Edogawa River Route

Finding reasonably convenient and pleasant places to ride in Tokyo continues to be one of the more critical concerns in my life.  Of course I would like to think I am wrestling with large and meaningful issues in my life these days, but the fact is discovering good bicycle routes is pretty high on the list.

So I am pretty darn thrilled to find a secret passage to the East.  The path runs through various historic Tokyo neighborhoods and ultimately leads to the Edogawa bike path.  Well I guess I should acknowledge that most of the route was courtesy of Mike Sims-Williams of the Tokyo freewheel group, so I shouldn't be too quick to rank myself alongside Magellen and Henry Hudson.  While the route has a significant number of stoplights, the roads have much less traffic than the route I had used previously in my journeys from Roppongi to the Arakawa frequently running alongside canals.   Here is a link that shows part of the secret passage:

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=129308

What delighted me even more than the secret passage was discovering how surprisingly scenic and barrier free the past is alongside the western banks of the Edogawa River. 

The weather today (Friday) was ideal  which no doubt contributed to my good feeling about the route.  The weather and the fact that I am sick to death of the Arakawa, Oifuto, etc. 

Unfortunately I only managed to ride up to the 37-kilometer mark.  I had hoped to get in some actual ironman-level cycling training for once, but as usual my cycling time was truncated.  Today it was due to my not realizing that the China Consulate would be closed all of next week, so I had to spend the morning getting an expedited visa for my upcoming trip to Beijing and Shanghai.