If you follow the Arakawa river trail far north of Tokyo, past the gleaming towers of Omiya, through quiet bucolic rice fields, deep into the bowels of Saitama prefecture, after some 50 kilometers of riding you will come to one of the great destinations for Japan cyclists -- the bicycle cafe.
Today I rode to bicycle cafe as part of my brick -- a workout combining swimming, cycling and running.
As is so often the case, it was Keren Miers who discovered the bicycle cafe for our Tokyo cycling club. The Arakawa river trail appears to dead-end some 35 kilometers upriver from Tokyo Bay. But one day Keren followed a group of local riders over a bridge, past a golf course and up a side road and discovered the path continues for god knows how long - maybe up into the Japan Alps, maybe to the Japan Sea.
The bicycle cafe appears out of nowhere along the bike path riding north throught the farmland. The cafe itself is in a rusting, ramshackle building next to a small swamp. The building is surrounded by vending machines with small plastic table and chairs scattered in the patch of gravel out front. Nearby are several outhouses. Perched high on a pole in front of the cafe is an old, vintage Schwinn bicycle. The bicycle cafe may not be much to look at. And for that matter the food is not very special either. But after 50 kilometers of cycling, a plate of piping hot yakisoba, a bottle of cold Pocari Sweat and a can of Boss coffee can somehow be remarkably satisfying.
3 comments:
Does today really mean today, Thursday? Does the blog entry that mean you have also done the swimming and running, or are they being punctuated by a short respite for a quick blog update? It is only 10:57 by my watch afterall. Gambatte Jay!
Like so many triathletes today, rather than stretching or massage or fueling during our transitions we update our blogs.
My blog settings seem to be stuck in the past. It says Wednesday now, but I am pretty sure that it is Thursday January 26 today..
Go into your blog settings and under formatting there is a field to change your time zone.
Another handy tip is under the Settings - Email tab, you can set up an email address that you can use to post to the blog. It is the "Mail-to-Blogger Address. Once it is set up, you send an email to that address and the email becomes a blog post with the subject line as the header. I do a lot of my posts like that; saves opening up Blogger. I only use Blogger if I want to include a photo.
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