Hatsumode Ride - 2019

Also this year I participated in the traditional Hatsumode ride of the Night Pedal Cruising team in Tokyo. Happy New Year! 

Bicycle: 26 km 
Riding time: 2:23 min
Total ascent: 56 m

Route: Shibuya - Asakusa - Minato

Weather: After sunset, cold but not too cold

As last year and the year before, also this year, I was here for the 3rd Saturday of January, ready for the Hatsumode ride of the Night Pedal Cruising (NPC) team.

We were a relatively small group this year, but still we paid our visits to two shrines, the Toyokawa Inari shrine, where we handed back to the goods the 10 yen piece we got last year, doubled it up with an other 10 yen and then received a new envelop with a shiny new 10 yen piece to be carried around for the rest of this year.

After that visit we continued cruising through Tokyo to the Senso-ji in Asakusa, where was our official end point of the ride.

We paid a visit to that shrine as well, and then went to a bar in Ueno that one of the riders knew. The only condition in that bar was to drink, they had food (and I took soba), but actually the owner was totally fine if one wanted to bring ones own food from the conbini next door. So we got some snacks there as well.

Back towards my temporary home most of us did ride together as many need to go to Roppongi, so it is perfectly under way. 

Before the ride I had gone in the morning from Minato-ku to Shimokitazawa to my good old hairdresser. Always a ritual in Japan. 

On the way I passed by Y-road in Shibuya to get some extra air into my tiers where they detected that some of the spokes in the front wheel were quite loose. I was actually surprised by that, as the bicycle was just for reparation at a brompton dealer in Leiden. How could they have overlooked this? They even changed the tires. So on Sunday before going to Ghibli museum I raced to the brompton shop in Daikanyama, handed over the bicycle and a few hours later, after a nice visit to Ghibli, got it back, now with all spokes fixed. 

Back to Japan - Jan 2019

So, I decided to bring my good old brompton back to Japan, although I am coming here only for a few months every year... 

Bicycle:  0 km 
Taxi: 30 km
Plane: 9342 km
Courier: 75 km
Riding time: 0 min
Total ascent: 0 m

Route: Leiden to Tokyo

Weather: Sunny in Tokyo, cloudy in Leiden

Last time (summer 2018) when I was in Japan especially in Osaka I was missing my bicycle. In Tokyo, there are rental bicycles available at many points in central (and not so central) Tokyo, so it was kind of okay. One can't really ride outside of Tokyo as one cannot bring the bicycle on a train, but at least within Tokyo it is possible. One has to add though that while electric these bicycles are VERY small. In Osaka the same bicycle rental system exists, but - at least currently - with much less rental points, and none close to Shin-Osaka where I would normally stay. So in Osaka I was often thinking in the evening that now for some stress release an excursion in bicycle would be ideal, but that wasn't possible. 

So finally I decided to bring my good, well-travelled brompton back to Japan ... and buy a new one in The Netherlands. 

This is how the new one will look like... just ordered it two days before leaving for Japan so it should be freshly baked when I come back. 

This time I had also two luggages included in my flight ticket (thanks to flying too often with KLM) so I could bring the box with my brompton along for free:

KLM on the phone when I enquired if I could really check in two baggages, said that bicycles needed to be paid extra, but at the airport no one asked for any money, probably because the box is right inside the maximum allowed size and weight isn't a problem with a brompton either. 

So 11 hours later we arrived in Narita, where I handed the box and the big suitcase over to Yamato Kuroneko, for transporting it the last few kilometer to my weekly apartment in the center of Tokyo. The guy at the reception desk of Yamato Kuroneko first said that they would not transport bicycles... but after assuring him that I had transported this very same box already with them to the airport he got convinced. And well, I didn't technically lie. It wasn't the exactly same box, but when I moved from Japan to The Netherlands at end of 2017 I sent such a box to the airport, only that obviously the guy who was tasked in picking it up, didn't ask any questions about the content. So better not to say anything probably. 

Next day in the evening it arrived to my apartment hand delivered and since then is parked outside in the bicycle parking lot of the apartment building (semi illegally as I would need to ask the house administration for a permission, but I figured that there were still so many bicycle parking slots free that probably no one will say anything... and so far so good.