge impromptu scrapyard for sorting. There are acres of foundations with no houses on top of them. The few houses that do remain are very badly damaged.

Something used to be here. I don't know what.

Wreckage still litters the fields and plains. This is about 2-3km inland.

Cars dumped into hedges. There are no roads leading into this field.

Inside of a performance tuning garage.

This was one of the more emotionally difficult places I have been to. It is difficult to know how to act around a damaged building knowing that the family that lived there is very likely dead.

As I carried on down the coast the damage seemed to disappear. But eventually there was a roadblock manned by people in radiation suits. The Daiichi nuclear plant which exploded still has a massive exclusion area around it. There are no exceptions. The main east coast rail line is shut down. The exclusion zone is an irregular shape. There is a road which just nicks one of the arms of the zone. That road is also closed.

We spent a while with a map trying to work out how to get around it (I was refusing to take the express ways)

Not that being diverted was a bad thing. The tiny roads through the mountains were amazing.

I kept seeing signs for a waterfall. So I decided to go and investigate. The signs made it seem really impressive - a big multilevel waterfall.

I have to admit, I felt slightly let down. I was expecting something impressive, at least that's what the signs had led me to believe. Not a trickle with a path that had been washed away.

But after a brief search I discovered the real waterfall hiding around a corner.

That's better.

Back on the road I got to Tokyo that night. Apart from general sightseeing I needed to go to Tokyo to arrange for my bike to be sent to Bangkok. I mean, how difficult could that be?


tbc