Nimbus Motorcycle Trip in Japan

Preface

2007-07-23T14:04:00.000-07:00

I wrote this story as a regular weblog – in Danish - while touring the western part of Japan in October and November of 2006. Unlike the Danish weblog, the version you see below is set up so you read it like a regular homepage, starting from above. Please ignore the date at the very top of each section, about when the pictures and bits of text were posted. It is the weekdays and dates from September, October and November that count.

English is not my first language, so there’s bound to be a lot of misspellings, grammatical errors and occasionally downright incomprehensible sentences. Inevitably there will also be a number of factual errors, because I had great difficulty communicating with most of the Japanese I met, even if all of them were most helpful when I tried to tell them something, or have them tell me something. So please bear with me, I’m really doing my best..

It was a long and eventful trip, so not all details, or even all the people I met and had fun with, are mentioned here. My sincere apologies for this, but I do remember you all, and I will remain grateful for your help and for having enjoyed your company.

If you have comments and/or corrections, do not hesitate to point out where I went wrong. You can use the ‘comments’ function under this first part of the weblog – at the risk that I’ll never notice – or write me directly (ccc40821@gmail.com), if you want to be absolutely sure I get the message.

Preparing The Big Trip

2007-07-23T14:02:00.000-07:00

The trip to Japan is a 50-year birthday present to myself. Japan is chosen because it is civilized, and because I am fascinated by the mix of old traditions and lightning-fast changes into a modern society. Air fare round trip is only about 120,000 yen (1,000 yen is app. 8,5 US $, 4,3 £ or 6,4 Euro), and in any case riding all the way across Siberia, is for people with more a lot more wanderlust, time, money and alcohol tolerance than me (also see http://kccd.no/).

After three years of rebuilding, with the haste and frantic urgency of a glacier, my standard Nimbus into a bobber-style hotrod, I test ride it on a 2,300 kilometer trip to Belgium: The engine leaks oil, it has no power and the ignition system is all but dead, but otherwise everything works fine. The top box and the highway pegs ruin the style a bit, but hey, I’m not 25 anymore, and I want a minimum level of comfort. The engine is torn apart, the cylinder head gets new valves and guides, and all bearings are checked for wear. Then everything goes together, and now I can ride uphill again, even with the wind blowing the wrong direction.

Sending the Nimbus to Japan by air is 140,000 yen, which is only marginally more expensive than if it went by ship. It’s the paperwork over there that costs. The shipping crate is made of 28 metal v-shaped profiles bolted together. It can be dismantled and taken along on the Nimbus when leaving the airport in Tokyo. This will save me the costs and logistics of having to build a new crate for the return trip.

Saturday Oct. 1 - Security Fanatics At Heathrow

2007-07-23T14:01:00.000-07:00

After two hours of sleep I wake up and a friend drives me to the airport. Warnings about a two hour wait to clear security (actual time four minutes) are exaggerated, but later security at Heathrow retaliates by being a right pain in the arse, demanding I check in half my carry-on stuff. Long walks and two security checks result. I think even my tooth fillings can make the alarms go berserk, so sensitive they are. And then there’s Heathrow itself; years ago, before his untimely death, the British author Douglas Adams wrote that there is no language in the world that has an expression like ‘beautiful as an airport’. No doubt he thought up that one right here. The last few times I was in Heathrow I really hated it – guess today’s strong dislike is a small improvement.

Monday Oct. 2 - Tokyo First Impressions, Pacinko Parlours

2007-07-23T13:58:00.000-07:00

Twelve hours of flying by way of Siberia brings me to Tokyo, where the airport personnel is extremely embarrassed to tell that most of my luggage – sadly the part with wheels on it - is still in London. So I drag the remaining 30 kilograms through the subway, a bus, and finally on foot towards my hotel. An elderly gentleman bicycles past, then feels sorry for me and turns around, offering to take the luggage to the hotel. He is from 1926, he says, and his English is worse than my French, so here I walk along in the darkness, jetlagged out of my mind, speaking French with an 80-year old Master Yoda clone on a bicycle. Good start.

Hotel New Koyo is situated in Tokyo’s poorest neighborhood, but for 2,700 yen a night I can cope with a room measuring 2,3 by 1,3 meters. The bathrooms have – thank God – both Japanese and Western style toilets.

It’s too early to sleep, so I’m walking around in a slight drizzle for a couple of hours, taking in all the impressions. The noise from a Pachinko Parlor – an absurd cross between a game hall and boom cars – assault my ears, fastfood places are omnipresent, some roadways between houses are so small that two bicyclist barely can pass each other. Not many motorcycles about tonight, but lots of scooters. Especially the large Burgman-type ones seem popular, usually with a large sports-can for an exhaust, which makes them sound like proper motorcycles. On the other hand many of the small vans sound like sport bikes, 660 cc engines whirring their way up the rev range.

Tuesday Oct. 3 - Shinjoku

2007-07-23T13:56:00.000-07:00

Walk around an area behind Ueno Station, where 100-plus motorcycle shops are located. Along with me is a young Scotsman from the hotel, Mike. Now newly introduced to the semi-mad world of motorcycles, he then drags me through the electronic equivalent a few subway stops from there. I consider buying a laptop, but – still a bit careful with my money - leave it for later. Same thing with a lung-shaped ashtray that coughs when a cigarette is placed in it. Tokyo seems not as expensive as feared, but Eastern Europe it isn’t either.

In some places the town reminds me a bit of New York City, in others even about the movie ‘The Fifth Element’, because it is humid and hot, and there are people and traffic everywhere. It also has all the charm of Hamburg (i.e. none), which was bombed to bits in WW2. There are mostly concrete buildings here.

Our evening is spent in Shinjoku, a part of town crammed with the type of bars and hookers and misfits and junkies you always find behind the train or bus terminal of any major city. At least there’s light and life like in an amusement park. I’m getting to know the quirks of the subway system – like that it turns into a pumpkin at midnight. By then it’ll be cheaper to find a local hotel than to take a cab home.

Wednesday Oct. 4 - I'm Here, The Bike Isn't

2007-07-23T13:50:00.000-07:00

My luggage may arrive today, but the motorcycle is still stuck in Frankfurt, a woman from the airline says. Bugger all. That means I probably won’t get to ride this weekend, as customs and insurance paperwork needs to be taken care of first. And Monday is a national holiday. Good thing I dropped my original plan of going straight from the airport to a motorcycle rally on the northern island of Hokkaido.

Thursday Oct 5 - The Famous Japanese Insurance Ceremony

2007-07-23T13:48:00.000-07:00

After today I understand why all Japanese movies contain at least one sequence with rainy weather. The local bikers don’t seem too bothered, not even those without windshields or much in the way of fenders. They just sit there in light rain gear, back seat passengers chatting away on their mobile phones. The good news is that I may get the Nimbus through customs tomorrow. A local contact – Crazy Pete a.k.a. Schuichi – has helped me locate an insurance company, and with explaining to the airport people how important it is that this bike be no further delayed.

Third party coverage for two months is a modest 6,000 yen, probably less than it cost the insurance company to have 4-5 of their people taking are of my business. Fine service, though, deep bows all around. Even less expensive is a 1:200,000 road map that I finally track down. It is completely devoid of those ugly Latin characters, which no doubt will make it interesting to use when out there.

Friday & Saturday, Oct. 6 & 7 - Crazy Pete And Red Tape

2007-07-23T13:46:00.000-07:00

Friday there’s a rainstorm, so when they call from the airport to tell the motorcycle is still not here, I’m almost relieved. But it will be there tomorrow, and customs clearance should be no problem, they say. Saturday arrives along with sunshine and high temperatures, so I take the subway and a suspended monorail to Chiba, where Crazy Pete has his Indian motorcycle workshop. Outside there’s a stack of clapped-out old Japanese scooters, and inside there’s real gold: 1920’s and 1930’s Indians and Harleys, plus an enormous collection of old helmets, pictures etc. etc. Which is very typical for people like us, who are blessed/cursed with this special instinct for gathering old stuff. ‘One man’s junk is another man’s treasure’ as a sign somewhere in there says.

In Pete’s old Chevy pickup we head for Narita airport, only to learn 1½ hours later that I STILL can’t get the bike out. An essential stamp, only available in Central Tokyo on Tuesday, is needed. I quietly recite to myself all the nastiest Danish curses I know, but keep a straight face, as one does here. Later the good company of Pete and his American wife compensates for this setback, as does the dinner at a sushi restaurant, where all the dishes move about on an endless conveyor belt. Pick as many as you can eat, and when done the waitresses count the plates and charge 100 yen apiece. Nice, but it may take a little while longer before I really learn to appreciate sushi.

Sunday Oct. 8 - The Japanese, Large, Medium And Small

2007-07-23T13:43:00.000-07:00

While being tall is bad when out in thunder and lightning, my height usually makes it easier to navigate. But contrary to my expectations, here I do not feel like a giant in an ocean of smurfs, when I’m in a crowded subway car or on the street. The older generation is actually quite small, the next one about one head shorter, and those my age typically half a head below me. The youngsters are often as tall as I am, even some of the girls. Don’t se many thick people either, much less obese ones. And very few wear traditional clothes, so the place seems very westernized.

Monday Oct. 9 - Mountain Mini-Monkeybike Madness

2007-07-23T13:39:00.000-07:00

I leave early for another part of town, where Osca will take me to a motorcycle rally in the mountains 70 kilometers west of Tokyo. Osca is a friend of Yori Kanda, a London-based Japanese bike journalist that I met in Denmark over the summer). He tried to revive the Horex brand name some years ago, utilizing a tweaked Honda Dominator engine and all sorts of expensive bits, but lost big on it, because only 10-12 units were sold.

And now we race up through small towns with ridiculously narrow streets, his friend ‘The Master’ at the wheel. I find it quite entertaining, mainly because I’m in the back seat and thus better will be able to survive a head-on collision. After a couple of hours driving at breakneck speeds, we reach the place where the other motorcycles are waiting. And all I see a dozen or so tiny moped-like contraptions, towards which everyone present apparently harbours strong nostalgic feelings. These are 61 % scale models of the already small Honda Monkey-bike, around which there’s a world-wide cult.

So it isn’t exactly the vintage bike meet I thought I was going to, but still better than nothing, so I get to talk with a few of those around who, like Osca, speak a tolerable English. This is a nature park area, which is great if one is into that sort of stuff. And there are interesting things on the parking lot as well: Like a tough little Suzuki Cappuchino (no kidding) sports car. One of many Japanese car models intended mainly for the home market, with odd names. Thanks to special tax rules over here, cars with engines of less than 660 cc’s are not as expensive to own as larger ones, no matter how much they have in the way of extra valves and turbochargers.

Then off everyone goes, along the narrow two-lane blacktop, through tunnels, across bridges, around hairpin curves. After a few mandatory stops they give me one of the little critters to ride, and I wobble my way onto the main road. Equipped with license plates and turn signals they are actually street legal, except on the freeways, where there’s some sort of not-under-126 cc rule. Ok, this is actually fun; the steering is lightning-quick, my seriously tuned example (2,2 bhp) easily pulls away from the others, so with the 57 centimeters wheelbase bike and my knees in the air, I race downhill through the tight curves doing 45-50 kph. Trust me, this feels very fast.

Some 15 kilometers of hairy-scary riding ends at a farm where the city dwellers can se real cows, let their kids crawl up on a stack of manure, and even take a pet piglet home.

While another 2 ½ hours of bumper-to-bumper driving takes us back to town, Osca tells how he has driven his tiny bikes around Hawaii, from Geneva in Switzerland to Heidelberg in Germany, and to other places in Europe. The guy is cool, and his business with the mini-monkeybikes seems to be doing well: 450 units sold so far, at 3-400,000 yen apiece. That’s about 3,800 Euros / US$ 5,400 and upwards….

Back to town with three different privately owned subway systems. It very simple, really: If you pay too little at the ticket vending machine, there’s a fare adjustment machine at your destination. And there is usually also a guy in a sharp uniform and white gloves, to help you if you still screw it up.

Thursday Oct. 10 - The Nimbus Is Out, At Long Last

2007-07-23T13:38:00.001-07:00

Start out by going to JAF (Japanese Automobile Federation) to get that stupid stamp customs can’t live without. I also become a member of the organization, in case I need legal help, and buy myself some road maps better suited for my tank bag. It all takes 1 ½ hours – so much for Japanese efficiency – but they bow a lot, and I politely bow back at them.

I’m back at Crazy Pete’s motorcycle shop at about two o’clock, so we head for Narita again. And hold our collective breath, when the senior customs official points out, that the carnet was incorrectly stamped in Denmark. Obviously the Japanese aren’t the only ones unfamiliar with this type of document. But after another hour, and 3-4 people working on my case, everything is hunky-dory, and the bike can be picked up at the airline warehouse. Then yet another hour partially dismantling the metal frame and making the bike ready to go. Pete offers to keep the frame pieces on his truck while I’m out there, which I gratefully accept.

After filling up with gas at the customs area, I ride out. And immediately stand face-to-face with an enormous green truck. Aah, they all drive on the left side here, remember? Being outnumbered 1 to 126,000,000, I better do it their way. Could have trained a bit at home, of course, but that would probably not have made me all that popular. Especially not on the freeway.

Returning to Chiba in the dark we lose each other, so I get to test the concept of finding my way using only Japanese road maps. This appears to work, and after being shown off to one of Pete’s friends, and after the best Japanese meal so far (Suriaki), I take a regular road home. This means 45-50 kilometers and at least twice that umber of traffic lights before I get to the hotel, but I don’t want to pay the 1,000 yen for the toll road. Had to try out city riding anyway, and 10.30 at night seems to be a good time for this. Riding here seems easy, as all two-wheelers filter safely up through the rows of cars. I’m back at the hotel before midnight.

Wednesday Oct. 11 - Buying A Laptop, Japan's Future Nuclear Weapons

2007-07-23T13:35:00.000-07:00

Today’s project is to buy the laptop I saw the other day. Mike guides me through, and then installs all kinds of necessary programs on the thing. Considering what internet time costs at cafes and the hotel, the 28,000 yen will be money well spent. Besides, it is kind of cool having all those kanji characters on the keyboard. Also get to see a retrospective exhibition of sci-fi drawing done by a famous Japanese illustrator. Fun to see who originally did many of the Tamiya (plastic model kits) box cover art. Or how it seems that the Japanese win in all his wartime cartoons.

The Japan Times keeps me up to date on international affairs, on Doonesbury, and also gives small glimpses into Japanese politics. There’s a mention of the Japanese MP who uses a mirror to peek up under schoolgirls’ skirts. Or the article about the North Korean nuclear test, with local fortune tellers’ opinions about what will happen next. About how Japan – as a response – may want to acquire nuclear weapons herself. And about a smart little credit card sized gadget from the Sharp electronics company, which translates spoken English into spoken Japanese. Unfortunately it is not for sale yet – I’d be first in line to buy one, despite my otherwise strong principles about being at least ten years behind, when it comes to such devices.

Mike has another thing to worry about: He can’t find condoms the proper ‘western’ size over here, and decides to have an emergency supply shipped from Denmark. Guess we all have our problems….

I decide to stick around Tokyo for a few more days, as some journalist acquaintance of Crazy Pete is supposed to come and do a piece about me and the Nimbus for his motorcycle magazine. CP has been very nice to me, so being nice to him and those he knows seem like the right thing to do. Talking of Japanese magazines, most of those I have seen look like rubbish. They’re more like sales catalogues, with a bit of text in between to justify their place on the magazine racks. The chopper magazine Vibes is slightly better than most, though not by much.

Gotta get moving - this is, after all, supposed to be a motorcycle vacation.

Thursday Oct. 12 - Urban Warfare On Two Wheels, The Manga Babe On The Scooter

2007-07-23T13:33:00.000-07:00

I ride out to mini-monkeybike man Osca, two hours and 30,000 traffic lights from the hotel. I want to see that secret new motorcycle project of his, that he talked about the other day. I also want him to translate my official Danish permission to ride without a helmet, which he does using some sort of ‘Babelfish’ translator program. The text goes back and forth a few times, and ends up rather weird, but it’ll do for now. Programs like these may be part of the explanation about why most Japanese speak English like they do.

Osca may also have the world’s smallest storage/office/workshop for his motorcycles. At least 50 are stacked in boxes floor to ceiling in his tiny house, and amidst the chaos there’s a prototype with no less than two small 25 cc ohv engines. Osca reckons it’ll be good for about 80 kph. He also tells that his customers assemble their bikes themselves, despite the earlier mentioned 3-400,000 yen purchase price. 25 of them have been sold to the US and 5-6 to Europe. The last one he brought over went in his Samsonite suitcase.

Riding back for another two hours trough dense city traffic, makes the toll road seem like maybe not such a bad idea. Wear and tear on the brakes and clutch, as well as the higher fuel consumption, will be part of the equation. On the other hand, I would have missed racing the Manga-babe on her large scooter with all the ‘Hello Kitty’ stickers and the Supertrapp exhaust, and a bunch of other interesting sights and do’s. Besides, it is nice to learn that my New York City riding instincts are still all intact. Lane splitting (filtering) is widely used here – I feel it’d be almost impolite not to do it - and only the Nimbus’ wide motocross style handlebar prevents me from keeping up with the locals.

At the hotel I get to talk to a Japanese phd-student from Kyoto. Being shown the no-helmet permission written in kanji, she decides it needs a total makeover, and being the ambitious person she is, the woman does a very thorough job of this. It is probably also much more fun than laboriously studying the ethical dilemmas in connection with kidney transplants, which is what she’d otherwise have to do. This is all done at the local watering hole Tepui Bar. Later that night, on my own way back from the bar, I see one of those guys with his red illuminated Star Wars saber do a dance show, while directing traffic around some road repair. My guess is that he was rejected from the ballet school a few times too many.

Friday Oct. 13 - Europtrash And Bush-Bashing

2007-07-23T13:31:00.000-07:00

One favourite topic amongst the Eurotrash at the hotel lobby, is - of course - moaning about George Bush. Unsurprisingly the Americans present seem to be even MORE pissed off about him, which may be typical of the US citizens who recognize that there's a world outside North America. Still, I give them the advice to say just one word, if the Bush-bashing gets out of hand: ‘Berlusconi’ (and for those who don’t readily know that name, Berlusconi is the former Italian premier minister, who is a REAL crook, instead of just a village idiot.)

Saturday Oct. 14 - Japanese Bikers, Music At Tepui Bar

2007-07-23T13:25:00.000-07:00

Plan a route west, as I want to attend a vintage bike rally on a small island west of Kyushu. The meeting with the motorcycle journalist gets postponed until I’m at the end of my vacation, so Crazy Pete leads me to some motorcycle workshops his friends run, a bit west of Tokyo center. Fine people out there, who incidentally look just like the same sorry flock of Indian- and pre-1960 Harley riders you can find in the rest of the world, except here they look and speak Japanese. I note that one of them is even taller than I, as he unfurls himself from his extremely worn old Chevy pickup.

Funny as it seems, everyone grins and exclaim a loud “Aah, Smith!” when they see the Nimbus’ ‘Smith Cronometric’ speedometer. Before we leave one of the places I ask what they think of the large custom scooters. “Too noisy”, they say, which is a strange thing to hear from people whose bikes usually have short drag pipes. Then it’s time to head back to town, and again I struggle to keep up with Pete. Yesterday I already drove a bit too fast in order to keep up with the motorcycle couriers – they can better ‘afford’ an accident than I can, so I try to cool it. Wonder what the h*** I was thinking about, when I converted the bike to hand gear change and a ‘suicide’ foot clutch.

The local drunks have started to greet me in the morning, when I go to the bakery, so it is definitely time to get out of town now. Early if possible, but an Okinawan folk music at Tepui Bar gets in the way. Great Japanese audience doing waves, clapping and singing along, a band sounding just as great in the sober part of the evening, and a great way of ending my acquaintanceship with Tepui, which most nights here has been my last stop before hitting the sack.

Sunday Oct. 15 - Westward Ho!, Up Mount Fuji

2007-07-23T13:22:00.000-07:00

Bike is packed and ready at f****** 11 o’clock, which is f****** four hours later than planned and f****** 2½ hours later than realistic. This is the first time I ride the Nimbus fully loaded up, but it seems to work. Really should have brought the little one-wheel trailer instead. Then I’m up on the toll road through town, get lost immediately, do a one hour detour by way of Yokohama, and when today’s toll road allowance is spent, I get back on a regular four-laner. Which is packed with traffic, so rarely do I get to use fourth (top) gear. Seems like the other half of Japan is out Sunday driving too.

Today’s target is Mt. Fuji, west of town. When green mountainsides start climbing on both sides of the road, and tunnels and bridges appear, I feel the clutches of Tokyo letting go of me, finally being on my way. I reach the bottom of the mountain at three o’clock, start climbing initially in third, then second and occasionally in first. The guys at my workshop back in Denmark – ‘Urdu Racing’ – would have loved to tear this road to pieces, because despite the 40 and 50 kph limits posted everywhere, most motorcyclists ride the way this road should be ridden.

For every hairpin turn, and for every tree with first red and soon yellow leaves, and for every degree the temperature drops, my bladder shrinks another three percentage points, so it’s a cold and happy Nimbus rider who eventually parks his bike at 2,400 meters above sea level. This is how high I’ll get without actually having to walk up the ashen side of Fuji-san. Turns out people only can climb up it a few months over the summer, and those who make it to the top – about 3,000 a day (!) do the 5-7 hour trek – are usually so cold and miserable that they just want to get down as soon as possible. Frankly, they can keep it.

Climbing that mountain must be as exciting (yawn) as riding all the way up to Nordkapp in Norway, except the view here is beautiful. Even today, when the lowland lies in haze, I can see the mountain ranges I may have to ride across the next few days. Less of a pleasing sight is the thin mist of oil on my engine. Back home I did all I could to make it leakproof, apparently with limited success.

The sun has set when I’m all the way down again, and despite my best effort, I cannot find any of the campsites marked with triangles on the map. Maybe the map just indicates where there are small red triangles out here. So instead I check into a business hotel, at 6,000 yen, and thus get a chance to finally write a bit of this story. Writing wasn’t too easy in town, with all the distractions there. Dinner will be of cheap Japanese fastfood; a 400 yen plastic tray with what may be pork (disputable) and rice (indisputable).

Monday Oct. 16 - Zero Engineering Redefining Custom Bikes

2007-07-23T13:17:00.000-07:00

Today I start by riding along a winding road through a deep gorge, which leads me to The Pacific. The map says it’s a major road, though the 30 and 40 kph speed limit, posted on signs and painted on the road, do make sense most places. The locals seem rather relaxed about these limits, though, and soon I adapt to that too. When occasionally a truck appears on this ‘major road’, and there’s hardly room just for him, I’m glad to be on a solo bike rather than riding one with a sidecar. The latter would also have been a true disaster later, when I ride on Highway 1 going west.

Hwy. 1 leading through the urban area is The Road From Hell. Ugly, narrow, sometimes on stilts over built-up areas, occasionally with walls, and crammed to the max. with diesel fumes spewing trucks, the latter turning my white hair grey and greasy within hours. I hardly dare think what my lungs take in, especially when I ride through long tunnels. I see no ventilation inside these, though this may be because I wear sunglasses and can’t see much of anything in there anyway. Only a ten kilometer long stretch along The Pacific breaks the constant ugliness – this is the second time of my life I see this ocean from the saddle of a Nimbus, though this time it is on my left hand side. ‘Magnificent’ is the right word here, I guess. I also note the first palm trees and bamboo forests, and try to figure out in what kind of place I can pitch my tent. Like on the beach.

After some 250 k’s of often filtering through dense traffic, mainly doing 40-50 kph, I reach Okazaki, where the Zero Engineering firm is situated. ZE builds some of the best looking Japanese choppers, usually in a short and low style, not much chrome, but with a lot of innovative details and technical solutions. The founder of ZE, Shinya Kimura, has since moved to Los Angeles, where most of his customers live anyway, and has sold ZE to someone with a more traditional building style. Luck has it that today he is visiting his old place – good thing I did not postpone the ZE visit until my return trip, because by then he would be back in Lala Land.

Shinya Kimura meets me outside the workshop, and exclaims “Oh, a Nimbus!” Ok, sooner or later I was bound to run into someone who knew about this brand. Turns out he even has worked on Nimbuses, albeit ages ago. But for everyone else at ZE my Nimbus is new and exciting. I buy the book about his choppers, have it autographed, run the Nimbus engine to show the exposed moving rocker arms a few more times, and check out the workshop. Along with the sound of a sidevalve Triumph twin, which a girl keeps starting, I hear a distant bell, and soon after a monotonous voice drone on for a while. Being curious, I ask if this is the sound from some kind of religious ceremony. No, they say, it’s just someone selling potatoes.

After chatting about chopper design and my further plans, the man invites me to stay at a small place he has up in the mountains. I can stay there for a week or two, he says. The place is actually the office part of two large barns made of corrugated steel, filled up with Japanese junk bikes and parts thereof. Tons of it, and lots of cats too. Around the barns a further hundred bikes or so can be found – other places there’s a further 2,000 or more, waiting to be broken up for spares. In Denmark much of this, like the large Suzuki Katanas, would be considered pure gold. This is not the case here, as he elaborates later, when we drive away searching for dinner. By now it is dark, and since traffic has eased up some, the open Porsche Carrera gets a workout (remember; southern latitudes darkness, very narrow roads, 30 or 40 kph speed limits).

Tuesday Oct. 17 - North To The Sea Of Japan

2007-07-23T13:12:00.000-07:00

I leave the coast again, ride over mountain passes and along rivers until seven in the evening. It a truly wonderful landscape here, in particular the gorges, and any attempt to take pictures of it will do the actual sight very little justice. Attempting a shortcut I find a fantastic mountain road, some of it so winding and step that it has to be taken in second and first gear. Engine braking downhill in first gear is new for me, but still fun. At places the road is about two meters wide, so here in the twilight I’m happy about my halogen bulb up front.

I intended to find a campsite along this stretch, but having missed it, I check into an ugly ‘ryokan’ – business hotel – along the freeway. Have to change my sleeping pattern, or get better at spotting those elusive campsites. A ‘Lawson Station’ – a store like a 7-11 – provides cheap dinner, and I see ‘Haägens-Dasz’ ice cream in two new varieties: Green Tea and Black Sesame. I’m worn out, but happy with today’s distance.

Wednesday Oct. 18 - Threewheelers And Hiroshima

2007-07-23T13:09:00.000-07:00

The roads on this sunny say are a mix of the best in the gorges, a few normal ones, and some over the mountains. I absolutely love it, even the ones where the engine grinds along in second gear. Going uphill there’s the expectation of the soon-to-come semi-scary downhill race. Bumpy and a few meters wide, or three lanes with perfect asphalt, it is changing back and forth. There are trucks here too, of course, so I really lean to appreciate the mirrors found at the more hopeless turns.

And the place is just so green and beautiful, clear up close, but with a haze further on so one sees the mountains in 6-7 steps onwards (if you know what I mean). My only worry is that one may have a finite life-ration of mountain roads, and that I now may use up my allowance a bit early.

At some point I stumble over a collection of old three-wheeled trucks. I saw one in Greece ages ago, in another life, and have been looking for such a Mazda ever since. These trucks are further developments of the large Harleys and Indians, which were brought to Japan in the 1930’s and fitted with truck-like rear ends. The Mazda version even has a H-D front end, albeit in 1½ times the motorcycle size.

The vegetation changes again, I see more and new types of bamboo and palm trees, and there are herons in the air. Not as many falcons today, but junk cars appear, and I see more farmland, with old ‘bent over’ people out there harvesting. Then Hiroshima appears, and thus a hotel, and a much needed internet café, both located with the aid of the Lonely Planet guide book. Old tramways clank along the concrete slab city roads, but I already like the place.

Thursday Oct. 19 - The Peace Memorial

2007-07-23T13:05:00.000-07:00

I spend a few hours around the Peace Memorial Park, where the famous ‘A-bomb Dome’ stands along with a series of more or less ugly minor memorials, for Korean forced labourers etc. Unlike the equally famous cathedral in Dresden, the dome building will not be rebuilt, but shall stand as a reminder of the folly of mankind. It even is one the Unesco list of world heritage sites – an honour Mt. Fuji missed some years ago, because the mountain was all messed up with the litter people had thrown there, while hiking up and down it.

Today’s distance is 200 kilometers on a mix of roads. Unlike what some bike tour reports from over here occasionally claim, the Japanese roads are far from perfect, in part because heavy truck traffic have worn down a lot of the surface. Some mean tunnels (cough!) are included, as is the sight of some petro-chemical plants with their special, almost science fiction-like aesthetics. The lack of space requires these plants to be built taller than they would elsewhere. My rule of thumb says 50 kilometers per hour of riding on European regular roads, based on a few decades of experience. Here it’ll be about 35 per hour, which today includes a quick roadside lunch, an equally quick oil change and two happy cops. I sleep in the very fine, relaxed youth hostel in Shimonoseki.

Friday Oct. 20 - On To Kyushu

2007-07-23T13:02:00.000-07:00

I cross the Kyushu Strait on a tall toll bridge, and do the next 150 clicks on a toll road riding on stilts half the way, over urban areas. Then a bit of marvelous mountain riding, and a long stretch on the first not-built-up flatland I’ve seen so far. The mountains are about 3-4 kilometers away on each side, so it is not particular interesting, save for a few custom car shops along the way. A compass guides me the few times I loose my way, now that the sun is hidden behind grey skies. It is not until today I fully realize how big this country actually is, and how little of it I’ll get to see.

On less densely trafficked roads I philosophize over the fact that Japan in reality is bilingual. Sort of. Most shops, companies, all cars, gambling halls, hotels etc. have a name in Latin characters, just like most road signs are written in kanji characters as well as in English. ‘Hotel lady Love’, ‘Nuclear Emergency Response Center’ (!), ‘Batu Insect Village’ etc. Still very, very few people actually speak any usable English, or understand what I say, but they can to some extent cope with written English. By now I’ve learned to express myself in the simplest of terms.

This night I stay in a ryokan in Hikado, a town that was amongst the first to have any contact with the outside world. Trade flourished, even if the Europeans got kicked out at regular intervals, and the local Christian converts crucified, but all in all the town did well. Now it is a small cozy tourist place, with lots of restaurants that may or may not look authentic and old style, whatever that is around here. I can’t tell. The place I eat at has a large basin with live fish as a division between me and the kitchen. A narrow bridge leads across the basin, as an incentive for the cook and waiters to stay reasonably sober.

Saturday Oct. 21 - The Very Small Vintage Bike Rally

2007-07-23T12:58:00.000-07:00

No way I’ll ride to the rally with my bike all messed up, so 1½ hours are spent cleaning away the oil and the road dirt accumulated over the two weeks, while from across the street a bunch of girls in school uniform watch the gajin work. School uniforms and even kindergarten uniforms are the rule here. As is politeness: When some small kids crossed the road a few days ago in a pedestrian crossing, they stopped and bowed in all three directions at us who had stopped to let them pass.

25 kilometers and two toll bridges further out, I arrive at the island where this vintage bike rally is to be held. The roads look like those on Greek islands, except of course everything is beautifully green here, instead of burnt brown. At the harbour I spot some BMW riders put up stalls. I ride in and park, and wait to see when the other old bikes arrive. Some hours pass. The email said about 50 bikes would likely show up, though now all but 15 appear, and that’s even counting a Katana, an XS650 and a nicely tweaked 1970’s style Z900. The remaining 30-40 bikes are modern ones, mainly BMW’s. Well, [beep] that, I was going to Kyushu anyway, to see the chopper builder Chicara Nagata, and then to see a good motorcycle museum.

And the people here are really nice (two speak English), the man with the guitar and the ‘On Any Sunday’ t-shirt isn’t half bad either, and when the classic bikes have been checked out for the fifth time, I can go look at the old sports cars. A Shelby Cobra and a 1950’s Mercedes top this collection. The most interesting vehicle is a Rikuo, which basically is a copy of the Harley-Davidson WLA, but with a more modern front fork. Same vintage as me, and also a bit worse for wear. Like many others present, the owner is dressed in US Army fatigues.

My modest contribution the general entertainment is – surprise – to fire up the Nimbus a dozen times or so. Several times during the last week I have parked right next to other motorcyclists, who often ignored me completely for the first 10 or 15 minutes, before suddenly turning around to take pictures or even talk. This shyness, or whatever it is, is of course totally absent here – people fiddle around with the gearshift, brakes and electric controls, whether I stand next to the bike or not.

At some point an old motorcycle and car racer (in both cases Honda) shows up, and starts signing t-shirts, books, pictures, motorcycles and cars, and even my book about Zero Engineering’s choppers. Kunimitsu Tagahashi is his name, apparently famous beyond belief around here. He then gives a speech and gets interviewed the same evening, which of course I can’t understand a word of, but everybody else seems nicely entertained.

Later, after I’ve pitched my tent, the BMW club boys invite me for dinner at the hotel they’ve invaded some kilometers from the rally site: Sashimi – essentially a lot of different sliced raw fish, including politically incorrect whale. Finally I get to practice some of the many rules, that I’ve learned about how to behave at a Japanese dinner. I think it works out ok, maybe in part because we can’t really understand each other. Unfortunately I did not bring any business cards, which would have been a good idea here, now that everyone gives me theirs.

Back at the harbour things have evolved some, in the less sober direction. (‘Wall-eyed drunk’-san; “My…….father……kamikaze…….pilot…”. Me; “Oh rearry? How many missions did he fry?”). It is quite funny here, even with some extremely tough looking biker types now taking part in the festivities.

Sunday Oct. 22 - BSA Copies, 'Chicara Art'

2007-07-23T12:54:00.000-07:00

A new day of sunshine and no wind greets me in the morning, more stalls are being set up, and a lot more old bikes roll in. Amongst those there’s a group of 10-12 Kawasaki W650 twins, the BSA copies, where here I can see the whole development throughout the years: From an early one with a solo saddle and its speedometer in the headlight shell, to the final version with double front brake discs and Z1-like clocks. It begins to look a bit more like a classic bike rally. Though on the parade around the small island I end up riding with a bunch of young yahoos on scooters and tuned Honda Cubs, as practically everybody else rides modern machinery. Half the distance somebody videotapes the whole thing, so everybody is forced to do 25 kph, now that 12-13 cars are leading us.

One of yesterdays hangovers lead me to a rider – Keji Turuta – with a new Triumph 900 Sprint, knowing that he is heading for Saga, where the chopper builder Chicara Nagata also lives. I show him the CN phone number, as I want him to check for me, if the man is home sometime during the week. When the long telephone conversation with CN is over, a translator tells me that he’ll lead me all the way to CN, and that he has arranged that I can sleep at a friend of his. Actually my plan was to drive south to Nagasaki, but this sounds a lot better. I also know my theoretical chances for finding CN’s workshop on my own.

Before we leave I tell him that riding on the shoulder or between cars is fine with me, and that up to 70 kph is fine with the Nimbus. He signals an ‘ok’, and than proceeds to ride all the way at about 50 kph. The weather looks like there is thunder on the way, so how he and his friend on yet another large sports bike can ride at this speed, fully dressed up in Gore-Tex clothing, remains a mystery to me. Maybe they know something about speeding fines, that I do not want to know about. After an hour along the coast we reach a large flat area, which turns uglier and uglier as we get closer to Saga. The industrial areas stink, and here farmers still believe in burning their fields, a practice long abandoned in Denmark.

Just as unpleasant the landscape and the city looks, just as good the rest of the evening turns out. After a brief visit to Keji’s motorcycle workshop, we find ‘Chicara Motorcycles’ a bit outside of Saga, where a smallish man with spiky hair greets us. Unlike Shinya Kimura from Zero Engineering, he speaks no English, but has arranged for a woman friend to show up for translating. It isn’t easy, but I do manage to make CN understand that amongst the major targets on this trip of mine, Tokyo, Mt. Fuji and he are amongst the most important ones.

The custom motorcycle ‘Chicara Art’ is his latest creation, and it has earned him the official title as the world’s premier chopper builder. He rolls the thing out of his van, so I can take pictures, when I am not just standing the spell-bound by this two-wheeled sculpture. Over the years I have seen many outstandingly beautiful bikes, but this one tops them all. It took him an astonishing 7,500 hours to build, but you can see every minute of them. There’s a myriad of details, almost beyond belief, a wealth of curious small technical solutions, and the final touch is an ultra-thin layer of chrome, so you can see the a hint of the golden glow of the brazing, where all frame tubes enter the innumerable fittings.

The sculpture is not for sale, CN says, and since I can see several of his other well known Harleys stand in the room, I assume he must make his income from his architect or graphic design business, instead of from selling custom bikes. Asked about it, I tell him how much I paid to have my bobber flown over to Japan. Turns out he paid five times that price for shipping his creation to the USA, which may explain why his hair is still standing straight up.

After 3-4 hours, where he signs the Zero book and gives me so many t-shirts and other small gifts, that I get downright embarrassed. I hardly dare mention that I think his shirt looks really cool, fearing that he may give me that one as well.

As an end to the gift giving – after me handing over a package of special Danish chocolate – I invite everyone out for dinner. Outside the rain has started, so suddenly I have the # 1 chopper builder on this planet wiping water off the Nimbus, and then manhandling it into his van. Fine with me, I have not yet had to ride in the rain over here, and think that should I encounter 2-3 days of the wet stuff, I’ll do indoor activities in the nearest large city. It is already a bit tricky finding my way on the Japanese maps when I have to a) put on my reading glasses every time and 2) use an English language map for reference and c) not have to do this through a clear plastic cover on the tank bag.

Of course it is a very good restaurant the locals have chosen, and we stay there for three hours, where Karo The Translator handles both her two dictionaries, and takes care that all we men get servings when the food arrives. She always gets food last, so no wonder she is so small and slim. And now guess if they allow me to pay for us all when the check arrives….

As it probably never read on the tombstone of the famous old actor Erroll Flynn: “He was lucky, and he knew it”.

Monday Oct. 23 - The Iwashita Collection & The 'Rider House'

2007-07-23T12:50:00.000-07:00

Todays weather is nicely dry, so I do not have to take up Keji’s or Chicara Nagata’s offers of hanging around at their workshops until the rains clear. After breakfast with Keji, and several Nimbus posings with his customers, he leads me out of Saga. I’m going east, my aim being to visit The Iwashita Collection, which reputedly is one of Japan’s larger motorcycle museums. The initial 1½ hours go through the same unpleasant landscape as we rode through yesterday, but suddenly it snaps into the type of mountain roads that I already have become spoiled rotten with. The trucks are few and far between, so the resultant diesel smoke have only managed to turn my hair a slightly lighter shade of grey (“He was ugly, and he knew it”), when I reach my destination another 1½ hours further east.

Having seen so many car- motorcycle- and airplane museums that I have, I’ve become a bit jaded. Most of it is the same as already seen in other museums or collections, so it takes something special to really catch my attention. Fortunately The Iwashita Collection has it: On the second floor I find a lot of motorcycles I have never seen before, much less knew about. Small wonder, because tiny Denmark has had about 60 brands, and few people in Denmark – even motorcyclists – would be hard pressed to remember more than Elleham and Nimbus, which were the two major ones. I take lots and lots of pictures of various design details, of special technical solutions and in particular of the two three-wheelers, that configuration long having had my extra attention. There’s also a rather pitiful looking Nimbus present, hidden away under a staircase.

On top of it (though technically speaking below it) museum owner Iwashita-san has filled up the whole ground floor with an eclectic collection of just about everything: Japanese film posters, old toys, Beatles single covers with Japanese kanji characters, old telephones, the body of an American F-86 Sabre fighter jet (!), a small shrine-like area with Steve McQueen stuff, jukeboxes, Princess Diana dolls and the local gods may know what else. Local cab drivers use the museum’s classy café as their hangout, and seem to really appreciate the ‘Seeberg’ jukebox with all the 1950-1970 rock’n’roll songs.

As far as the two-wheelers upstairs are concerned, a large V4 Ducati prototype from the 1960’s is by far the most interesting. The bike was the brain-child of the American Ducati importer, and the prototype development partially financed by him. At the time most American police forces specified that only motorcycles with V-type engines and 5x16” tyres were to be acquired, giving Harley-Davidson a virtual monopoly, as The Indian Motocycle Company no longer produced that kind of bikes.

The relatively simple engine on this behemoth was built by using four separate cylinders, each with their own carburetor and ignition system, all connected to a common crankshaft and case. The first version had a 100 bhp, which of course tore the tyres available at the time to shreds, so it was lowered to 80 bhp – still way too much – and eventually to a mere 60 bhp. Sadly only this one example was built, along with another engine, and for mysterious reasons it happened to end up here on the other side of the world.

I want some information about the museum’s Nimbus, but the owner only is here on the weekends, the girl at the entrance tells. She thinks it is kind of cool that I show up here on a Nimbus bobber, and shows me pictures of it on a website belonging to someone, who also attended the rally a few days earlier. Then she proceeds to take her own pictures of it, and poses on the bike while I do the trick. Unfortunately she knows of no museums specifically for three-wheelers, but mentions that there is a small car museum further down the road, that probably has a few. Sold to the gent with the light grey diesel-hair!

The town of Yufuin is an old health resort, and part of it so 800% tourist-trapped that this by itself is almost amusing. The car museum in this Tourist Hell is small, though ok for the entrance fee, and has the promised dozen or so three-wheelers standing about, in various shapes and conditions. Like The Iwashita Collection many of the vehicles here are not top-notch restorations. Then I buy my postcards and ride back up to the first museum again. The girl here told that the old train wagon next to the museum entrance is a ‘rider house’, where traveling motorcyclists can stay for free. There are two beds, blankets, sleeping bags, a microwave oven, radio, air conditioning and a sink. It is almost too good to be true. The rider house concept is widely used on the northern island of Hokkaido, and is slowly finding its way down here too.

The other museum employee shows up, makes sure I’m comfortable in the train wagon, and draws a detailed map of where in the tourist town I can locate a cheap ‘onsen’ – this being is a hot bath with water from the volcanic interior of Japan. A few taps on the laptop, and I head downtown, where for a very modest 100 yen I get my introduction to this extremely Japanese thing. At an onsen you shower and wash thoroughly, before climbing into the large common bath with 42 centigrade hot water. No doubt I will want to track down more onsens, as I ride along.

Back in the wagon I eat my tray of sushi with two ball-point pens, as I forgot to ask for chopsticks at the store. It’s only a question of being motivated enough. Before going to sleep I want to follow local customs and have a small present ready for my hosts. So I sit there until two in the morning cutting and folding some arche-typical Danish Christmas tree decorations. There was a physical limit to how much special Danish chocolate I could schlep around, so I had to figure out other Danish alternatives.

Tuesday Oct. 24 - Beppu

2007-07-23T12:44:00.000-07:00

It was a two-dog night in the wagon (i.e. so cold an Eskimo would take two dogs with him to sleep), and there’s a slight drizzle as I go out for breakfast. My breakfast contains 526 calories, the menu says, but this is still better than the two balls of rice and two small smoked fish, which the Rikuo guy at gave me at the old bike rally. Also note the first military vehicles here, from The Japanese Self-defense Forces, at least 50 of them, in new Hummers and Mitsubishi-built jeeps. “Fall maneuvers”, one of the locals say. (“Remember Pearl Harbor!” I think).

You only stay in a rider house for one night, so even if I’d have liked to hang around for a few days in the area, I have to move on. Some of my excess baggage goes to Chiba by mail, because all the gifts and souvenirs I’ve acquired are taking up too much space. The girls get their gifts, and following the wishes of the Museum owner, the Nimbus upstairs gets dragged out of its hole, so pictures can be taken with me in its saddle. I leave town at three, by which time the rain has gone elsewhere.

Cross a mountain pass, the landscape turns to grasslands, a bit like seen on pictures from Scotland – though without kangaroos – and everything is just as nice as I want Japan countryside to be. An amusement park along the way has an enormous rollercoaster built in wood. Save for a few incidents it has been without problems to ride on the left side of the road – if I’m still sleepy in the morning (10 a.m.), and accidentally take of on the right hand side, the horrified facial expression on whoever is driving towards me is usually enough to make me remember where I am. At some point I also have to figure who has the right-of-way in four-road intersections.

A mere 25 kilometers of turns bring me to Beppu, a large costal town where I want to find an internet café. Have to check out my bank balance, and send four days of travel reports. Tourist Information at the train station locates a 2,000 yen hotel for me, and while the place offers wireless internet connection – which I can’t use - they direct me to an expensive hotel nearby, that has pc’s for public use. Very neat. I also crave some time of speaking proper English, hoping to find that at a bar called – well - ‘Speak-Easy’. After walking in the world’s narrowest streets in the red light district I locate the bar, all boarded up, so my English-fix will have to wait. At some time over the summer I talked with a Polish friend about meeting here – never thought I was going to miss him for his ability to speak English.

Wednesday Oct 25 - Southwards Along Kyushu's East Coast

2007-07-23T12:39:00.000-07:00

Bebbu is known for its many baths and for its ‘Hells’, the latter being where places where steam bubbles up through sand or mud. All over town you can see steam pipes, so my lunch is of course of the naturally steamed variety as well (but didn’t taste particularly well). Anyway, first a warm batch in a wonderful old onsen, and then quick visits to The Bamboo Museum and to Hihokan Sex Museum, up the hill somewhere.

At the first one it is the incredible craftsmanship that really impress me, as well as what artists – especially contemporary ones - have managed to create with bamboo, so the superlatives usually reserved for mountain roads and such, also apply here. The next one was described in The Lonely Planet guide as one of Japan’s most surreal museums, but methinks it’ll take a lot more to make your average Scandinavian get visibly upset over an exhibition like this. Most of it is fairly serious stuff, with a lot of beautiful old erotica, mainly from Eastern and Far Eastern cultures. The more entertaining bits include stuffed version of various animals’ genitalia, amongst which both a male and a female whale are to be found. Best, worst and funniest is a very liberal interpretation of the old fairytale ‘Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs’, in a three-dimensional 1:1 scale version.

Going out of town I start with 60 kilometers of expressway, to avoid the cityscapes, then 70 k’s of lightly trafficked main road, another 50 k’s of two- to four lane city-hell road, and finally 15 k’s of toll road into the town of Myiazaki. There’s still a bit of light left, against which I can see the tall palm trees along this perfect stretch of asphalt. The warmth, the sight and even the smells reminds me of similar roads in California, ridden an eternity ago. Cheap business hotel, good food, English-language newspaper, ½ an hour of writing this, and I’m off to Dreamland.

Thurssday Oct. 26 - Motorcycle Cops, Surfers, Falcons And Monkeys

2007-07-23T12:36:00.000-07:00

Monkeys, Surfers, Kamikaze Pilots and An Annoyed Tourist.

On my way down for breakfast I meet Graeme, a British motorcyclist who has chosen to see Japan by train. The English-fix is home, and a man whose internet address starts with ‘Z13’ can’t be half bad to talk to. He’s had them since he was nineteen, he says. (For non-motorcyclists: The 1300 cc Kawasaki Z1300 is for motorcycles what psychopath boxer Mike Tyson is for The Noble Art of Self Defense). I tell him about the Iwashita Collection and a kamikaze museum further down on Kyushu, as it seems he’ll follow my tracks with some days’ delay. He for his part recommends I go see the part of Osaka, which apparently inspired Ridley Scott to make the movie Blade Runner the way he did.

And then on south, along the coast, five hours of stunningly beautiful road, snaking and curving its way up and down, with green hills to the right and The Pacific on its left. It just goes on. More and more types of palm trees, eventually cacti as well. I’ve run out of superlatives, so just take my word for that it is the most beautiful road I’ve ever ridden, save for a few select ones in the USA. Here and there I see surfer dudes and dudettes, easy to spot when yet another surfboard flies high in the air, while a wave knocks its owner under the surface.

Two motorcycle cops going the opposite direction impress me a great deal, first by how fast they turn and catch up with me. And then by one of them insisting he use my camera to take a picture of me and his colleague, for my vacation album. Actually I got all my documents out – doctor’s statement, copy of same, translation of same, passport, regular driver’s license, international driver’s license, insurance papers – so they had as many things as possibly to deal with. But as usual there are no problems, so I could have saved myself all the paranoia about this back home.

Dozens of falcons can be seen flying in the updraft from the ocean, and suddenly some monkeys run across the road. I stop to take pictures, but too late, as they are even more shy than Japan’s other primates. Then I take my lunch break at an old Shinto shrine, and walk hundreds of uneven stone steps down to the temple, complete with monks (or priests, f*** should I know) and a bunch of good luck charms etc. for sale. From the jungle next to the walkway there are all kinds of birds screaming, just like in a jungle movie.

Actually I don’t care all that much for temples and shrines, except maybe that I can appreciate their architectural qualities (and in this respect Kyushu does otherwise not impress much), but fortunately this place has a bit extra to offer: I follow the locals’ example by putting money in wooden boxes here and there, bow in front of the shrine and clap my hands twice, and eventually throw some rocks down into a hole in a large rock down by the ocean. The former helps fulfilling one’s wishes, and the latter puts the turbo on that first wish, and hey – you just try to prove that it does NOT work. On the other hand I was so intent on doing the ritual properly and hit the hole in the rock, that I clean forgot to actually make a wish, so in any case the money is wasted.

Five hours later, at the very bottom tip of the island, the road turns really narrow, winding it’s way up and up until – aaargh! – the outermost part has slid down into the ocean a couple of hundred meters below. I could easily tip-toe me and the Nimbus along on the remaining bit, but the roadblock is so effective, that anyone short of a mountain climber would have a hard time getting past. I hate backtracking, but since I now have enjoyed the sight over the ocean on the way up, the ride down is done to the pleasant sound of the forward foot pegs scraping in every turn. Along the way a falcon flies right over me, 5-6 meters up, with a dead rodent in its claws, and a bit later another bunch of monkeys cross the road ahead of me.

A couple of hours getting pleasantly lost on some very minor mountain roads, a regular road takes me to a ferry to Kagoshima, where I drive around for ¾ of an hour trying to locate a small hotel from the Lonely Planet guide. The hotel foyer smells like if a tomcat comes by regularly, its shoes of and on every time you enter or leave, but it is cheap, very Japanese interior with tamami mats and neon light, and thus has a bit more personality than many of the other ryokans – business hotels – I’ve stayed in so far. And like John Travolta says in ‘Pulp Fiction’; “Personality goes a long way”.

Friday Oct. 27 - Buddhist Temple, Peace Museum For "Kamikaze" Pilots

2007-07-23T12:29:00.000-07:00

The LP guide describes Kagoshima as ‘the Naples of Japan’. Without ever having been to Naples, I bet the Italians would take exception to that comparison. Too much concrete, and a large red ferris wheel over the central train station. Ok, in some ways the town is nicer than many other large cities I’ve seen here, because there are a lot of arcades, good restaurants, designer boutiques, covered sidewalks and old tramway cars. Of the latter there’s at least one really amusing example, with all sorts of lights, looking like a parade float, or like stall that has run away from a traveling circus.

On my way to ‘The Peace Museum For Kamikaze Pilots’ (go figure….) south of town, I see an impressive modern Buddhist temple. It is not just the building itself, or the 7-8 meters tall Buddha statue inside, that impresses. On my way out the old lady at the entrance insists I go down to the basement first, to see also their downstairs collection of vases, statues and woven pictures. Yesterday I wrote something about not being particularly interested in temples, but here I surrender unconditionally. This exhibition takes my breath away. Mainly traditional pictures, of course, but here and there I also can enjoy seeing something, that can only be describes at photo-realism in woven silk.

Further inland I locate the combined peace- and kamikaze museum. Exactly how one can make wishes for peace and harmony for all peoples of the world – as the messages is carved into stone outside the museum – go together with a tribute to more than a thousand young suicide pilots, remains a mystery to me, as the written material at the museum is in Japanese only. The hundreds of portraits of these doomed young pilots – about half of which weren’t volunteers at all – is disheartening, but this is outweighed somewhat by the sight of five more or less original single-engine military aircraft placed in there. Taking pictures inside is, annoyingly, very much prohibited, so the one I got of a wildly corroded Mitsubishi Zero, picked out of the sea some years ago, is taken from the outside, through the large windows.

A quick walk through an old samurai village not far from the museum, ends today’s sightseeing. Save for a few roof-mounted solar heating panels, the place looks fairly authentic, and people actually live in the houses. It also shows how little Japanese interior decoration style has changed throughout the centuries, with simplicity and harmony being the major guidelines. After this somewhat boring experience, there’s only the sight across the strait I passed yesterday to enjoy, where smoke from the Sakurajima volcano is seen, and once again I will stop at a lumber store to take in the fresh, and for me unfamiliar, smells of newly cut lumber. They have different sorts of wood over here.

I have been here for more than a month now, and have gotten myself into a good routine when it comes to riding about, and how my interaction with the locals is. Nevertheless, this morning I got really irritated about my inability to ‘read’ people, and their difficulty in understanding what I try to communicate, despite my attempts to express myself as simply as possible, either by writing short easy sentences, making drawings or even just pointing at something I want to buy, and take out money for it. In this case it was a woman, who simply could not grasp that her printer had swallowed 800 of my yen, and that I didn’t get any photo copies for them (later I figured it probably wasn’t a language problem, but simply that she was an idiot…). Good thing it took so long before it happened, and good thing that I’m very conscious of the fact, that it is me who is invading their universe, and not the other way around.

Unlike when I rode my Nimbus across the USA back in 1982, and logically had an easy time explaining things or having things explained, and thus was a participant, I really am only an observer here. If I want to know something about – say – their windmills or solar heaters or motorcycles or architecture, my chances of finding someone who can understand my questions, much less know anything about the subject, are probably 0,5 percent. I doubt it would have helped much if I had learned some basic Japanese before going here, because it would have been as primitive and awkward, as is their English. My pocket guide easily takes care of most normal things, like food, hotel room availability and common polite everyday phrases like ‘hello’ and ‘thanks’.

Saturday Oct. 28 - Another Paradise Road, Another Great Hotel

2007-07-23T12:27:00.000-07:00

After more unsuccessful attempts to locate a copy shop competent enough to print a few documents from my memory stick, I ride north on the expressway for about 100 kilometers, to make up for the two lost hours. Then there’s 44 k’s of absolutely wonderful paradise road, so high up the mountainside that I occasionally have to go below the speed limit, to be able to fully enjoy the sights. Being not young but still stupid, I follow a sign pointing towards a waterfall (small, insignificant, and with so many steps leading down to it that I get postal flashbacks (I’m a mailman, and in Denmark mailmen do climb the stairs in apartment buildings)) somewhere to my left, and end up doing 32 k’s of knot-like road. As other many roads like it, it has stretches where not even a car and a motorcycle can pass each other. Again there are large mirrors at each turn, of which there are many, there being no straight stretches longer than 50 meters.

As the twilight sets, I ride along some more paradise road, and end up at an expensive looking hotel. They have no rooms available, nor do the other hotels they call. In the end the guy with the phone figures out, that they will not rent out the last large handicap-friendly room unless I get it, so – being the professional – he offers it to me for what I secretly have decided is my maximum price. 8,000 yen pays here for more space than the combined previous 8-10 smallest rooms I’ve stayed in. The TV has neither a coin box on the side, nor brochures for soft-porn channels, and even a safe stands there in one of the many closets. Origami figures everywhere, a breakfast buffet and the onsen is included, so tonight I will probably think a bit about whether to stuff my relative frugal way of traveling completely.

A bunch of old guys already sit in the outdoor onsen bath, and I hear a comment about ‘gajins’ – foreigners – as I enter, much to the others’ amusement. I laugh along with them, unable, of course, to understand them, with their coarse voices and a dialect much different from whatever Japanese I’ve heard so far. It sound like a cross between the grunting, when four or five guys have their heads down in the engine compartment of a large American car, and Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of reciting his favourite poem. I could care less, as I lie here looking up at The Milky Way, listening to gentle jazz music from the outdoors loudspeakers. I laugh aloud about how enjoyable this is. Good thing I took the detour past that lame waterfall.

Today’s English-fix is unexpectedly saved by an architect, who sees the hotel staff go all cross-eyed when I ask for internet access. We end up in the hotel office, me sitting in my kimono, downloading various directions to some vintage bike rallies and swap meets in Osaka and Kyoto, that I may want to attend in the near future. The architect translates everything to English, and later, over a couple of beers, he tells, regrettably, that my favourite beer over here – the red Asahi – isn’t a real beer at all, but some artificial mixed product only made to avoid a government-imposed tax.

Sunday Oct. 29 - The Dead Volcano, and A Trip Back To The 1950's

2007-07-23T12:24:00.000-07:00

I have a serious go at the breakfast buffet, because on the scale last night, I saw that being on a Japanese diet for a month, I had lost 5 kilograms since my arrival in Japan. Load up the bike, kick it over and enjoy my first day over here with nothing but heavenly roads. I stop at a truck driving company just outside of town, offering to buy the hood emblem from one of their non-registered ‘Hino’ trucks. Offer them a thousand yen, but it’s a sorry (both arms crossed), no sale. While I try to negotiate a reasonable price for the whole truck, three sports motorcycles howl past – first time since Mt. Fuji I have seen anybody ride such motorcycles the way they should be ridden. Anyway, the emblem purchase is still a no-can-do, but one of the company’s employees leads me out to a junkyard, where maybe there’s such a sign to be found. Alas, there isn’t, but I get to take with me one of the taxi roof-top signs, that I have seen so many different versions of.

A long stretch on a very nice road, and then – whoa! – in front of me there’s a wide, empty road, 20-25 kilometers long and with a lot of 60-80 kph turns. It even has the elusive broken centerline, so I can legally overtake the preciously few cars that are in the way. No way the 40 kph sign at the beginning can be taken at face value for longer than the first few k’s, so finally the Nimbus gets to breathe a bit, as much as I’ll let it with all that luggage out back, and with the built-in flex of a steel strip frame with no horisontal stiffness.

Today’s main attraction is an old volcano, Mt. Asosan, with a circumference of 128 kilometers. The crater is about 100,000 years old, and now built-up with roads and rail tracks, while one of the five minor volcanoes inside is still active. Occasionally it burps, and they have to close off certain roads if the poisonous fumes blow in the wrong direction. Today things are peaceful, though, so everybody else is out here Sunday driving too. At lunchtime I stop right next to three Ducatis and their owners, who ignore me completely during the fifteen minutes I eat my lunch. I have gotten used to this by now.

Further down the road I follow a large bunch of motorcycles that clearly are going – well - somewhere. There’s about fifty of them, modern machinery as well as some older GT750’s, and some of Kawasaki’s BSA copies. We stop at the top of a plateau overlooking the crater I just drove through, at a café style place, where evidently hundreds of motorcycles meet on Sundays. Here the Nimbus gets some attention, as we’re being photographed constantly from before I turn of the engine, until I ride off again half an hour later. There’s a nice mix of bikes here, ranging in size and exclusivity from an old 350 cc three-cylinder Kawasaki, to a large particularly vulgar Boss Hoss with a sidecar. Three ultralight aircraft hum like distant lawn movers over the place as well, being the first private planes I have seen here.

Back to the main road, and up over a national park’s cold 1,320 meter high mountain pass, climbing at a snail’s pace because of heavy car traffic. Guess 50,000 car drivers can’t be wrong; it is a beautiful road, and I see all the colours of fall on whole mountain sides. I’ll probably see a lot more of that as I head further north. At the end of today’s ride I am back in Yufuin, where the motorcycle museum I saw a few days earlier is located. I stumble in to get something – anything – warm to drink, and am being greeted by Iwashita-san, the owner. He wants to see the second Nimbus of his life before I can buy anything.

After having loaded all my gear into the rider house train wagon, I ask if anyone knows a good restaurant nearby. Sure, they say, and they already decided that I, the museum staff and some family go there together. Fine with me, this sort of kidnapping usually turns out good. We ride with the museum owner at the wheel, all of 24 kilometers and f****** 138 turns (counted them on the way back, being too petrified for this on the way out). Iwashita-san makes his living producing parts for Honda and Mazda, with some success apparently, as he has about 500 motorcycles stacked away.

We end up at ‘The Hitparade Club’, a place where people probably don’t come for the buffet, but for the music. Black & white photographs of everybody, from Scarlett o’Hara to the younger Elvis Presley adorn the walls, out compartment lies on Sunset Boulevard, the waiters have greaser hair and the colours are nicely kept in brownish nuances, that I haven’t seen since I traveled in East Germany. Only a modern license plate from Hamburg disturbs the picture a bit, but hey, it’s foreign. We barely manage to finish our food before a band, with two singing girls in old-fashioned skirts, enters the stage, and starts playing 50’s and 60’s rock’n’roll. Had John Travolta and Uma Thurman shown up on the dance floor, I’d have been only mildly surprised.

Fortunately the eight band members actually know what they’re doing. Mixed up with the slightly absurd in having ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ and other classics sung with a Japanese accent or even in the local language, this is very entertaining. Just like in Tepui Bar some weeks ago the Japanese audience is also a lot more fun than a Danish equivalent could ever be on a Sunday night. The dance floor gets filled during the three sets, and as so often before, I see the old and the new Japan all mixed up: The hip-hoppers and people in kimonos and samurai hair style are out there with each other – along with a sole transvestite, and a Dane in leathers – dancing, yelling and clapping. I have a good time with these people.

Monday Oct. 30 - Scaring the living daylight out of a Japanese

2007-07-23T12:20:00.000-07:00

Time for goodbyes again, but Iwashita-san has to have a box of chocolates before I leave. Then he gives me a set of old lithographs in the traditional style, which I happen to be crazy about. Then he gets a couple of pages of gift-wrap paper I made with Santa Claus on a Nimbus. Then I have to have a copy of the CD playing, because the girls remember I really liked that one, when I was here the first time. If things continue like this, it’ll just be a matter of time before my leather jacket goes, so I get out to pack my stuff on the bike.

While waiting for the world’s slowest CD-burner to finish the job, a group of tourists come into the museum. This says a lot about the eclectic collection – or maybe about me – that while I stand there, fully dressed in my leathers, quietly thinking about today’s program, one of the Japanese stops in front of me. He stares at me like no one else has stared at me before, least of all over here. Suddenly I move, while he lets out a scared shout and jumps away. I crack up, of course, but he can’t see the fun of this situation, so shocked he is. Had my day not been saved already, it would have been now.

138 turns later I’m back in Beppu, visit the expensive hotel with free internet access, and catch a ferry to Shikoku, the fourth largest island of Japan. It is conveniently located on my way up to a vintage bike rally in Kyoto at the end of the week. On board I notice that most of the Japanese are in the rooms with tamami mats, while I and a select few others prefer the soft chairs and sofas. If the Japanese could invent something even harder than a floor to sleep on, I’m sure they would do it.

On Shikoku I head south along the coast, in fast approaching darkness, to Uwajima, whose main attraction is a phallus-worshipping temple. Turns out this was pretty common once, before the West with its Victorian morals did away with most of that dirty stuff. Apparently it still survives in a few places. If I have to see temples – and in Japan you do see temples – it might as well be the more entertaining ones. In any case the town is placed perfectly for my time schedule.

Tuesday Oct. 31 - Getting a Hino emblem

2007-07-23T12:17:00.000-07:00

Tuesday Oct. 31

Up too late, see the sex-fixated temple, do some free internet transmissions and leave this one-horse town at noon. ‘One-bull town’ might have been more appropriate, because the tourist office informs me that they have some Pamplona-like bull stuff going on several times a year, and that I missed it by two days. Nevertheless, the company in Yufuin and Beppu I wouldn’t have missed for anything.

I ride inland following some rivers, all in all some 129 kilometers with practically no cars, all of which would have been like, totally marvelous, had the bar not been raised so high over the last few weeks. Now it is just a very, very good road, but at least I get myself a Hino emblem from an old bus parked somewhere along the way. The houses on Shikoku seem to be back to the standard of those on Honshu, though I still see a number of car junkyards. Which of course I find fascinating. I also note the occasional man walking in the opposite direction, wearing white clothes and a cone-type bamboo hat and a pilgrim’s staff.

As darkness approaches, my tired body tells me to pick the first hotel I see, so for a couple of thousand yen over the planned price I end up in a place with surprisingly good food (is tuna still politically incorrect?) and one of the hot baths. After half an hour in the latter, I’ll tell the Finns that they can keep their saunas and their birch branches and their rolling around in snow. This is the real thing, completely devoid of the sauna’s masochistic element of hardly being able to breathe, every time some idiot pours more water on the hot rocks.

Wednesday Nov. 1 - Around Shikoku, Then a '2001' Flashback

2007-07-22T15:56:00.000-07:00

I ride all the way down the southernmost tip of Shikoku, knowing this may well be the last time ever I see The Pacific this close and from the saddle of a motorcycle. Wind blows, it’s colder here, there are the rough looking cliffs. Lots of restaurants too, advertising whale meat. One even has a large bronze sculpture of the animal outside, so it’s not hard to figure out what the locals think of a ban on whale hunting. On the east side there are sandy beaches, and lots of surfers. Riding this road I also see more pilgrims clad in white, walking a route that will lead them to no less than 88 temples. Apparently there is something really cool about visiting all of those. Eventually the road turns into a four- and then sixlaner.

Time for the third oil change, and I note with some satisfaction, that all nuts and bolts are still tight. The Nimbus has really done well. Literally no technical problems, cheap with gas, and fairly comfortable even when the road surface is of dubious quality. Whether the rocker arms or ‘The Peace Tail Light’ have caused most amusement, I do not know, but the reaction to the bike has been very good all the way. I have lost track of how many non-motorcyclists – hotel owners, gas station attendants etc. – have taken pictures of the bike, or how often I have taken pictures of them sitting on it. The Japanese just love that photo thing. I also could have saved myself all my worries about whether the police or other authorities would let me on the roads without turn signals, or if the damaged slightly-out-of-balance front wheel rim should have been replaced. No cops have said a word about the former, and at the speeds I’m doing the rim is fine.

I jump on a toll road across the island of Awaji-Shima, in order to reach Kyoto by nightfall. This rewards me with a beautiful view of the sunset over the ocean, though I’m not sure if I had enjoyed it this much, had I know what the charge for riding here was. Legal robbery, that was. Still I pay for the expressway up to Kyoto, where I have booked a bed-place at a small hostel, that was recommended at one of the earlier cheapo hotels.

This wide expressway is an experience by itself, as it winds its way through of foretaste of what the sci-fi writer William Gibson calls ‘The Sprawl’: A large urban area stretching from Tokyo and all the way down the south coast. 60-70 clicks on the multilane freeway, along parallel freeways, over- and underpassing freeways, with monorails snaking back and forth across them – long well lit tunnels where an endless stream of trucks with polished aluminium sides and yellow, blue, red and green lights overtake me on both sides – just as shiny noise walls curving in over us, all in all a scene reminiscent of the last part of Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001 – A Space Odyssey’ – and suddenly a plethora of road signs ensuring that I miraculously reach my destination in Kyoto in record setting time (I’m not used to that). 350 kilometers today, longest one-day distance, if one does not count the Copenhagen-London-Tokyo stretch.

Thursday Nov. 2 - Sophisticated Kyoto

2007-07-22T15:53:00.000-07:00

I stay at ‘Taro Café’ for the next five nights, while exploring a town that seems to contain all I wanted and expected of Japan. ‘Taro’ is cool, at 3,000 yen per night very cheap, unlike – say – a place nearby, which has a Rolls Royce parked in the lobby and rents out rooms on a two-hourly basis. Only the second night in Kyoto Taro doesn’t have room for me, so much to my annoyance I have to go to the local youth hostel. It’s not that I can’t deal with brain dead youngsters, but staying at a place with a 10.30 p.m. curfew, and other rules like that, is below my 51-year old dignity. Then again, it was that or pitching my tent under the bridges, next to the homeless. In any case I have to get up early, to go to a vintage bike rally.

Before that I walk around town, taking in the sights and sounds and smells. It’s so unlike Tokyo: Old buildings stand next to new ones, shops sell elaborate shrines for your home (800,000 yen being a typical price tag), and mainly there’s all the natives, quite a few of whom walk around in sandals and wear traditional kimonos. It just looks so elegant, and I’m downright envious that our Western culture does not have this. By this I mean traditional Japanese style – having my neighbours trot around wearing Danish folk costumes would be most unbearable. Had I known Kyoto would be like this, I might have checked out the possibilities of shipping the bike and myself to here, instead of to Tokyo.

When the old bike thing tomorrow is done with, it’ll be temple-touring for a day or three, as Kyoto has 2,000 of them. I may just see the most spectacular ones. But then there’s the general architecture, where I see bits of Amsterdam, with lots of narrow tall houses next to each other, and where they all seem so much better designed and kept than their equivalents in the current capitol.

Round off the evening drinking with other Westerners – some French, some Canadians and one American, who is so incredibly pissed off with Bush and his clan, that I almost feel like defending the bastard. Almost.

Friday Nov. 3, Part I - A Decent Old Bike Rally

2007-07-22T15:46:00.000-07:00

On my way to the rally, a gas station attendant misunderstands my question about cleaning the bike here. He proceeds to do most of the work himself, and a mere 500 yen later I have a shiny, grease- & grime-less bike to show when I get to the rally site. Which turns out to be about ten times larger than the previous rally.

Lots of the bikes here I know very well, of course, but there are also many new ones, ranging from small WW2-era bicycles with bolt-on engines, upwards past vintage mopeds, Fuji rabbit scooters with and without sidecars, three-cylinder Kawasaki strokers, their smoke mixing it with that from an 80’s Suzuki RG500 square four race replica. Along past an R35 BMW, an early Moto Guzzi Falcone with the external flywheel, a Japanese Yamaguchi (!?), a fairly new Chinese Jawa 250 two-stroke copy, a lot of British classics, and on to an Indian Chief and a bunch of Harleys and their Japanese counterparts, the Rikuos. Guess there’s 2-300 bikes present, in all shapes and conditions, and with all sorts of riders.

Predictably the Nimbus gets more than its fair share of attention, and the usual routine of starting it, posing behind it, and letting people pose on it, is repeated at regular intervals for the next five hours. Right as I park it upon arrival, a guy comes over, and tells that maybe another Nimbus will show up today. Alas, this does not happen, but eventually he introduces me to an old collector, who used to have three of them until a few years ago. Ok, this is getting interesting; “Does he know where they are now?” Well, only the one that was sold to a coffee shop on Kyushu, not far from the museum….! Anyway, we arrange to meet again Monday afternoon, with the first guy to come along as the translator, so I can see his photos of his Nimbuses. Maybe his memory will improve over the weekend.

I take a few hundred pictures, especially of a newly restored Meguro/Kawasaki, which represents the first year of the BSA copies, and of the three Rikuos, two 750 cc bikes and a pre-war 1200. The two smaller Rikous have original extra equipment signal wings, just like older cars had them, manually cable operated from the handlebars. Then it’s time for one last pose with the organizers of the meeting, ‘Old Motorcycle Love Club’, as one of them translates the text from his club sweatshirt. I try to get his organizers’ badge from him, in part because it says ‘stuff’ instead of ‘staff’, and end up with it, as well as with all sorts of gifts, badges and even his sweatshirt. Some Nimbus postcards go the other way, along with the business cards I finally have made. Wish I had more stuff to give.

Friday Nov. 3, Part II - The Biggest Tambourine, The Longest Front Fork and The Happiest Smurf In Town

2007-07-22T15:42:00.000-07:00

On my way back to Kyoto city center, I run into a religious Shinto-procession of some sort, which blocks an intersection for the better part of an hour. Two flocks circle each other a few times, each having a group of 28 men carrying a heavy shrine. At the same time they are jumping and dancing and shouting, so the large cymbals at each end of this 10 meter long construction, like a monster-sized tambourine, bang against each other. The guys take turns doing it, because it clearly is very hard work. A motorcycle dealer placed right next to the intersection explains, in detail, what the whole thing is about, this being one of the preciously few instances where I have just a little idea of what is going on before my very eyes.

A chopper shop even closer to town catches my interest too, resulting in another one-hour break. The place builds four of five different set styles of choppers, one of these being a genuine Zero rip-off, utilizing new Shovelhead style engines. But they’re nice folks, it is Nimbus showtime again, and before riding on I test-sit an insane 70’s style construction with a 2½ meters long front fork, which they claim the owner actually rides.

At Taro Café I rent a bicycle, to better explore the shopping and partying areas of Kyoto, which of course is crammed with people. It is Friday evening, there’s a national holiday, and seeing they only have one week of vacation each year (usually between Christmas and new years) the weekend get used to the max. Had I not bought this computer laptop thing, so today’s many impressions could be guided out of my skull and into the laptop, my head would have exploded. Now I can start every day with a clean slate, essential especially on days like these, where it feels like someone somewhere up there is sitting with a finger on the ‘fast forward’ button.

So I look around in the shops, take in all the faces, the clothing styles, the shop windows, the elaborate crafts (wooden combs at 8,000 yen and upwards), and a hard, by and large successful, fight against going on The Wild Tourist Shopping Spree is being fought. Only one temple today, squeezed in between the shop in one of the endless arcades.

Saturday Nov. 4 - Osaka

2007-07-22T15:39:00.000-07:00

Take the train to Osaka and rent a bicycle there. Traffic rules for bicycles are essentially the same as on war and in love, i.e. there aren’t any. Still it seems to work, as people ride on the road and on the sidewalk, with or against traffic, and at night without lights. I experience very few hairy situations, so as long as I don’t knock down pedestrians or scratch cars, everything is fine. The northern part of Osaka looks a bit like Tokyo, while the southern part is a mix of the capitol and Kyoto, minus the temples, the kimonos and – fortunately – the hordes of tourists. There are the obligatory shopping arcades over and under the surface, a department store has a full scale model of a whale hanging at the entrance (the whale is bright red, so I assume it is a model), and the ever present Ferris wheel on top. The crowds here are more intense than anywhere else I’ve been, a bit like a rock music festival where they’ve let in too many people.

The picture chances a bit at night. The area near a canal has tons of bars – often located on second floor and upwards – clothing stores and other stuff aimed at youngsters, who seem to be in a permanent contest for outrageous appearance. But there’s a good atmosphere, American cars cruise the streets, I check the multi-storey manga shops, while at the canal bands take turns playing, and behind the stage kids display their BMX bicycle skills.

Back at Taro we all end up outside, drinking and chatting way past midnight, as despite it being November, the night is warm and mild. Firing up the Nimbus brings out a smurf-sized neighbour and her current boyfriend, and she goes gaga over the rocker arms, poses on the bike and has flashbacks to her glorious days of yore, when she rode a Honda Monkey bike. Posing, posing, taking pictures again and again.

And I feel my vacation time disappearing, despite there being three weeks left.

Sunday Nov. 5 - Temples in Size XXXXL

2007-07-22T15:34:00.000-07:00

I sit with my green tea, waiting for the caffeine to take effect, as I hear Danish voices say ‘Nimbus’ outside. It is three Danish architects, on one of which once had a Nimbus, and even knows who I am (I used to be the editor of the club magazine). Now try and figure out the odds against us meeting here. Later, over breakfast nearby, I note the full city buses and people rushing about, despite today being another national holiday. Wonder to what extent the concept of ‘time off’ exists here.

Two major temples, the first one unbelievably crammed with tourists, are on today’s program. Kiomuzi-dera takes up about 20 acres area, has over 20,000 altars, and there are more graves up the mountainside than I have seen ever in one place. Not even the soldiers’ graves in Normandy top this for sheer numbers. The second temple – Kimani-joja - is just very large, as in the Godzilla slogan ‘Size matters’. Mainly painted in a garish orange colour, and I see several young women with white-painted faces and even more elaborate traditional dresses.

Then a short tea break in the company of a Japanese gentleman (watchmaker, kimono enthusiast, quite interesting to talk to), and finally the Nanzin-ji temple which is less ornate than the other too, but makes up for it in stoutness. Back at Taro café I catch up on my writing, until a Canadian – Jakob - shows up and wants to talk bikes. Then we all do the traditional beer ceremony again, I fire up the bike, but the smurf next door is nowhere to be seen.

Monday Nov. 6 - Temples, Ace Choppers And The Old Nimbus Man

2007-07-22T15:30:00.000-07:00

5 hours of sleep, then sightseeing with Jakob at a Buddhist temple which is relatively simple in construction, albeit very long and reminiscent of traditional Viking architecture. Inside there’s 1,000 statues of ‘Kannon Bodhisattva’ (I think), 500 hundred of them on either side of a major version of same. This is my favourite temple so far, and Jakob, who is a carpenter by trade, tells about the different building techniques used here and at our next stop:

Nijo-jo (Nijo castle) is an impressive shogun’s (supreme commander’s) residence, and stylistically very simple and clean. Still the place sports a lot of wonderful technical touches, like floors that in certain places are designed to squeak, secret small compartment where a samurai could sit and wait in case he was needed, etc. etc. All walls are beautifully decorated with simple motifs, often with large areas in (real) gold, in order to demonstrate, Versailles-style, his wealth – aside from being a real fortress with high walls and a mound. Best building I’ve seen here.

In the afternoon I take the train to Kobe, through so much ugly suburbia that I can think of one more good reason for using the Shinkansen, the 300 kph high-speed trains. First I visit ACE Choppers, a hole-in-the-wall workshop under the railway. Some really tough looking bikes came to the rally the other day, and as I’m to meet the old Nimbus man a few hundred meters from here, I thought it’d be a good opportunity to take pictures of the place, and of the dusty Panhead project in the middle of it all.

My translator shows up, and shortly thereafter Ansai-san himself, in one of the tiny, tiny vans. By local standards his workshop nearby is fairly large, as there is room for both six motorcycles and for us to walk between them. More amusing, though, is his ‘office’ with all the books, pictures and motorcycle models, the tiny room measuring 1,3 by 3,5 meters, and 1,9 at it’s highest point near the door. Here he has the Sunbeam he brought to the rally, a Douglas boxer, and a BSA B33. There’s also an impressive 1958 Ariel Arrow with all the factory options and the original paint, and two Matchless motorcycles, a G3 and a G2. The latter is special, in the sense that it has some sort of ‘unit-construction’ engine, where they simply put extra engine covers on the outside, covering both the engine and the separate gearbox. Well, if you have to cheat, you might as well do it in style…

Ansai-san shows all the pictures he has from his 10-year ownership of the Nimbuses, tells about how he got them because he had gotten tired of technically complicated BMW’s, and about where they are now. Unfortunately only the one on Kyushu can be traced - Ansai-san has bought and sold 98 bikes over the last 19 years, so understandably some of the details no longer stand so clear. That part of the chase will thus be left for the next Nimbus enthusiasts going over here.

Tuesday Nov. 7 - Japanese Fine Cuisine

2007-07-22T15:28:00.000-07:00

The last temple visit, this time the world’s largest wooden construction, some 76 meters tall. Good thing this one wasn’t burned down like so many other ones, during WW2 or in earlier wars. Then a yet another bicycle trip through town, where I can’t help but think they should make a Japanese version of ‘French Connection’ in these narrow streets. Even a bicycle chase would be downright exciting here. I also try to locate Kyoto’s only ‘rider house’, but it turns out to be closed for winter. Taro Café has room for me only one more night, so this may be a sign that I have to move on.

Takao, the other neighbour, is a cook apprentice in a restaurant nearby, and Jakob and I said we’d go there for dinner one night. Takao is an all-round nice guy and good company the nights we did the beer ceremony, and for once I want to eat an excellent meal without thinking about what it costs. And this is absolutely great; a long line of small delicate dishes, that the chef and his two underlings prepare in front of us for a couple of hours. Never mind the price, let’s just say it was the single most expensive thing I got in Japan, save for the laptop.

Wednesday Nov. 8 - Kaikado Kustom & A Slight Fever

2007-07-22T15:25:00.000-07:00

A couple of hours on crammed local roads, and some time on a toll road, 150 clicks in all, and I enter the town of Nagoya. Here are the chopper shop Kaikado Kustom, the hot rod shop Paradise Road and the Toyota Car Museum. I’m getting colder and colder as I ride over the mountains, so only the image of me sitting in a hot ‘onsen’ keeps me going. That is, however, not to happen.

I’ve emailed a bit with Kaikado, and am expected as I show up late in the afternoon. It’s a large workshop, in the sense that I can see part of the floor and the walls, despite all the bikes and parts around the owner’s ´28 Ford A hotrod project. The place has style, and after talking a bit to owner Masao and admired his latest creation – a Rikuo-framed 45” WLA – he and his wife Hana (finally a name I don’t have to write down to remember) invite me to stay for the night. In return I invite them out for dinner, with the aid of her laptop’s translator program. I rally hope those translations are as entertaining for them, as they are for me.

Turns out Masao and I share a number of interests: aside from motorcycles and hotrods, also planes, weapons and psychobilly music. The man is into fishing as well, and asks if I like to do that. “Don’t know”, I reply, “but I’d certainly like to try it one day. With dynamite”.

Thursday Nov. 9 - Rocket Plane, Mexican Style Custom Cars, Toyota And A Tube Hotel

2007-07-22T15:19:00.000-07:00

We start by visiting a museum that the large Mitsubishi Corporation has here in town. Supposedly the place is closed, but Masao pulls some strings and we get access. Very small museum indeed, but the contents are top class, especially the two real planes the factory has restored. Most people know the WW2 vintage Zero fighter, but very few have even heard of the tiny tailless rocketplane Shusui, which is a virtual copy of the German Messerschmitt Me 163, the latter of which became operational in the closing months of the war. Few probably care about this, but for an aircraft nerd like me, with my special interest in these particular years of airplane development, I feel like a catholic who accidentally gets to eat lunch with the Pope.

Shusui means ‘Fall Water’, one of the typical lyrical names the Japanese also gave their aircraft carriers and other deadly hardware. Another evil little thing, specially designed as a suicide plane, got the name ‘Cherry Flower’, but the Americans – who usually assigned American code-names like ‘Frank’ to fighters or ‘Betty’ to bombers – broke this tradition by calling it ‘Baka’ – Japanese for ‘stupid’.

Just my incredible luck chasing down Kaikado yesterday (despite running a slight fever), and not postpone the visit until today.

From the museum we go to a series of other hotrod driving friends. The Aichi Prefectorate here is the center of the Japanese hotrod- and custom car culture, I’m told. One place I also get to take part in a small religious ceremony, where the owner of a carpentry shop is dressed as a ‘shaman’ – possibly a Shinto-priest – for the occasion. All bow as required, clap in front of the altar, and outside I get a bit of holy salt on my shoulders while sake is poured around me, in order to ward off evil spirits. Like I said before about superstitious stuff like this: Just try and prove that it does NOT work….

At the hotrod shops ‘Malibu Classics’ and ‘Paradise Road’ they also get to see the Nimbus, in return for a peek inside their workshops. The 50’s and the 60’s style rides high around here, but at MC the Airstream camper shop office, is the real attraction, as far as I am concerned. Like so often before the game of ‘guess how old the Dane is’ get played. “Over 18”, I usually sneer, before revealing my exact age. Thanks to it’s Mexican style custom cars, which has earned Paradise Road an endless number of trophies, I knew this was one of the workshops I really had to see while in Japan. They also get to sign the Zero book, and like practically all other place they’re generous with t-shirts and other gifts.

After lunch in a restaurant, where the whole staff yells in unison every time a customer enters, Masao leads me to The Toyota Museum. We say our goodbyes, and I repeat my invitation for when he and his wife want to see Scandinavia. Despite Copenhagen being the third most expensive town for tourists (Tokyo and Osaka being number one and two), I really hope they will come to stay with me. I also hope they’ll follow my advice and come here during our ‘green winter’, rather than in the hara-kiri season.

The Toyota Museum is fine, with the occasional absolute great car in the large collection. Of course it is the early Japanese cars that have my interest, and the background history of things like the Toyota V8 engined prestige cars aimed solely at the home market. I’ve seen quite a few of these Mercedes-killers on the roads, and they were completely new to me. A special exhibition with original artwork from the GM, Chrysler and Ford studios is worth the entry fee alone.

Now satisfied from seeing planes, bikes and cars in all shapes and sizes, I fight my way through rush hour traffic to the center of town, and check into one of the famous capsule hotels. This is pure ‘Alien – The Third Passenger’, all those small beehive-like compartments, but I just had to try it. I’m still running a bit of the fever – maybe the sauna will help.

Friday Nov. 10 - The Bicyclist And The Car Wreck

2007-07-22T15:15:00.000-07:00

It’ll be a quiet day. I’m still under the weather, and least of all do I want to enter the vehicular warfare game on Hwy. 1 today, the Road From Hell I used when leaving Tokyo some weeks ago. Three hours there would take me to Hamamatsu, Yamaha’s home town. On the expressway it’ll take 1½ hours, but instead I plot a potentially much nicer ride on a mountain route going a bit north. I need to scrape the footpegs again, and I want my traditional lunch of ‘Calorie Mate’ sticks and hot apple juice from a vending machine, somewhere up on a mountain pass. One hour on a regular road gets me to where the Paradise-like roads starts, and this continues for another 4-5 hours. I get lost a few times, but using the sun for navigation I still end up more or less where I am supposed to end up.

Somewhere along there I meet my first long distance bicyclist, and noticing that he’s a Westerner, I stop for a chat. We exchange our Japan experiences, and what he says about Japanese car drivers would cause the paper to catch fire, should I ever write it down with a pencil. Still I’m pretty impressed with the way they drive – even Japanese motorcyclists reckon car drivers are fine – but less than an hour later a small truck going in the opposite direction runs of the road right next to me. At a distance it looks very bad, and close-up probably a lot worse, so I trust that the other people running towards the wreck will handle the situation.

Saturday Nov. 11 - First Day Of Rain Riding

2007-07-22T15:14:00.000-07:00

All night there was thunder, and it is still pissing down as I go out in search for breakfast. On the good side there’s the newspaper’s report on how the US congressional elections turned out. The Republicans got spanked so hard that even Bush may have realized what just happened. Wonder if Blair and Danish prime minister Fogh regret having Bush’s dick in their mouth all these years? (pardon my French….).

Stay in town or not, that’s the question. The ‘Time Tunnel’ motorcycle event at Fuji Racetrack starts at nine tomorrow morning, a few hundred kilometers away, so I better get up there today. But first the nice girls at Tourist Information (“Are you here to play in the piano competition?”) direct me to the Yamaha museum, where I may or may not have an appointment with one of their PR people. The latter does not happen, and the cake in the cafeteria may really be the best thing out there. Ok, this sounds a bit unfair, because the cake WAS exceptionally good, and the collection of old Yamahas wasn’t half bad either. It’s just that I have seen so much good stuff lately. Only a few of the racers, and an 89 cc two cylinder street bike make me do a double take.

Hwy. 1 in rain and approaching darkness is out of the question, so I buy myself 2,800 yen of smooth asphalt and no traffic lights all the way to Gonteba, close to the track. The ride is fine, and in any case I would have felt silly to have taken the rain gear with me all the way from Denmark, only to use it for insulating the laptop back on the top box. It gets darker and darker, and finally all black, and slowly I get this unreal feeling, that pilots doing instrument flying probably also get up there; the sensation of speed and other physical inputs diminish, and in the end you must rely solely on what your eyes tell you.

It is impossible to find a bed in Gonteba, which could be expected on a Saturday night here around Mt. Fuji. Just before I pitch my tent at the first available piece of grass, one of the hotel clerks suggest I drive a bit further up the road to an onsen, where I also can stay for the night. It takes an hour to find the place, but it looks really great, it has a decent restaurant, and sleeping there won’t cost me much either. So here I sit typing, with a large beer in front of me, and a 42 degree hot bath somewhere in the near future. Kampai! (Cheers!)

Sunday Nov. 12 - Time Tunnel Race Meet, Part I

2007-07-22T15:11:00.000-07:00

The onsen last night was great, as I laid there in the steaming hot water, looking up at star constellations I couldn’t readily recognize, even if they are supposed to be the same at northern latitudes (?).The large dormitory was ok, 50-odd ‘beds’ placed about one meter apart. Six hours of sleep, and then a marvelous view of Mt. Fuji through the large panorama windows. Couldn’t see it yesterday in the darkness, of course, but today there’s sunlight and the mountain is capped with snow.

Off I ride in direction of ‘Time Tunnel Race Meet’, and park at a Yamaha SR shop I spotted last night, when I stopped to check my road map. The door sign reads ‘closed’, but the owner runs down the stairs as he sees my Nimbus. ‘Stinky’ is the odd name of the shop, but the quality of these SR 400 conversions are higher than on any SR’s I have ever seen before. MV Agusta, BSA, Ducati and other themes are used, most of them have a delicious 120,000 yen (ouch!) rear swing arm, and some even have Japanese copies of Fontana brakes, while the owner’s personal mount has real Grimecas front and rear.

I have a timetable to consider, but an offer of breakfast – green tea and bits of chocolate – make me stay and talk for a while, as it is still freezing cold outside. 10 degrees centigrade last night, and certainly not any higher this morning, with a strong wind blowing. I hang around for ¾ of an hour, whereupon his mechanic or apprentice or whatever leads me the back way to the racetrack. Whatever time I may have ‘lost’ at Stinky is recouped here, because even if Fuji Speedway lies close to the onsen, it is still far from anywhere (in beautiful nature, of course), and I see no signs in English leading there.

At the entrance I mutter the magical code word – Yoshimura-san (the organizer, one of Osca’s friends) – and get in for free. Down to the race pit, and quickly I tear off everything that is touring-related, before Yohimura-san sees the bike. I want to go on the track, lack of a proper racer’s license and no pre-registration be damned. Impossible, he says, as I meet him at the office, but after he has seen the stripped-down bobber, and after some other people kindly have intervened on my behalf (just like in ‘The World’s Fastest Indian’), I’m allowed to race in some sort of ‘parade’ class. All I have to do is promise not to overtake anyone, or do any knee-sliding.

A couple of hours are spent walking around looking at all the nice stuff: Lots of small vintage Honda racers, a dozen or so Bridgestones, some small Ducatis, 10-15 pieces of British iron, a sole 1960’s Harley-Davidson KR, at least 20 scooters and one incredibly mean looking 1200 cc pre-war Rikuo. All in all a little more than 100 motorcycles, which according to a local Brit is about half the number that showed up at last year’s event. Seeing that people here are more focused on the racing thing, rather than that of the vintage bike thing, the Nimbus is an entertaining element, but not half as much as at the other two meetings. Fine with me, I’m mainly thinking about my start just before noon, and how to get a race number plate to put on the bike. Riding without would be like robbing a bank without having real ammo in the sawn-off shotgun.

Normal conversation in the pits is all but impossible, thanks to the sweet, loud music of bikes getting started and adjusted. On the track battles are being fought in different classes, on a short, narrow track with only one 500 meter straight stretch. A number of crashes occur, though seemingly with only damage to the machines and not their riders. In particular the rider of an orange Lambretta scooter goes around like if his life depended on it, but miraculously the guy reappears from some of the hidden turns every time. A local journalist pops up next to me, his camera man sticking a camera lens in my face, and asks questions like ‘Which motorcycle here do you find most interesting?’ (easy; the big old Rikuo with the Kawasaki W3 gear box). From behind a hill we can hear the roars from the larger part of the Fuji racetrack, where a Lotus Seven club is out this last weekend before winter sets in, having a blast in the little cars.

Just as I’m mounting a race plate borrowed from a Bridgestone, a friggin’ band of bagpipers march down the pit area. This is part of a 30-year old tradition, I’m told. So be it, at least the sound like they know how to play those contraptions. Half an hour later they are done, the flock of scooters do a number of sloooow laps, and it is time for me to go on the track. Last man in an eclectic bunch of smallish bikes, right behind and incredibly loud megaphone-equipped little Honda (noisy to the point where I consider running him off the track), and with a 200 cc Velocette LE as the unofficial pace bike. This is definitely too slow, even for a Nimbus, so I fall back about half a lap for each go-around, and repeatedly have some fun catching up.

Downhill along the straight at full throttle in second and third, something I would not even have considered on the first part of this trip. Now, however, I can finally ‘afford’ a serious engine failure, which in any case not likely to happen. I’m close to the port of departure, and here’s a lot of large vans and people who will understand my predicament – this very bunch of racers have probably experienced more blown-up engines per capita than any other group of 4-500 people in Japan.

Another bonus of racing here, is that for a short moment I get to remember how easy the bobber is to ride without all the touring crap, and without my highway pegs and the low license plate to limit the lean angles. Even if I’m 6-7 kilograms lighter by now, thanks to six weeks of small servings of Japanese food, the 35-40 kilograms of luggage severely hamper the stripped bike’s reasonable performance and handling. Eight or ten laps later it is over, all too brief.

Sunday Nov. 12 - Time Tunnel Race Meet, Part II

2007-07-22T15:05:00.000-07:00

The local Brit – Simon Godden – reappears, telling about his nice motorcycle riding experiences in this country, about his plans for starting a race series with older Triumph Tridents, and about how minor private toll roads can be treated almost like road race courses, seeing that they’re devoid of speed cameras and similar unpleasantries. Technically these are still public roads - just like the Nuremburg Ring in Germany, where you just pay at the gate for doing a lap or two – so there are no insurance issues. SG also kindly feeds me cans of hot green tea and coffee, sorely needed on this cold day, even if I detest the taste of the latter. But for as long as I hold the can, at least I can feel my fingers.

The last four or five heats are ridden, of which the 250 cc class is the most interesting. The guy on the orange Lambretta fights his way from the back, up through the field, overtakes at least six real racers along the way and ends on fourth place, behind a Ducati, a Bultaco and a Honda. Good going, and nice to see an underdog being able to tune a scooter this much, and use his racing tyres to the max.

Luggage racks, tent, footpegs etc. goes back on the bike, and while I sit there, being annoyed with myself for not having put an ‘INFORMATION ABOUT A NIMBUS IN THIS AREA WANTED’ sign on the topbox, a young guy comes over. Problems with the gas cable on his H-D KR prevented him from doing any serious racing, but we haven’t spoken yet, even if he has the second most interesting bike here. Turns out he once saw a Nimbus in a shop close to where he lives. This was about ten years ago, but he may remember where the place is, and offers to lead me there when the race meet is over. I’ve learned a long time ago never to reject such an offer, despite the last three hours’ fantasizing about going back to the onsen, in order not to catch pneumonia. Now follows 2½ hours of insane traffic jams, half through which my battery almost goes down, and I start riding without lights. Things are so slow going, that we can exchange snacks and candy along the way, and I start taking notes on my little writing pad while sitting there. If any nation on this planet needs hybrid cars, it has to be Japan.

Amazingly he finds the place in first try, but the girl in the scuba equipment shop says the motorcycle place ‘Scramble’ moved or went out of business about four years ago. Ok, it was worth the try, but we arrange to go out for dinner instead. Now we’re in the neighbourhood I have to meet one of his friends from the custom car shop ‘Pumpkin Sally’, a place specializing in Ford F100 vans. Actually I knew about them beforehand. I’ll be back here tomorrow to take pictures.

The KR guy Ted/Takeshi drives his wife and tired small kid back home, the Nimbus rolls into his large workshop, and we find a place to talk about the US, bikes and whatever else we have in common – like the Peace Tail Light, one of which he has, or the Czech PAV bike trailer he once bought along with a Jawa. Spooky. Ted used to work for Bud Ekins, the actor Steve McQueen’s riding buddy for decades, but only learned much later of BE’s fame. Ted was the practical link when everybody in Japan suddenly wanted old Kawasaki Z1’s and the wild three cylinder two-strokes, both of which there were plenty in the US. He also told that von Dutch worked for BE, without Ted knowing who the hell vD was.

At ten I’m being dropped off at a ‘sento’ (something like an onsen), with the same baths and sleeping accommodation as the place up in the mountains – even if this one has not half the charm and elegance of the first one, and has the same computer game machines I noticed at the tube hotel in Nagoya, where guys sat making virtual hot babes take of their clothes. Half an hour under water, and I finally feel like a warm-blooded species again.

Monday Nov. 13 - Pumpkin Sally & Their Ratrod

2007-07-22T15:00:00.000-07:00

Ted picks me up at nine, we have breakfast and then go see some of his hotrod friends, one of which has the honours of starting up the whole movement over here about 15 years ago. Before then nobody cared about the things, but now the authorities have loosened up on rules. Today you can build the wildest choppers and custom cars, ride without fenders etc., although it is still easier to modify an old vehicle rather than a new one.

After bidding my farewell to Ted, wife and kid I track down the ‘Pumpkin Sally’ workshop, and take pictures of one of the toughest looking ratrods I have ever seen. The thing barks, roars and smokes, shaking like a dog every time the owner floors it. I also change the oil on the Nimbus, for the last time over here. Then I head north, using the same road on which we drove south last night. It is only half as nice as I believed it to be, and I’m only slightly delayed by all the cops, who naturally wonder about my helmet-habits.

The mountains are just as cold as yesterday, and temperatures drop for every hairpin turn I encounter. I put on every single piece of my clothes when starting off down at the coast, which keeps me reasonably warm. So far; Mt. Fuji in its majestic beauty lies to my left, and will soon block the warming rays of the sun. Still I manage to cross the first mountain pass without suffering frostbite, and note here how the red leaves are long gone, and all the trees stand naked.

At a crossroad in a typical vacation resort, a Kawasaki W3 rider going in the opposite direction does a double-take, as he recognizes my Nimbus from some Classic Kawasaki homepage. We stop and talk a bit, trying to figure out if there are any hotels some 50 clicks further out in the direction I’m going. One of the locals tells me not to sleep in the tent (fat chance), because the temperatures went below freezing last night.

The Kawasaki-guy – Hidey Katsumada - leads my to a tourist information 10-12 kilometers and one mountain pass away, where we learn that the nearest accommodation is a few hundred meters from where we first met. We ride back over the pass, with no cars but now also no daylight, so I do my very best to keep up with his tail light – which disappears every time his revs drop when changing gears, as his battery is shot. Still we make it back to the resort, I find a hotel, and we go out for a dinner of wild boar noodle soup. Today he is the fifth or sixth Japanese I meet who speaks a tolerable English – maybe my luck changes now that the vacation is about to end.

The last pictures get taken, business cards exchanged, and he will have to find a car to follow over the next mountain pass. “I never ride in the dark”, he said earlier, and if this is to be taken literally, it’ll be quite some debut. On the other hand, I’ve done this often enough on a Nimbus, so I’m not too worried about him.

Tuesday Nov. 14 - Last Ride In The Mountains

2007-07-22T14:58:00.000-07:00

Off I ride, sun shining from a clear blue sky. It’s all of 18 degrees, Mt. Fuji in my rear view mirror, and my last Japanese mountain road riding ahead. I don’t know if it is because this is the last time, but having fought my way up, up and up, in second gear most of the way, and I now stand looking out over yellow and red mountain forests, which I felt cheated for yesterday, the scenery seem almost unreal. This place is more beautiful than any other place I’ve seen on the whole trip, an observation due neither to the oxygen-poor elevation, nor that I’ve been mixing up my medication again. It is also a bit sad, and I don’t feel like going back to Tokyo again at all, despite all the good people I’m going to meet down there.

Another hour of riding along a forest lake, in and out of a long series of tunnels, on a road where a lot of other motorcyclists and scooterists also have found their way out. Then two hours of hellish road a bit north of Tokyo, the falcons of the forests replaced by an old military Convair turboprop plane doing lazy circles over the stinking cityscape. And in the end, still in the stench of the local industries, on an expressway north, to a town that must be large enough to have an internet café. Honda has a good museum up here, and I try to time things so I can make it back to Chiba tomorrow evening.

Finding the very cheapest hotel in town is difficult, but the run-down place has style. A hopeless style, actually, some sort of hillbilly rusticism, and common showers on the ground floor. It will disappear when the owner dies or retires, which still is a shame.

Wednesday Nov. 15 - The Nimbus at The Honda Museum

2007-07-22T14:55:00.000-07:00

The traditional Japanese breakfast they serve is - untypically - the size of the American equivalent, I wave goodbye to the old hotel host, and find the Honda-owned and run Motegi Twin Ring, which despite the name consists of a lot more individual track, asphalt or dirt. The place is enormous, has its own motel, conference center, and a wedding suite for those who want to get hitched while hearing wails from race cars. Of course the surrounding area looks like something straight out of a tourist brochure.

Walking around in the museum, at some point I notice a sign describing the Honda CB 750 as ‘the world’s first air-cooled four cylinder production motorcycle’. Indeed. So I drag the Nimbus over to the restoration department, and get to talk to an Australian accented woman from a bit higher up in the hierarchy. She tells the museum also has a Nimbus. This really lights me up, but sorry, it’s in storage and the man responsible for things in storage won’t come back until next week.

Now if everyone just accepted a ‘no’, there would be a lot fewer marriages, and I would drive away from here a disappointed man. So I go on for a while about all the things I probably can tell them about their Nimbus, about my involvement in the Danish Nimbus club, how long I’ve searched for them here, etc. etc. I walk through all three floors of the exhibits, and sit in the cafeteria, marking all the mistakes in their rather limited English Nimbus material, when she shows up again, telling me that the Nimbus is on its way. Right on, baby.

It turns out to be a nicely restored Standard model, where predictably a host of thing aren’t quite right neither for a Nimbus, nor for a 1938 version. Right away I can point out 10 or 15 such things, and when the experts back home get to see the pictures I take, they will likely find 30 or 40 more. Of course I promise to send whatever reading matter in English that I have, as well as a spares catalogue and other things they surely can use.

And the rest of their collection? In one word: Perfect. Mike Hailwoods 125 cc racer with its aluminium fairing greets visitors at the entrance, the six-cylinder 250 cc engines are there, a for me hitherto unknown 169 cc boxer livens up things in the scooter section, and so on it goes. Occasionally other brands are exhibited too, usually for reference to whatever Honda they’re placed next to, and on the small plaques loyally described as a better or more successful vehicle if they were so.

The second floor has the street bikes, while the third floor contains perhaps 100 racers. Lots of racing cars too, either Honda’s own or the many marques that just used Honda engines. There’s also a line-up of small cars with 360 cc motorcycle-derived twin cylinder engines, as well as the jet turbine used on the very recent Honda business aircraft is there, in the company of a stunning old Curtiss race car with a V8 aircraft engine. Just a pity the museum is so far away from everything, that you almost have to have your own wheels to get there.

Upon leaving I once again dress up with all the clothes I have, put in an extra pair of t-shirts over my chest, because now it is all of 13 degrees, in the sun. If I jump on the expressway heading south I can get down to Chiba just in time to have dinner with Crazy Pete, the guy who helped me get the bike through customs 1½ months ago. Like this morning I ride through a hilly landscape, there are few cars, the road surface is good, and the low sun casts a warm glow over the scenery. I’m still sorry I have to leave this kind of Japan, but feel this is nature’s nice way of saying goodbye to me.

It has happened before, and no doubt it will happen again, that when I plan to be somewhere at a specific time, I momentarily enter a parallel universe, in which neither traffic jams nor my Christopher Columbus-like talent for navigational errors exist. Things are not made easier with some major rain showers halfway to Tokyo, so I get to Chiba at 8 p.m., about two hours later than hoped. Parts of the trip is being made on the large, confusing toll-road network of the metropolis, at places everyone does 30 kph, and once again my instincts tell me to do what motorcycles are so good at; riding between the lanes. And I enjoy it, because this is my home turf. At other stretches traffic moves so fast, that even at my steady 85 kph, the large trucks roll right past me.

At the restaurant I tell Pete the condensed version of my travels, and about the chopper- and hotrod people I’ve met along the way. Turns out he knows quite a few of them personally, so I guess it is just like at home: A small incestuous bunch of mecchano-nerds, where everybody knows everybody.

Tonight my sleeping accommodations are as odd as they were last night; I am to sleep on a shelf in Pete’s workshop, high up under the roof, so the dinner and the highway tolls have not managed to do serious harm to today’s budget. But mainly I stay here because it is just such an absurd place to sleep, in the company of my Nimbus, two-three Harleys and seven Indians, when just counting those that can actually roll on their own wheels.

Thursday Nov. 16 - Shocking The Japanese Journalist

2007-07-22T14:47:00.000-07:00

Despite my 24,000 yen ergonomically perfect earplugs, traffic noise wakes me up after five hours of sleep, and I work my way around the motorcycles on the ground floor. Start using the wrong leg, and 5 steps later you’re stuck and have to go back to start. Then breakfast, the bobber gets washed just in time for when the journalist/photographer shows up. It’s a mainstream magazine, somewhat relevant questions, Crazy Pete translates both ways. The usual shock when I tell them about Danish taxes (I’m low-income, and in the 52 % tax bracket, all imported vehicles get app. 200 % slapped on them etc., etc.), and the usual shock when I tell that I think the tax level is fine, considering what we get for our money. Then more pictures, and after this I just have to wait until the magazine arrives in Denmark.

I use the same toll road network through Greater Tokyo on my way to Yokohama, where I have arranged to spend the night at a small family’s home. Besides, I also want to check out a ‘Mooneyes’ hotrod shop in the area, and talk to the shipping agent there, who is supposed to send the Nimbus back to Denmark. After a few detours I find the train station where host Yoshiko Obe meets me. In Japan it is always the last 500 meters that are difficult, thanks to a weird way of marking streets and house numbers. Anyway, we drive to her home, and after mutual introductions she tells that she takes in guest this way in order to a) keep up her English and b) so that her three-year old son gets used to being around foreigners. Which I find very admirable. Like about half the women over here she quit work after having her first child, but she hopes to get a job again soon.

Friday Nov. 17 - The Shipping Agent, The Brit and The Korean

2007-07-22T14:42:00.000-07:00

I leave early, forget about Mooneyes and try to locate the shipping agent, using maps that Yoshiko Obe printed out for me. Knowing now that paperwork can be a bit tricky over here, I want to be prepared. Despite the fine maps I still need the aid of a scooter rider to lead me through the final labyrinths, and after having passed the shipping agent’s office three times, he jumps out and stops me. Tokuda-san then greets me in perfect English, his language skills being a major factor in my decision to use this company.

“We’ve never tried this before”, he tells me as he looks through the carnet, and reminisces about his Copenhagen visit some 40-odd years ago. Registration papers, passport, drivers license etc. gets copied, along with a list of whatever I’ll send with the bike. The 110,000 yen price doesn’t seem outrageous, and I get a map of some harbour area in Yokohama, where I am to deliver the bike on Tuesday. He’s off fishing on Wednesday, there’s a national holiday on Thursday, so we’ll have Friday to sort out possible complications. In theory the bike will be home before Christmas, just like the soldiers in WW1.

Then back through town, between the lanes like some ‘Ghost Rider Light’ (the real ‘Ghost Rider’ is an insane Swede who rides at 200-250 kph this way). Back into Tokyo centre, where I am to meet Simon Godden, that I met at Fuji Speedway some days ago. SG is a co-owner of a video production company, and he wants it to do a bit about me and the Nimbus. He shows up at Tokyo Station on an immaculate Magni with a 1200 cc Suzuki GSX powerplant, one of the last the small Italian company built before concentrating on MV Agusta restorations. Later, as we talk at his office, it turns out he also has one of the new Triumph Rocket III’s, which he uses for going fast. The Triumph is a 317 kilograms heavy juggernaut, examples of which he has seen over here with clip-ons et al. This may explain why he listened to me at the track, when I suggested some sort of two-wheeled truck racing series, using Honda Goldwings and similar bikes for actual racing.

A few hours later we ride through rush hour traffic up to my hotel, where I get as nice a welcome as I do when entering Tepui Bar, the nice watering hole nearby. Nice to ride together with someone where you don’t have to worry the slightest, whether they’ll hang on or not, our progress only being dictated by the wide motocross type handlebar on my Nimbus. Have a long chat with Simon about bikes, about how Brits seem to be able to fit in anywhere in the world, about how it is to live in Japan as a ‘gajin’ – a foreigner – and how it is to run a business in this environment.

One interesting example of the latter, was the time he wanted to fire six employees who were unfit for whatever they were hired for. No can do, his Japanese partner said, in Japan a company has a responsibility for their employees. So the six guys were offered a 75 % reduction in wages, were to sit together in a room staring at a wall, waiting for someone to have something copied on the photo-copier, which now was their new and only responsibility. The humiliation was total, the toughest one held out for three days. But the company didn’t fire anyone….

Later in the evening I meet a young Korean – Jay - at the hotel. He turns out be probably the first person over here who wants to know about Denmark. Having taught himself English by seeing every single one of ‘The Simpsons’ episodes (!) up to ten times each (!!!), his language skills are excellent, and I get my fourth English-fix today. He takes me to a really strange little restaurant at Ueno (Fukuoan specialities, see picture above), and we pay a quick visit to Ueno Park with all the homeless living in and around there. Predictably we end up at Tepui, which is one place I definitely think should be transferred back to Denmark, if at all possible. Together with a) a couple of large mountains (or five) with their wonderful, twisty car-free roads, b) some onsens, c) the better half of the Japanese cuisine, d) electrically heated toilet seats, and e) the Rider House train wagon, the accompanying Iwashita Motorcycle Museum and it’s staff.

Saturday Nov. 18 - Brat Style Choppers and The Bavarian Pub

2007-07-22T14:37:00.000-07:00

The weather forecast says shitty weather Sunday and Monday, so I take the opportunity of having one last sunny ride, going ten-fifteen kilometres north to see the ‘Brat Style’ custom bike shop, whose modified Yamaha XS’s and SR’s once caught my eye when I surfed on the net. Impossible to find, but again some local bikers save the day, by spending half an hour guiding me to the place. The bikes out there are as cool as they get (besides, they’re not the usual Harley-crap), and the many trophies on the walls confirm that they’re not one-shot wonders either. Really should have brought the Zero book for signatures.

An hour on the freeway later I’m down at Crazy Pete’s again, to pick up the shipping crate for the Nimbus. It takes me four hours to dismantle it, beat the damaged parts back in shape, strap it all onto the bike, and buy a few essentials at a builder’s market. Talk a bit to some Indian guys and Pete’s daughter and son-in-law who have showed up, do the rocker arm trick and such. Good thing I didn’t postpone getting the crate until a potentially wet Tuesday morning, because I have to be in Yokohama an hour from here at 1 p.m. that day.

Rush hour traffic back to the hotel is just as dense as it was yesterday, even here on the toll road, so again I use the emergency lanes if available, and otherwise filter up through rows of slow-moving boxes, up high on the ten-twenty meter stilt-road in over the centre of town. Though now with 30 kilograms of metal strapped onto the side, and a red rag flapping in the wind at the end of the 2,2 meter long strips.

Simon from yesterday meets me at his office, we jump into his modern Nissan sports car, and head for the city part called Roppongi, a wealthy neighbourhood where a lot westerners live or hang out. Nice fast ride, despite his complaining about how heavy the 1,7 tonnes car is for the 280 bhp engine. A genuine Bavarian pub is our target, as even Brits will admit the Bavarians know a thing or two about brewing beer. Or about sausages and Sauerkraut, tonight’s dinner. I have been on a strictly Japanese diet over here since arriving, but ‘Fleischkäse Pretzel’ and whatever else this mini-Bierhalle has to offer is exotic/absurd enough for my tastes.

Sunday Nov. 19 - Ultranationalists At The Shrine

2007-07-22T14:34:00.000-07:00

The Controversial Shrine, More Photos and More Interviews

Sunday Nov. 19

The hotel is all quiet, the weather humid and cold, probably a foretaste of what it’ll be like to come back to Denmark. Japan Times still writes about North Korean nuclear bombs, and now also about a Patriot 3 missile shield around Tokyo. While in the more entertaining part of the paper there’s a bit about a restaurant in Arizona offering cigarettes and an 8,000 calorie ‘quadruple bypass burger’. Extra services include waitresses dressed up as nurses, to roll you out to your car in a wheelchair.

Then it is time for indoors sightseeing. I, Jay and a guy from Singapore – Lau - go to see the (in)famous Shinto shrine, where the former prime minister carefully managed to piss off the neighbouring countries by repeatedly visiting it. Some convicted war criminals are buried there as well, but hey, why care about what the neighbours think? To the local ultra-nationalists this place has quite a symbolic importance, and while there we see two of these idiots, dressed up as WW2 soldiers, march back and forth, one armed with a rifle and the other with a resounding trumpet.

The museum next door is very professionally set up, and with untypically faultless English texts as well. It is, on the other hand, a very revisionist version of Japanese history being told here – a bit like if Nazis had been in charge of the Danish resistance movement’s museum in Denmark. What infamous ‘Rape of Nanking’? Never heard of it. I barely have time to get a closer look at the real warplanes and a large number of exquisite ship models in wood, metal and even brass, before we practically get kicked out, to the melody of ‘Ould Lang Syne’.

Out in the rain again, across town to the electronic district, which is where the other two want to go, up in a bar for a game of pool, down into the subway where the homeless are lined up for something to eat and eventually shelter for the night, and then a quick ride back to Tepui Bar. Both Jay and Lau are curious and smart people, apparently with a lot of knowledge about Japan and the rest of the world, and the histories of their respective countries. At some point I ask Lau, if the things he tells me about Singapore are some he could express in public back home. “Oh, I’d disappear tomorrow!”, is the cheerful answer.

Monday Nov. 20 - Photos, Interviews & Filming

2007-07-22T14:33:00.000-07:00

Monday Nov. 20

The promised rains stop about noon, just as well, because I have to ride downtown for some more photo ops. The journalist that interviewed me in Chiba has a photographer, who wants to shoot some pictures where I actually ride out there on the stilt roads. Fine, we’re done in about an hour, and I leave the editorial office with a lot of photo copies of the magazine’s Nimbus articles. Even a recent one written by Yori Kanda, the journalist who visited me a couple of times over the summer.

Interview # 2 is a slightly longer affair than the two hours I had figured beforehand: A whole film crew greets me as I enter Simon Godden’s office, including a director who reminds me about his equivalent in ‘Lost In Translation’ (turns out he used to be a rock guitarist in L.A. a long time ago). Anyway, we have to go somewhere with not too much police, as otherwise they’d need a permission for doing the kind of filming they’re up to. So we go down towards the harbour, in direction of Yokohama, to a somewhat quiet piece of road, which in any case is not easy to find in this town.

Making films is notoriously time consuming, and doing it this time is no exception. Around and around I drive, shots from all angles, heights and directions. At least I get myself a personal translator, Aida (named after the tragic princess in the opera of that name), of Ethiopian origin, so the instructions are not hard to understand. Off I go behind the van, where the director gives all sorts of hand signals and I change gears over and over and over again. The camera man and his camera are roped to the van, just for safety, as he is filming out through the open back door. Things are working out fine, and then they want some kickstarting shots and some more turns, until darkness approaches and the rain comes back.

Back at the office we start a regular filmed interview, with now a total of nine guys involved with camera, microphone, lights etc. Riku Emoto (half Indian), whom I met at Fuji Speedway, asks me about Danish motorcycle culture, about Nimbus, about my feelings for motorcycles and life in general, Aida translates back and forth, there are takes and retakes – the hand shake at the end gets 4-5 shots before I’m happy with it. By 7.30 everybody is happy with it all, after which we go down to take pictures of the Nimbus bobber, in the dry comfort of a garage across the street. Another 1½ hours everybody is even more happy, and it’s a safe bet that my bike is the most photographed Nimbus in all of South East Asia.

It’s dark outside, everybody’s stomachs growl, so it’s time for another large serving of raw fish and other Japanese delicacies, at the crowd’s favourite restaurant right around the corner. Except for one, everybody in this company understands English, which nicely compensates for the days when I got all misty-eyed by just hearing a few comprehensible sentences from the TV in some hotel room. While I finally have a chance at getting answers for my thousands of questions about the local bike scene and other things Japanese, and I of course have a great time with the crowd, the chef comes out and does magic tricks. Something I happen to love to see, when it is done so well as he does it. Not until midnight do we return to the garage.

Which is locked.

No chance to get my bike out, the man at the other end of the phone line says, but my time schedule for tomorrow still allows me to carry some of the luggage down here by train in the morning, and then continue on to the warehouse in one of Yokohama’s 7-8 large harbours. Most of the things I intend to send by ship – tent, side bag, transport crate, helmet – are already strapped onto the bike, so it could look as ‘authentic’ as possible when they filmed it. One of the main people of the company (half Korean, grew up in Italy) and one of the photographers (half French) drives me up to Tepui Bar, where the former gives me some knowledge about Japans drug laws, and about the potent marijuana, which a lot of old people out in the countryside still harvest and smoke. Marijuana was a common recreational drug here, at least until the Americans took over in 1945, but apparently not everybody thinks it should not be smoked, much less be outlawed in the first place.

Tuesday Nov. 21 - Goodbye To The Big Animal

2007-07-22T14:31:00.000-07:00

It was another moist experience at the bar last night, as Lau from Singapore and some Swiss biker hung out there too. Not good, because I had to get up as early as possible to meet the interviewer from yesterday, in a park somewhere in Yokohama. I make it just an hour late, and just like Mother nature-san said a nice goodbye to me some days ago, these kilometres on the Greater Tokyo/Yokohama toll road network is a decent final ride: The sun is shining from a clear blue sky, traffic congestion is to be found only on the other side of the centre dividers, long stretches go under other roads, through tunnels and across very tall bridges, and once again I have this feeling of riding inside the body of some absurdly large monster – following the veins while looking out or down on its intestines of traffic, houses, steaming or smoking industries, shipping ports where thousands of cars are lined up, and all this in the constant roars from large trucks overtaking me. Or the roars from the few I manage to overtake, tons of luggage on the Nimbus notwithstanding.

First a ¾ hour of lunch with Riku – way too little time – in a waterfront park, then back to find the warehouse where I have to assemble the crate, just about half an hour later. The shipping agent is jumping up and down and helps me tighten up the hundred or so nuts and bolts, because he has to be somewhere else before too long. The crate is assembled in record time, papers are signed, then on to find a banking machine to get the rest of the money out for him. But the thing refuses to give me more money, 39,000 yen being today’s allocation. Too bad, then I have to take a train out to his place tomorrow, assuming my account isn’t empty….

I terrorize Tourist Information back in town for half an hour, because there are some (indoors) things I really want to see during the next few days of rain. Then back up to the hotel, skirting around the many homeless sleeping under their dirty blankets, and a tray of cheap sushi for dinner. I have grown fond of this type of food, available from every little convenience store. Too bad it can never be made for this price back home.

Wednesday Nov. 23 - Shinro Ohtake, Pop Artist

2007-07-22T14:28:00.000-07:00

I’m up untypically early, so I can see the big city wake up. Or rather so that it can see me wake up, while I wait down at Ueno Station for the money machine to open. Still have the feeling I might be able to use my remaining days here in an efficient manner. Thankfully the weather is behaving it self – I was really worried last night about the homeless out there in the open. I also finally get some business cards made in proper thick paper – 7½ weeks late – while my attempts at getting out enough money for the shipping agent come to naught. Bugger all, again.

When arriving at Tokyo I saw some poster for a Shinro Ohtake retrospective, at The Museum of Contemporary Art. SO is an artist, whose style is reminiscent of the American pop art master Rauschenberg’s, who is another favourite of mine. The exhibit of 2,000+ of his works is enormous, and at least as large as the museum’s permanent collection. Ohtake must have been incredibly productive, and on top of that he has worked in several different styles: Aside from the dominant and rather impressive collages, the rooms are filled to the brink with etchings, coal drawings, oil paintings, sculptures, photos, bent neon light etc. etc. The cost of taking even a small representative part of this exhibit to The West will be astronomical, but I really would love to have more people outside Japan see this. Google him, if you’re curious enough about this.

At dusk I’m back at Tourist Information, where by now they know I’m not the type to give up easily, if I want them to find something for me. I have really expressed my gratitude (tactically a wise move) when they got something right for me, so at their own initiative the have located some more Manga-shops, where I intend to find some things for my Manga-crazed niece back home. And some more bike-shops too, here as I show up for the third time today. The two girls are really something, especially compared to the airheads who stood behind the same counter six weeks ago.

Thursday Nov. 23 - The Last Goodbyes

2007-07-22T14:19:00.000-07:00

Another day of getting up at some ungodly early hour. Totally without reason, as it turns out, because the door to the money machine down at Ueno Station (only possibility on this national holiday) opens an hour after I stand in front of it. Finally I get the dough, take one of the privatized metro lines out to the shipping agent, and pay him his 110,000 yen. Why both he and his colleague back in Denmark only accept cash, I never will know. Perhaps I’ll get 20,000 yen back if customs here are not being difficult.

Then I criss-cross my way up, to have lunch with Osca, the Mini-Monkeybike man, using different train lines, all with separate ticket systems. Osca has invited several of the guys I meet back then, and by coincidence also the Kawasaki W650 rider, who lead me over the dark mountain pass a week ago. Yet another very authentic lunch in a small cold restaurant – winter is really approaching - then off to a blissfully warm café at an airport nearby. We have a long talk about W650’s, about Osca’s future motorcycle plans, I give them my invitations to come stay at my place when they want to see Denmark, etc.

The W650 man is not on two wheels today, but in his little Suzuki Cappuchino sports car. He offers me a test ride, but I’m too tired after four hours of sleep, and not 100% sure how I’d get out of the small car, if I ever managed to shoehorn myself down into the driver’s seat.

The final handshakes and exchanges of business cards, and I’m off by train to Tokyo Central. I’m too worn down to search for the custom scooter shop the Tourist Information girls found for me, and in any case it seems like my legs are ten centimetres shorter after all this walking about. Perhaps I’ll go there tomorrow. Still the hotel crowd drags me along to Tepui, when they kick us out of the hotel lobby at 10.30.

Friday, Nov. 24 - The Awful Museum

2007-07-22T14:13:00.000-07:00

Today is The Day Of Packing The Suitcase, lest I want to seriously panic when coming home tonight or getting up tomorrow early. The problem is a) the many books and magazines I didn’t dare send with the motorcycle, and b) the 23 kilograms weight limit for my check-in luggage, and c) that the Nimbus leather side bag is not part of my carry-on, like it was last time. And d) that I always carry too much stuff. Not that I would have wanted to without just about all of it – aside from the tent and the very few motorcycle spare parts, I really did use everything. The tank bags get packed until they weigh at least as much as the check-in stuff, and their zippers howl in protest. The laptop is another four kilograms.

Now the big decision: Stay in town and take in the final impressions of Tokyo, or got to the airplane museum near Narita Airport, a few hours train ride from here. The aforementioned Tourist Information airheads told me, five weeks ago, that this was Japan’s major airplane collection, so hoping to see some WW2 bombers and prototype aircraft, I go out there. In any case I’m to eat dinner in Chiba with Crazy Pete and his wife tonight, halfway to Narita.

A bad decision, it turns out, because this is the most pitiful museum of it’s kind, that I have seen in my whole life: A dozen of uninteresting civilian planes, in various stages of forlornness, a copy of a Farman biplane from before WW1, 3-4 large piston engines and a lot of scale models. Going back to Tokyo makes no sense this time of the day, but at least there’s a decent library and internet access, which I use until closing time some hours later.

Back near Chiba I walk around a while, before meeting the others, who then take me to a good restaurant with mainly meat dishes. Poor Pete can barely keep up with the conversation, as his wife and I clearly need to exercise our English. But he’s hanging on the best he can, and swears that one day he’ll visit both me in Copenhagen and some Dutch coffee-shops in Amsterdam, when one day before too long they’ll fly to Europe.

Flying Home

2007-07-22T14:11:00.000-07:00

Saturday Nov. 25

After dragging my 50 kilograms personal ’road train’ to the station, up and down innumerable stairs and endless corridors, I end up on the train to Narita. It’ll probably be my last subway ride on this side of the globe, and like on most other days people in the train sit, or occasionally even stand, and sleep. This will be the one memory of the Tokyo metro system, that will stay with me hopefully forever.

When reaching the airport, I’m worn out even before the real journey home has started. Security check is a quick, shoeless affair, copies of my boarding pass and passport are faxed to the shipping agent, so customs will trust that I’m gone for good, and I will get my carnet deposit back. Also fork out 3,000 yen for a luggage cart, because my back already suffers from dragging things here. I should have hired natives for carrying all this stuff, and maybe even carrying me. Now that I think about it, a BMW riding butler with all the luggage wouldn’t have been a bad idea either. The Nimbus really was so much more fun without all the dead weight.

Amongst minor miracles I count the only half full 747, this meaning I can choose for myself a seat where my long legs can actually be stretched out. To the extent I don’t mind people tripping over them, while I try to sleep. This is incredibly much nicer than when I flew the other way, and the flight attendants are in a great mood to, having only half their usual workload. For the first time in eight weeks I hold a knife and fork in my hands; the Japanese part of this trip ended the very moment the wheels left the ground. I surf the 15-20 movie channels available, and hear Bob Dylan’s new, boring album on the headphones.

Even Heathrow is easy this time, and quick, as there’s only just time to quickly catch the connecting flight. At least for me; there’s some kind of déjà vu in Copenhagen, because just like on the flight out, my check-in luggage has decided to spend a little more time in London. Perfectly fine with me, I had dreaded the thought of manhandling all that weight home on the train and the bus.

Postscript

2007-07-22T14:09:00.000-07:00

Home again, to December’s cold and rain, and the usual three-month long display of a thousand grey nuances (Danish winters suck). To a chronically understaffed Postal Service. To my family’s many crisis’s. And to non-weblog-reading friends’ many questions about how the trip went. Weblog readers already know things went great.

Preparations:

Before leaving for Tokyo, I tried hard to find some Japanese contacts through the internet. With little success, unfortunately, because very few understood English, and even fewer were able to answer my questions. Www.horizonsunlimited.com has a few contact addresses, which either weren’t updated or the people were away travelling. So in the end my only contacts were those that a London-based Japanese motorcycle journalist gave me, plus one – Crazy Pete in Chiba – that a friend here thought of giving me a few days before departure.

Three Times Lucky (out of dozens):

In Japan it rains a lot, which was why I went there in October and November, supposedly a relative dry period. In those two months the northern part of Japan had unusually bad weather, while the southern part was unusually sunny and dry. I only rode in the rain twice, for four and two hours respectively. Plus for about fifteen minutes in Tokyo, going home from the film session. It’s not that that I have a problem with wet weather riding, but being on a bike is still more fun in the dry.

Meeting the two famous chopper builders of Zero Motorcycles and Chicara Motorcycles, and spending time with them the way I did. The former I only met because he happened to be at the shop the very hour I called. The latter I saw mainly because by coincidence someone at the first old bike rally asked a friend of Chicara Nagata to call him.

The Iwashita motorcycle museum on Kyoto was a planned stop, while the rider house and the good company was an unexpected bonus.

There were, of course, a number of other great coincidences along the way, too numerous to all be mentioned here. I do remember you all.

The Nimbus Bobber:

The old Danish motorcycle turned out to be perfect for this type of touring, in part because of it’s inherent qualities as a motorcycle, but mainly because it opened at lot of doors for me. Vintage bike enthusiasts loved it because it was old and unusual, and the chopper and hotrod crowd really appreciated the bobber style. Had I just bought myself a normal modern motorcycle over there, these people all would probably have treated me nice too, but I’d still just have been a normal tourist.

The cost of transporting the Nimbus back and forth, plus the carnet’s insurance, was about 320,000 yen. Buying and later selling a local motorcycle might have been 40,000 to 100,000 yen cheaper, depending how large and expensive a bike one desires. For one person a 250 cc or 400 cc bike would be sufficient for roads of Southern Japan, because they just don’t drive all that fast here. Should I buy something in Japan, and ride in a more rainy part of the year, one of the large scooters might have been an option.

Two Good Moves (aside from deciding to bring the Nimbus along):

First of all it was buying the laptop. As normal communication with the natives was very difficult, it was a great comfort to sit every evening and type down the day’s impressions on keyboard. Out of my head, onto the screen, and again there was room in the skull for the next day’s bombardment of sights and senses. Normally I sleep 7-7½ hours each night, but throughout the trip I made do with 5 or 6. So the adrenalin production must have been running in top gear. Had I not been able to clear my mind every night, my head would probably have exploded before I reached Hiroshima.

The second good move was to use cheap hotels instead of camping out. I’ve never been much of a camper anyway, but have used it for saving money or because my travelling companions used them. It was good to have at the first old bike meet, because this allowed me to have a lot of fun with the other drunks at the rally site. Besides, having it strapped onto the front probably gave me some street-cred (camp-cred?) as a serious touring rider.

Had I pitched my tent the nights that was at all possible, I might have saved 100-120,000 yen, but then I’d always have needed to find an onsen to wash the diesel out of may hair, and still not have anywhere to plug in the laptop (old battery). In which case this weblog might not even have existed.

Price:
As mentioned above, using the Nimbus cost me about 320,000 yen, and add to that about 5,500 kilometers of wear and tear. Then there was the 120,000 for round trip air fare for me, and app. 10,000 yen per day for food, lodging, gas, oil and whatever. I still have the laptop, so it is not part of this equation. I was able to sublet my apartment, which saved me 140,000 yen, so all in all the bill runs up to 860,000 yen (US$ 7,238 / £ 3,668 / 5,451 Euros) for my second longest motorcycle vacation on the Nimbus. The exact figure has not been figured out yet, as I still have to check my next bank statement, and I want to see the bike outside my front door, before I’m sure there are no further shipping costs.

Better Ideas:

Despite many attempts, I never found out if my one-wheel motorcycle trailer would be legal in Japan. No-one I emailed knew, while everybody said that a) the bike absolutely had to have turn signals, and b) there was no chance of riding without a helmet. In reality the many cops I met said not a word about the missing turn signals, and they all accepted the translated doctor’s permit for me riding without my helmet. So now I’m sure I could have gotten away with the trailer too, which would have made the bobber a bit more elegant to look at.

More research about Japan would have been an advantage too, even if my schedule kept me busy as it was. Many places were only learned about by accident – the kamikaze museum I coincidentally read about in the Lonely Planet guide, one late night when I was unable to sleep.

Other than that, I’d do it all over again much the same way.

Some Advice:

Learn Japanese, or live with the little English they speak over there. If you’re a total loner type of person, or if you have a travel companion, the language barrier isn’t much of a problem (despite the many times I mentioned it above). Had my trip lasted three months instead of eight weeks, I’d have taken Japanese classes for a full year before.

Forget about Tokyo, and go to more pleasant and charming cities like Kyoto or Hiroshima instead. Also use a minimum of one month over there, if you’re on a motorcycle. Japan is more expensive than most other countries, but not as horrible as many will make you believe – all depending, of course, what your standards for accommodation and food are. By the way, I did learn to love sushi – even the mediocre stuff on plastic trays, that you buy for 400 yen from any supermarket or convenience store.

Buy the English Lonely Planet guide book, or something similar, and read it thoroughly at least a few weeks before actually going to Japan. The 3,200 yen are well spent.

Please do not hesitate to write, if you want any further information (ccc40821@gmail.com). I do, however, know nothing about buying or renting a motorcycle over there, nor can I tell anything about the northern part of the country. Local motorcyclists often described Hokkaido as the best place to ride in Japan, but also said to bring high-quality rain gear.