Here in Japan there are so many thingd to do that are in close range. That is by American standards. We are used to going hunderds and thousands of miles in a car to get from point A to POint B during a vacation. Most Japanese feel that 160 kilometers(100 Miles) is a very long trip. anything over 500 miles in a day is almost unheard of for many. Traffic is quite congested especially during the summer months and Japanese holiday months. Japan is roughly the length of California from the Northeastern most Island to the southwestern most island of the 4 main Islands that make up The Japanese mainland. Hokaido, Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu. Of course there are hundreds of tiny islands that extend out from the main four.
Japan consist of 85 percent mountainous terrain and only 15 percent plains. This is why the 3 main cities of Tokyo, Kawasaki, and Yokohama crowd together around Tokyo Bay and form the largest single metropolis in the world. There are roughly 30 million people in this plains area of the country. There are mountains everywhere to be had for Climbing, hiking, Snowboarding, skiing, mountainbiking, and any other thing that one could think of to do down the slope of a mountain. they even have mountain skateboards with beefy rubber tires for those who aren't getting enough scrapes on there body from the cement. In our 2 years here in Japan I have yet to do everything that there is to do. With so little time and money we are limited. I have however done something that I have wanted to do since catching the first glimpse of the gleaming white, nearly perfect cone shaped mountain in Japan in 1994. Last year in August I finally met with the sleeping volcano.
Snowboarding, trekking and cycling are also very popular here. There are countless ski resorts and hotsprings throughout Japan. One could never go to every resort on the map in a lifetime.(of course anything is possible). I took up snowboarding 2 years ago and what makes it so great is that it doesn't take a weeks vacation to go somewhere. I often went on a one day trip by car. I usually would drive over night about 4 hours and arrive early in the morning, catch a few winks in the car, and start snowboarding around 7am -8 am depending on the day. I would snowboard until about 4pm and eat a little cup noodle and coffee or coke and head back home that evening. With that in mind it makes it very nice for gaining experience on the single piece of flat fiberglass.
Cycling has always been something I have enjoyed from the time I recieved my first 12speed ( at that time 12 gears were it) Having ridden all over Enid day after day to expend all my youthful energy I had always wanted to test my limits. The problem was actual limits set by the parents which was of course to protect me. In Japan I have become een more interested in cycling and have gone on several one day excursions totaling 20-60 miles round trip. not much but a start for me with an entire country I am hoping to explore by mountainbike.
The following pages I will share some of my experiences with photos and a few entries of things I can remember. I did not keep a log : (
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