Jet; noun. means of convience that promises convienience but delivers ...

The bus ride was typical Japanese efficiency, stopping only to pick up flotsam and jetsam in the odd brightly lit bunker.
We arrived at kansai international airport at " oh fking hell its still early" and I took a cart and procceeded to look like I knew what I was doing .
After taking the service elevator to the storage cupboard and catching the eye of the concierge for the second time , I found the bus to the other terminal, where I took another bus back to the original terminal after discovering that jet star had decided to move.
Then after finding out that the scales of the extra baggage desk were 5kg over , as I had already confirmed the weight. ( it seems this is a trick as both Narita and kansai were over and when I pointed this out the strict wieght limit magically disappeared!)
I now settled down to wait. Not much you can do at the airport than wait. I did however treat myself to the biggest most calorie Laden Burger king I could find. That wasted 5 min.
Pretty soon the humiliation began and I was on the plane, knowing my shoes were not going to explode and the bottle I had just purchased wasn't going to burn a hole in my flight suit, or that I want going to strangle myself with either my belt or my shoelaces.
I sat with economy, not talking to the Himalayain bag wearing lesbian or the underfed connected sales jockey on my right. We touched elbows.
After the delays and apologies we arrived at Narita. After which I realised it would have been far more efficient to pay slightly more and take the shinkansen. as it was I had saved Y1000 , and now it was 7pm and I faced a 90km ride home, and it was raining.
It took 2 hours to clear customs , change and assemble the bike and there  was PC , doing my job.
" gaijins card" , no , " why not ",  " because it's nine o'clock and it's in my bag and you are just being an arsehole"
Once the formalities were over and "PC doing my job left". and I started home. Then returned to pick up my hat.
The ride home was one to remember. Raining , foggy , cold and later on totally lost with a dead phone, but at least the compass worked!.
Found my way back until  I got lost !
Ya follow the road , watching the road signs , which only show the next big town , if you don't know the relationship between the town and say Tokyo, well you is lost !
so I stop and play the 7/11 game . The best one being on the route 16 asking where is Tokyo in as many different accents and styles as a French mime with a halepeno enema.
upon descovering that the route 190 was the one for me and I was to turn left at a car dealership , I procceeded to track down the Origin of mankind, stopping to ask at every confidence store if they had seen Bigfoot , aliens or the route 190.
At one stage , in the middle of nowhere , following a goat track called route 12, I get to a junction. no signs, no nothing, foggy with zero visibility , and rain. I go right , why? it's because I'm a wild and impetuous young man. Seriously Japan fix your road signs or at least stop using the Irish as your contractors.
At about 4 in the morning I decide to try my luck at a police station.  by now I am in the Tokyo metropolitan area and a few miles from Omiya . nothing can stop me now , so I ask " how do I get to Omiya"
maps and people appear. Conversation happens that only those who are party to the inner circle understand. I contemplate ordering a pizza.
After the earth cools and the land emerges from the ocean, I get to look at the map. It seems that I go straight then at the resona bank , I turn right. I am then to follow that road until I cannot.  At which point I turn , right ..  I forget the rest but it was very entertaining I can assure you.
Two seven elevens later and many kilometers of Japanese footpaths I had made it to yono. 9 km away from home. The bike explodes.
Now we are not talking about a cracked frame or a broken cable , the whole back wheel centre falls off , hitting it won't help.
So we have gears not attached to the wheel and very little of motion , especially in the forward direction..
I hit it .  nope that didn't work. So I try putting it back together.  but as half the parts are broken this also isn't going to work
so I use stones , the theory being that I will get forward motion IF I
jam everything together , so I jam stones into the hub , this works . but as soon as I stop peddling the chain has kiniptions, and I have to stop and untame the chain and put it on the correct gear.....
Three sets of lights in the morning rush hour , but hey only a few kilometers to home and it's sunny .
how many times have I done that last kilometer  from lalaport to home it's long and filled with many emotions .
I arrived at 7;30 am.

The Dinosaur from nymphoid hell

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A bridge to long

Matsuyama to Imbari

Matsuyama apart from the castle is another bland Japanese city. But following the coastline from Hories town is quite pleasant with the Seto sea on the left. The road is so, so some parts are unkept other parts are well maintained, still the trucks are present.

I can’t say much about Matsuyama to Imbari , it’s nice as these screen shots from Google show.

As you near Imbari there are road signs which tell of the underground storage of oil. Huge underground storage of oil, hard to believe but Japan has about 90 days supply and that’s a lot of oil. All underground.

Now as my phone has frozen and been dropped into a river it wasn’t behaving. So when I arrived in Imbari looking for possibly the longest bridge in the world. I had to rely on asking for directions. Asking for directions from locals is an interesting affair. This time I saw a young couple on bicycles, I stop, and in Japanese I ask where is the bridge. They were from Taiwan. Very pleasant people , so cheerful.

Off I go picking up a blue line on the road showing the cycle path until it disappears; you call upon divine intervention and it reappears, seriously Japan the locals may know where to go,  but think about the point of road signs. They are there to guide people who don’t know how to get a particular place. One shouldn’t have interrupt a divine being in order to find the longest bridge in the world.

Once the blue line had been found and the road wound up to the bridge, I let the deity go and resumed my travels , I mean I can’t screw this up , it’s a bridge 

Creak, groan, creak, groan ; up the on ramp onto the bridge, and who should I meet ! Yes the lovely Tawanese couple. What nice people, if they are representative of the country then I want to go there,it was a beautiful day. Warm sunny and the scenery was nice, couldnt complain.

The bridge is about 70km long ( http://wikitravel.org/en/Shimanami_Kaido_Bikeway) a bit of a cut and paste follows as well , I cant be arsed repeating something one can look up by ones self !:

The Nishi-Seto Expressway, also known as the Seto-uchi Shimanami-Kaido (highway above sea), was opened to traffic on 1 May 1999. The bridge connects Onomichi City in Hiroshima and Imabari City in Ehime, as well as six islands (namely Mukai-shima, Inno-shima, Ikuchi-jima, Omi-shima, Hakata-jima, and O-shima islands) within the Geiyo Islands situated near the center of the Seto Inland Sea. The completion of the Shimanami-Kaido has made Ehime more easily accessible from Honshu and driving through the Geiyo Islands possible. The highway also allows passage by bicycle and on foot.

With unique island-to-island bridges, such as the Tatara-ohashi Bridge (the longest askew-arched bridge in the world) and the Kurushima-kaikyo-ohashi Bridge (a triple suspension-type grand bridge), the Shimanami-Kaido provides brand-new scenery in harmony with insular nature. The best viewing spots to overlook the bridges over the Seto Inland Sea and various islands are the Hanaguri Seto observation platform on Omi-shima Island and Mt. Kiro-san on O-shima Island. Thanks to the mild climate, there are many flower viewing spots, such as the Yoshiumi Rose Garden (where you can see various kinds of roses collected from all parts of the world), Citrus Park Setoda (which boasts citrus plants as the main attraction), as well as the Inno-shima Flower Center.

Anyway along I went till about 2pm when lunch called. Came off the bridge and just off the road was a hidden park?, I didnt want to move! The sun was shining, lunch was good and a nice cup of tea.

On the subject of tea. I’m English, I’m not sure one realizes this ! And our DNA needs tea. Now a good cup of tea is an art, an art derived from centuries of culture. Being from the east end of london where tea was stolen from the docks and milk and money was scarce, tea tea needed to be HOT AND STRONG!; Good quality tea leaves , not this “earl grey sweepings from the bottom of the warehouse floor packaged in a lovely box. DONT get me started on starbucks lavender earl grey pure shyt. Thats all I’ll say on that!

Once you have the the tea leaves, one cup, one spoonful ! Now add milk; A LITTLE MILK. Not half a cow, or the entire production of New Zealand dairying industry for 2016. A little milk and you will enter what some religions call nirvana.

So you can now guess that , it was late when I finally rejoined the bridge. 5 pm was approaching fast. The next island was nice enough the road followed the inland sea and some lovely little villages.

After coming off the bridge onto Ma island, I came past;. Sunset beach.

Let me explain sunset beach. Manicured into hell .

A well manicured dry lawn with a stage and a cinder block toilet inter-dispersed with the cheapest tannoys you can find spewing forth J-pops. Well it’s 5pm and I can be arsed looking for a place tonight so I decided to stay. It had showers. Now bear in mind I am the only one there.

1000 yen later and the tent up. The music stops , thank you. I cooked tea then set about showering and washing clothes. ( sunlight soap and elbow grease).

The next morning , 7am the tannoys start, first to tell you that the cycle path is open and that Mrs Jones at number 63 has a bad case  of thrombosis and cannot join the glee club coach outing to the community centre. Then silence . Until 8am then the city hall informs you that it’s time to get up. Then silence. Until 9am when the J-pops start.

By now I was ready to kill. Anything and anyone. So I made a comment to a worker about the noise. He agrees and off he goes. About a hour later the music stops. I nearly died. Some scratching and shuffling leaked from the cheapest tannoys on earth then suddenly enka burst forth. FK. The bastard’s had heard my complaint , but because the rules state this is how to create a nice environment is to pollute the air with akb and thinking of the customer , the fkers had searched and found a record from possibly the 1930s of enka.

Insert total joy and completeness in peace and harmony. Not.

But what was to come would more than make up for this. and it was to beat the plastic whale!

Its all down hill from here !

Its all down hill from here !

The 197 towards yasuhara is a nice road winding up the hill with the river on the left then drops down into a remarkably clean well ordered town, looks like there is some money.
The houses are European in style and none of the clutter such as telegraph poles and the inevitable rooftop spaghetti that has destroyed Japanese towns.
Going full retard and turning right, along the 440 we follow the Yasuhara river, until we get to our favorite pastime, tunnels. This one is new with a reasonable foot path on the right hand side, and its downhill! so one cant complain.!
Nothing to report , I  stopped at a seven eleven for a snack. Then following the 440 which changes to the 33 and back to the 440 in as many meters !
Luckily we didnt need google maps !
Then down a long long down hill and I do mean long into Tobe! lovely.  beautiful views over the town but that wind , a little chilly it could be said.
There is nothing I can say about Matsuyama. Tobe has some history behind it I think. It was a samuri clan who opposed the boys in Tokyo and is something to do with ryomas escape route. Im not sure.  Matsuyama is just another Japanese town , with a big road going to the centre,
It does have a castle.  Insert 3kg of pure excitement, not.
You can probably guess by now I have no to very little interest in “old buildings”  Let me quantify this. “Old buildings” for the sake of looking at old building because this is “history “ is boring. But near me, Koganei has an architectural museum. In this park there is a collection of typical Japanese buildings and from an engineering point of view, fascinating. Old castles and temples  because its history and you are under some obligation to “do it “ , not happening.
After the long decent into Tobe the road levels out and I started to pedal, well I was pedalling and things were going round but forward motions were eluding me.
Stop at a 7/11.  Wheel off , sprag clutch not catching inside the hub , how to fix it? I know hit it , hit it untill its fixed;  that works for machinery and bicycles.
Little did I know, this would come back to haunt me with 9 km to my house at 5 in the morning!
My mate in New Zealand reckons he is an important fella and I never really thought he was but I was wrong , old Horie has a whole town named after him.
I stayed the night in Horie’s place on a what might be called a beach behind a sea wall.
Insert a rant on plastic.
How do you start ?  How can you point out the garbage on the beaches.  Its almost like the Japanese are a related to the mythical Vogons. The buildings,  cars, beaches anything that looks like “nature” has to be tamed , concreteded over and garbage spread around.  Now I know that the average person is not like this and the garbage is mostly not put there on purpose, sometimes you see it. The smoking person stubbing out the cigarette and leaving the butts on the ground but by enlarge the garbage is blown into the sea and onto the beach,.
He is the problem, plastic. The beaches are disgusting, lakes , rivers anywhere there is a high concentration of Japanese people,   its the local residents, they by a lack of thought have destroyed their environment.  The funny thing is; IMHO surrounded by a lack of beauty and nature destroyed by garbage, the Japanese seek beauty, the vacation to New zealand beacause its  “nature”!
Well Japan could be beautiful  IF the locals cleaned the fking place up!
Now how the pollution spreads isnt by malice , its by accident. You buy a bento, take the lid of and while you are eating the wind blows the lid away. You try to find it but cant. The lid blows into the sea and up onto the beaches.
We and especially the Japanese MUST STOP USING PLASTIC. STOP IT. The buck stops basically with the manufacturers, and they wont do anything unless their bottom line is hurt. Stop buying products with plastic wrapping , print out a standard letter and spam the fkers.
Rant over.
One good thing about horie’s place is there was a supermarket within a few min walk,
Dinner was french bread , a foot long “sub”....

The next day I spent half hour picking up the trash, Then a second cup of coffee and everything packed away on the road by 9, so that was good.

Leaving Hories place and following the road to Imbari. the weather was nice and the road was basically ok. Following the route 11 towards Nihamathe footpath was wide enough but the 11 is a main route so trucks and cars and noise nothing to report.
When the road started to follow the ocean things started to improve. Stumbling upon a cycle way I stopped to take a photo of these enormous ships, I have no idea what these things ship; cars, oil or cocaine? they are big!.
Battling a dying phone, I managed to head towards imbari township where I stopped picked up a bento from the supermarket and put the washing though a coin laundry, I maybe on the road but there is no excuse to look homeless.
Clean and fed I headed of towards the bridge. Surely a 70km bridge should be easy to find !

Into the hills

Following the escape route of the Samuri Ryoma, who from what I can make out, pissed off the people in Rome , sorry Little edo and had to bugger off rather quickly.  Probably humming thwe iron maiden tune " run to the hills" .
Mountains, love them or hate them, they go up and they go down , usually with a tunnel at the top.  Anyway back to mountains, following the route 197 towards Yasuhara you get to a place called Tosa. This cant be the famous Tosa clan , prefecture? Its a post office and a shack , well ok a collection of mud huts and quite possibly a resident sharman who can read tea leaves.
Up she goes past beautifull gaggles of houses and tea Terraces to  a tunnel.  A new one ....
Sailing through the tunnel, I see a middle aged woman running the opposite way, she waves I wave, and she sails past. A few min later in the middle of the tunnel, I see her car! 10 ft skid marks from the tyres and parked in the layby.  WTF ? Did the engine blow up?  forget her wallet, hit the handbrake and run back.
oh well its 4pm and at the top of a mountain range. Its going to be a cold one !
The areas not frequented by the general public are stunning and so clean. Im sorry japan but shoganai is and has destroyed this country. Stop with the beautification and concrete-a-fication of your country and that goes for you to china !
The river water was so pure you can drink it, unlike New Zealands which I would boil! And not a sound to be heard. Just the waterfall and a bird singing, fantastic.
Dinner, was starting to get a bit grim as supplies were getting low. Curry rice and pine needle tea.  Yes I had to emerge from the man cave to piss at "oh fk me, its freezing  hundred oclock"
A nice night with a big fire was well spent
but the next morning... lets just say Im glad I am not a brass monkey !
A late start , damn tent ! and we were off, through the mountains up hill and down dale untill I spied a home centre.
"oh"  I thought, I will pick up a flat washer for the bike, A simple flat washer of an inside diameter of 13mm.   This is japan.
Everything else except a simple flat washer.
Lovely range of brightly coloured rubber boots for those long winter nights or working in the field. But no flat washers
Maybe the tastes are different in the ski resorts.....

Susaki and beyond

Susaki is a resort town I think especially along the beaches. long nicely kept roads winding along the coastline. Until you get to Susaki then it is a non descript Japanese town with ua flyover and a tunnel. ...
Luckily the tunnel is one of the better ones and shortly after at a very small non descript right hand turn the 193 appears....
The 193 follows the river slowly winding along, all the while the mountains in front remind you of what will come.
The river is beautiful , clean and with some large fish clearly to be seen from the road .
However pulling off the road and down a path to have a break is ruined by human feaces and toilet paper ..
I know you may be nearing 100 and a toilet isn't always handy but for fk sake bury your waste. Third word country, poor form Japan , poor form.
With light fading its that time of day again, where to sleep. This time just before a small village there was a slip road down to a parking area beside the river and it was near a 7/11. That will do Candide , that will do .
Let's see organized or total fk up. I'll go with total Fk up.
Off to 7/11 for some light refreshments. After setting fire to the light refreshments due to indulging in one of the ingredients before setting up the tent and cooking for the evening.  I had enough battery for some music ....
The next morning was cold and we were in the mountains. The sun had to climb the mountain as well .
The weather was cool but sunny just right for the long slow climb into the Foothills.

Following the route 55 , the Tosa-higashi highway. through Anan and along the coast.

Sorry for the Google images, but due to the cold and the grey weather, my phone battery died.

Phone batteries never like the cold!

Not a very awe inspiring country , but with japan it can change in a heart beat.

The road starts to climb into the hills. You know what that means , YES there will be a tunnel and you know how much I LOVE tunnels.

Into the hills

nice road, made even better by a crunching graunching sound from the bikes bottom bracket. It cant be the bearing as they are new !

Decided to stop early this day and have a relaxing evening , so when I saw a sign for Fukui Damn. I thought " hello " we might be in luck here.

Turn down the side road aver a small walking bridge follow the pathup into the hills and you enter some abandoned rice fields with a lovely stream running along side. Rice needs good water and so far its been very drinkable. 

You can see the path behind the tent

 It was very peaceful. Very hard to find a place where there is no noise. Very hard. If you are lucky,,,

Mountain weather changes very quickly. So yes it was sunny and then raining and then raining. Oh well.
The tent stood up well. Though it does need to be set up a little better than my slapstick affair. I left the window open.
Not too much of a puddle in the morning. The sleeping bag is water resistant, so all in all, everything was fine.
 One trouble with the tent is; its black inside and out ! I mean pitch black inside and coupled with the peace outside. I slept in.     big style.
 Oh well,  a lovely cup of coffee and a wash in the stream made the rest of the day so much better.

you can sense the sea

On the other side of tunnels, 90% of the time the road goes down hill.  It even feels nice to type that word, downhill.
On the other side of the tunnels  the road drops down through green heavily wooded mountains picking up the a stream that runs long side the road

Navigation is very easy , follow the road and when you hit the sea, turn right.

On the subject of signs and navigation in Japan. pace beads and a good compass are the way to go.

Google maps is workable, when the phone is working and the wee man who operates the map service hasn't drunk too much. The road signs are a work of art. IF you know the next town and IF you can fine one they work.

down from the mountains , turned right. towards......

But if you dont and you are heading towards a big town e.g. Tokyo,  good luck AND don't even THINK of asking a local or into a convenience store to ask. . IF you are lucky and meet a young person you MAY be in luck.  Otherwise you could face a delightful time trying to pronounce that large cities name in as many variations as you can imagine ...

Muroto point ......to meet Ryoma .....