The day started early again as I couldn’t sleep longer than 3.30am. After much tossing and turning I think I slept another hour from 5-6am before finally getting up and doing some more re-packing. I figured to cut some of my bike padding and wrap it around the straps of my 2 heavy bags, one with all my camping gear and clothes in (3 individual bags) and another with my bike in. Thankfully I packed enough zip ties that come in handy for all kinds of things on camping/ cycling trips. I was surprised to then hear Mitsu’s alarm clock go off at 7am - on a Sunday! He did his morning exercises and I did mine, some push-ups and crunches and some yoga exercises. Then we had tea before I got ready to go to Shinagawa to catch the bullet train to Kyushu. Mitsu insisted to take me to his local station, a welcome help! The padding made itself useful and so we marched to the train station, my big bags dangling on either side of my shoulders. Gyms are totally overrated!
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| 2x 20kg so not convenient |
I got to Shinagawa station after 2 trains and walked to the Shinkansen part of the station. It was great advice not to go straight into the Shinkansen station entrance but to do some critical lunch and snack shopping in the station’s main part. There were many, many bento and prepared lunch shops catering to the thousands of travellers that pass through here daily. I picked some Onigiri (filled rice balls), a staple for many travellers and people short of time to eat and a sushi set from another shop before heading to the Shinkansen entrance. My train was in 30min so I got some more water before heading heading down to the platform seeing at least 3 more Shinkansen trains travelling to faraway places come into the station. They are such an amazing feat of engineering.
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| Shinkansen |
Eventually my train also arrived and I headed to my seat but to my surprise there was very little space for my bags, not as I remembered it from 2018. I awkwardly had to leave my 2 pieces in the connecting spaces outside the carriage, checking with the train staff whether that was ok. They nodded even though I insisted that I could move them somewhere else more convenient if that was possible, they said it’s fine.
I settled into my window seat, ready for a 5h journey. The carriages were full and next to me there were two young Japanese travellers, he was on his iPad watching movies and she was mainly sleeping. The Shinkansen to Hakata Station (Fukuoka, Kyushu) frequents ons on its way: Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe and Hiroshima.
As the journey was into its first 30min, one of the train staff came to my seat with a carefully handwritten note with the upcoming stations from Tokyo all the way until my final destination with a pointer to where the door would open and a friendly instruction to keep shifting my luggage out of the way as it was blocking the doors if I left it and train staff had better things to do. Awkward…but also not too much to ask considering I was the one who messed up and probably didn’t book the right carriage with a better luggage allowance, despite checking this the day before with Mitsu and concluding that my luggage was suitable for normal carriages. Oh well, it was only 4x for the whole of the 4-5h journey and a welcome excuse to leave my seat and stretch and walk around a bit. My seat neighbours understood as they watched me get up now and then to move my shit around. At one point the girl might have been quite happy to be disturbed by me as she was hanging halfway across the isle in a deep sleep, with seconds to spare before the food trolley would pass her by. As I needed to squeeze by she woke up with a big sigh and seemingly fell asleep again straight away.
The rest of the journey was uneventful, the train kept steady and the quality of the ride is pretty unprecedented, especially compared to UK trains, fast ones or not, which shake you about the place. Ah, Japanese engineering and an ever watchful eye on quality and customer experience, no matter where! I wrote my blog for some part of the journey, continued reading The Buddha and The Badass and watched the scenery go by. It took a long time for the scenery to visibly become greener and less urban, pretty much all the way to Kyushu. This was a good sign as I desperately wanted to escape cities and urban landscapes.
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| Lunch |
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| Random landscape towards Kyushu |
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| Random landscape towards Kyushu |
We got to Hakata station and I exited but had already rubbed my shoulders wound from carrying the bags earlier that I had to resort to a short, 5min taxi ride to get myself to the hotel. ¥550 or £4ish was totally worth the money as I didn’t fancy injuring my shoulders any more. The hotel was pretty awesome, a good sized room with shower. I lugged my stuff to the13th floor and took in the view. I have arrived!
Welcome to Kyushu!
I decided to unpack my bike in the hotel room, freeing it from the various layers of the remaining bubble wrap, foam packaging and a cardboard box for the reach mech. I untangled my handlebars that I had to take off and reattached them to the stem of the front fork. Somehow the cabelling was a bit different with one break cable being bent in a way that I didn’t remember but it was fine. I reattached the reach mech but had to do it 2x as I didn’t route the cabelling properly. I then fixed the mudguards with some more zip ties and attached the front and rear lights. It all looked as it should…up until I sat on it. When adjusting the handlebar I noticed that one of my gear shifters was broken off, another fatality from the transport. It wasn’t fully broken off thankfully but damaged enough to render it useless for longer journeys. Oh well, let’s find another bike shop and see if I can get another spare.
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| Zonk hotel Hakata |
I took the bike down and did my first ride with it since reassembly. I don’t really use the bike during London commutes as it’s too nice to leave anywhere. I’ve only ever ridden the bike around town where I knew I wouldn’t have to leave it anywhere so using the bike was and still is a pretty new experience. Despite the shifter being broken, the bike still worked and shifting was possible, albeit painful as the broken off plastic digs into my thumb. The overall gears also must have gotten a knock from transport and were a bit off. I decided to go as far east as I could until I reached the ocean. This was a short 20min ride.
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| Hakata Harbour, Cruise Terminal |
Once I got to the ocean I really felt that this is it. The adventure begins. At the same time, I also felt lonely, no one to talk to or share the day-to-day with. This does take some getting used to but it’s also not something that I had felt for a while as I didn’t solo-travel since 2018. I’m the only one who decides where to go, what to do, what to eat, what to see, how to get there, when to leave, when to come back. My mind quickly filled with doubt whether this was all such a good idea, whether I’m not too old for this kind of thing or whether I should have just stayed at home. At the same time, I was exactly longing for this experience as I wanted to get in touch again with the travelling spirit and being guided by something else, other than “myself”. It is a pretty amazing feeling to just travel following your intuition and often just thinking about things can bring them into existence. This can be anything from bike shops when you need them or anything else really. Our minds are powerful when they are connected to “the universe”!
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| Arrived! |
I acknowledged these thoughts and that my mind needed to get used to the solitude again. This is a transition and I know that I have uprooted myself from my comfort zone and put myself right outside of it, into a different country, on my own. Of course I’m not fully alone, there’s still WhatsApp, Facebook and LinkedIn, which can and do keep me connected but there’s just no one to share the immediate present and day-to-day with. I guess it will take some time to get used to being by myself again, listening to and directing my mind as needed.
On my way back from the harbour I cycled past a cycle shop that was still open, to my surprise! It was 6.30pm and it’s Sunday. But I wasn’t the only one who needed some bike service as there were some customers before me who picked up their bicycle. The older shopkeep seemed friendly as I tried to explain my broken shifter to which he answered that he doesn’t have any spare parts for it, only a whole new unit but that he’d be happy to give me some tape for a make-shift shifter lever. I also asked if he could re-tune gears which he was happy to do incl. spraying everything with WD40 for a smooth shifting experience for ¥500 all in. Great value as always!
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| Thanks for fixing my bike! |
I then left to look for some dinner. It was getting dark and I turned on my bike lights. As a serious cyclist I don’t use the pavement like most cyclists do here in Japan. It’s way too inefficient to navigate your path through pedestrians and the constant ups and downs of pavements can be pretty annoying. Cycling on the main road is where it’s at. Navigating my way through an unknown city using google maps is pretty easy with turn by turn navigation, thanks to my Wifi box, phone and headphones. I went back to the city centre, but not before trying to find another bike shop with the hope of finding a replacement lever for my shifter.
I found a more modern bike shop with a really friendly owner but they also didn’t have any spares. What they did have was a digital foot pump to get my tires up to max pressure (85psi) for a smooth and efficient riding experience. I was pretty happy discovering the puncture proof Schwalbe Marathon tyres in my Lands End to John O’Groats cycle. They literally are the most puncture proof tyres I’ve never had. They’re not easy to put on as they’re super tight but once they’re on they just keep on rolling!
After a short search on google, I found a nice sushi restaurant. I had some fish-bone miso soup and a few pieces of sushi before heading back to the hotel which was just around the corner. Even though I didn’t do anything exhausting today I was just so tired. It was about 8.30m but I couldn’t keep my eyes open for much longer. Quick shower, brush my teeth, off to bed. I think I fell asleep in an instant at around 9.30 or so. A bit too early and I already knew I was gonna be awake in the middle of the night again. The jet leg continues.
We end on a poem:
I should have gone to sleep
but, thinking you would come,
I watched the moon
throughout the night
till it sank before the dawn.
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