Japan by Bicycle

So, Dylan just woke me up, and we're now going to leave I think.

Start of the awesome.

Japan by Bicycle!

It's... uh... what time is it?

It's 4:30 in the morning. The sun is going to come up soon.

Hopefully

Let's go!

Woohoo! We made it to Yakushima

for our pre-trip bonding in the woods.

It was a challenging day.

I hope none of the other days are this hard.

We had to take our bikes apart...

Twice!

we took them apart part of the way to get on one train.

Then we had to take them apart some more to get on another train.

Then we got off the train and we put them back together

rode to the ferry and found out that we had to take them apart again.

And then we put them back together and got on them.

Now we've been riding for about two to two and a half hours.

What's up? This is where we camped for the first night.

It's a pretty sweet location.

Check it out.

Hello. I just got up to the trail head after forgetting Andrew's stove.

I'm going to be camping tonight in the mountains.

I think they're going to head back to the campsite.

And I have fashioned a backpack from my pannier.

Here I go!

Hey there.

I just hit the railroad tracks

which I knew existed, but I didn't know it is along my path.

But this is great news because it means I can pick up some time.

And I would really like to get to Jomon-sugi before dark

I didn't make it to Jomon-sugi before dark but...

I am about 30 minutes away.

Well, I got here.

This is Jomon-sugi in front of me. I'll show it to you in a second.

It's another 10 minutes to the hut where I'm going to eat something and sleep.

I'm exhausted.

I would say it was worth it. It's pretty amazing

You won't be able to see very well, but just take a look.

Ok, so I'm at the hut. I just had dinner.

I'm about to go to sleep.

I want to show you this visitor that keeps on trying to eat my food.

Where'd he go?

There he is.

Completely fearless.

Oh hey Internet.

Here we are hanging out at Cape Sata the Southernmost point in Japan

about to start out Japan by Bicycle end-to-end tour of Japan.

Alright, we are about to start our first kilometer of the trip

Here we go!

Start!

Day two of the trip and we already have rain.

Hot!

It's really hot.

Scott has just eaten his first takoyaki.

...or "octopus ball."

Squishy

Ok, here we are in Nagasaki.

We just landed here by ferry

and we're going to follow the coast up and around to Nagasaki City

so tomorrow we can tour the atomic memorials.

My spoke broke.

Woohoo! We made it to Nagasaki!

We're going to have some champon.

It's kind of later than we thought it would be because today...

...we did a lot of things we didn't expect we would do

and now we're in an elevator

awkward with other people.

Scott, why don't you just pick up that egg?

Use the chopsticks to pick up that egg.

That's what they're there for. Just pick up the egg.

There you go. You almost had it that time.

There it is. That's it for sure.

Heeeey, what do you know?!

We're here on Day 6 of Japan by Bicycle.

about to see the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum.

I'm not entirely sure what to expect.

Let's see what it looks like.

So... uh... I crashed.

I kind of road-rashed my whole left side.

A little bit disappointing... really scarey actually.

I guess that's what I get for looking backwards while trying to ride forward.

Not the smartest move.

So the x-rays show the I have no fractures,

They bandaged me up and I should be good to go.

My left hand hurts a lot.

I can't really grip anything.

It's good to know I'm safe and sound more or less.

So what I did was I just took out that spring.

Here we are making final preparations to depart Lori's for the second time.

Amazingly Dylan has found time to fix her burner.

That's awesome.

And Scott is doing creative things with his iPod.

And the guest room is it's usual state of disarray

as we finally try to depart Lori's for the second time.

It was a good stop... a little bit longer than we expected

because I got a blood infection on my hand.

but we made good use of the delay here

recharged and ready to head out to Honshu tomorrow.

We are at Joyful, a popular restaurant chain in Japan.

If you could take one thing on the trip with you,

and it would fit in your bags, the weight doesn't make a difference.

what would you take?

Maybe...

a nice, soft recliner

that has coolant running through it.

So you just get off the bike

and you plop into the cooled recliner.

That sounds pretty good.

Ok, what else we got?

I mean... maybe like a Vespa,

if I could fit a Vespa in my bags to swap out.

Maybe a really live person to pedal my bike for me while I just sit around.

I'm thinking...

A commercial kitchen.

Nice big counters, a gas range, some ovens, and a fully stocked pantry.

That's a bit more than one thing.

No! It's a commercial kitchen.

I would bring a commercial kitchen

With all those things inside of it.

This is going to be a really hard video to edit.

Ya, definitely.

So, should I just cut it off?

Ya -

Good news. The doctor, as expected, said that the blood infection has passed

and so now we are back on the road finally.

We're going to break into Honshu today, the main island of Japan.

That's about it.

aaaand go

Kyushu was easy.

So easy.

Here we are in Hiroshima.

This is the second atomic memorial museum

so it will be interesting to see what the differences are.

We're in Hiroshima, about to have okonomiyaki

It's the specialty of Hiroshima

especially their noodle okonomiyaki.

It's sort of a Japanese omelet slash pancake slash whatever you want.

I'm pretty excited, it's going to be delicious.

Say that again.

Yesterday we passed our 1000th kilometer mark.

Nice!

Here I am on the ferry to the start of the bike bridge route to Shikoku.

This ferry ride is one of the shortest ferry rides in the world.

Hey! Here we are in Okayama and it's laundry day.

OH YA! WOOHOOOO!

And look, Dylan made it back.

and he is drinking milk!

Kansai!

Ok, we're about an hour out of Himeji in Kansai area.

We were on our way to a bike shop to change one of my spokes that broke.

No big surprise. It's a little bit frustrating.

We were just stopping off at a Lawson's

and Dylan hits a weird bump in the road

and tacos his wheel.

Check out how this looks.

Geez. It's pretty bad.

Finally, we have someone who is going to fix my wheel.

Not just one or two spokes, but they have a new wheel

that they think is going to carry the weight all the way to Hokkaido.

Here's the bike.

Right here if you can picture it is a new shiny awesome wheel

that can bear the weight of my heavy bags.

Also, Dylan's wheel, they're going to fix that.

Scott's bike, which is usually fine, they did some free work on that.

Cycle Shop Tomato

for the win!

Come here.

That hot!

Hot, but good.

blah blaah~~.

We are in Himeji and we are eating yakitori

which is skewered grilled stuff.

And Andy is about to try his first heart.

Grilled heart.

How is it?

It's got a very rich flavor,

kind of chewy.

Not bad.

I like it.

We've got some squid here and little octopus here

so I'm going to go for it.

It's delicious.

Ok, here we are at Fushimi Inari Dera

This is a temple in Kyoto.

known for its red arch walkways.

It's dedicated to the goddess Inari which is the goddess of rice.

And there are apparently thousands of temples

smaller but similar to it all around Japan with this sort of red arch walkway

but this, this is the original.

They're orange.

Nope, one more one more one more...

One got it, that was in!

One yen, here we go.

Ok, second.

Oooh, I've got no more.

That's ok...

...not really. Scott has bad luck for the rest of the year.

Bummer.

Important fact about Japan for those of you with a Western persuasion.

One thing they seem to not care about at all is men's washrooms and sight lines.

Case in point...

right off of a busy road we have...

a pair of urinals.

This is the men's washroom.

Let's just go back for a moment to illustrate.

That guy is walking right past the... open men's washroom

Oh hey Dylan, are you about to pee?

No, I just went and saw the urinals... that's all.

Oh, ok.

Here we are in Osaka. We found an Internet cafe.

and we even got neighboring booths which we can see each other through.

Woohooo! Internet cafe Osaka!

YAAA!

Per the usual, we get a matted cubicle that's fairly small,

Internet and free drink bar.

This one was only 1500 yen, but the showers are 500.

so it still comes out to about 2000 yen.

It's a good bargain for cheap travel in Japan.

We are just coming from Osaka now, trying to get to Nara

There appears to be a large mountain in the way.

We tried biking up and had to give up get off our bikes and push.

Osaka is back that way

and we really hope that Nara is up over the mountain this way.

Hey Andy, what's up? What's up?

Oh you know...

...just biking up a mountain.

Cool.

And although it was supposed to be an easy 30km, we ran into mountains.

and ended up sadly missing the last entrance time by 20 minutes.

So now we are stuck here looking through the slats

at the biggest freestanding building on Earth.

Probably wasn't going to be any fun anyway.

I've been here before, three times.

It's awesome.

<O-KO-NO-MI-YA-KI!!!>

<NOM NOM NOM NOM>

God it's cold!

So cold...

but nice... but cold!

Hey Internets.

This is Dylan with Japan by Bicycle.

We're taking a bit of a rest and relaxation day today.

We already took care of the rest, and this...

well, this is the relaxation.

We're here in Kameyama in...

Are we in Nara Prefecture?