Kamakura to Kyushu trip preparation

This is my blog of my bicycle trip across Japan. I first plan to cycle from Kamakura to the southern island of Kyushu . About 1300 kilometers (870 miles).

I've been riding road bikes for 5 years. Mostly hard training rides in Southern California like Como Street, Montrose, and racing CAT 5. I also participated in two AMTRAK 100 mile (160 k) events. In 2007 I moved to Kamakura Japan with my wife and 2 kids. Kamakura is located about 50k(30 miles) from Tokyo. Kamakura is a coastal city that was the old Capital of Japan from 1185 to 1333 (according to the wiki article) There's alot of good riding within a 100K(60 miles) of Kamakura. Some of my favorite rides are Kamakura to Mount Hakone 110k(12.5k climb at 6.6% average grade), Kamakura to Tanzawa Mountain 80k ,50mile.( called Yabitsu toge)(11k climb at 5% ave) . Other tuff climbs to look up include Ashigara and last but not least the world famous Mt. Fuji. I rode to Mt Fuji and attempted to climb up to K-5 in October 2008. I abandoned at K-2. Be warned, its mostly 20% grade with no end in sight.

Because of the lack of training-group rides in Japan, I've decided to start doing some touring rides. See the country and ride the bike at the same time. I plan to ride during the day and camp, stealth camp, stay at friends, and even some Ryokan(small travel hotels).

Preparing for this trip has been somewhat frustrating. Japanese stores simply do not have the selection for most items on my list. In the U.S, you would expect your local sporting goods store to have 2 or 3 brands of an item (like a tent) so you could compare them and make a decision. Here in Japan it is either 0 or 1 brand. With the 1 brand sold at an unbelievable rip-off price. Like 100$ tents sold for 40,000 yen ($400 US.....OUCH). There are bicycle shops in most larger cities but very few deals to be found. Most price tags have the price printed on the tag from the manufacturer. In the U.S. the manufacturer suggested price is known as the sucker price. The next time I'm going to make it a point to plan earlier and order from select international shippers online. I ended up buying most of my cycling stuff at a department store in Yokohama called Tokyu Hands(located down the street from the train station). The bike section was bigger then most stand alone bike shops.

For this trip I want to travel as light as possible. So I have kind of rigged up my own bike setup. This setup allows me to take off the bags and ride my bike as normal when i get in the larger cities like Osaka.