On a recent bicycle ride I was surprised to find myself passing the nearest Costco to Kyoto, about 25km (15mi) away. I was a member years ago, and mentally, it was a long way away, taking 45 minutes to drive there through traffic, with $15 of tolls along the way. Unfun. My driving geographic knowledge often never connects to my cycling geographic knowledge, so I'm surprised in this way often.

Anyway, I made a ride to Costco yesterday, explicitly to sign up for a membership and do some shopping. Manseki was going to be heading in the general direction, so we met up and rode with each other for the first while.

Not long after these photo ops, we went our separate ways, and I continued on for 15 more minutes to Costco.

As you can see in the shot above, I was wearing full cycling kit, which look really strange to those not accustomed to it, so to advertise that I was a cyclist (and hence explain the strange clothes), I kept my helmet on inside.

Inside looks like every other Costco on the planet.

Costco is both a blessing and a curse. If you need a 78-roll pack of toilet paper, it's great. If you don't need 78 rolls right this moment, it can be a curse because the low price in dollars (or yen) can blind you to the price in storage and logistics.

Shopping at Costco by bicycle means that I'm limited to what I can consume on site or carry home. I have to really think about each item. So no gazebo or fire pit for me today.

Some things can be consumed on site...

The main thing I wanted was the nuts, which I think is a better evening snack than more-junky things like popcorn and potato chips. (Omitting them altogether would be better still, but I'm mortal.)

I was surprised that I could fit ten of the big tubs of nuts into my backpack. 10! Each is 2,198 yen. I could get them delivered via Amazon Prime for 2,732 yen, meaning I'd save 534 yen each, or 5,340 yen ($47) just on this trip alone. That's more than enough to pay for the 4,400-yen yearly membership fee. Plus, I get a cycling ride out of it.

Unfortunately, I didn't quite save that much because I made a rookie Costco mistake: I didn't have quite enough cash. So I ended up having to leave one of the tubs of nuts at the register. Doh!

Since I wasn't pressed for time, I wandered around a bit in the area...

This building (or whatever it is) is visible from the highway, and is near the Costco. For the last decade I'd wondered what it was, having vaguely assumed it was some sort of religious building, but it turns out (if Google Maps it to be believed) that it's related to the municipal waterworks (a pumping station, reserve tank, or the like). Interesting.

The “#2 Keihan Expressway” connects southern Kyoto with Osaka in a fairly direct manner, and didn't exist 20 years ago. In fact, I wrote about the final parts of its construction nine years ago in A Kinki Drive: The No. 2 Keihan Expressway".

It's elevated for its entire 18-mile length, with a regular public-artery road built in parallel underneath that a bicycle can go on. A bicycle can also go on the minor parallel roads that flank the expressway/artery stack for much of the way, or the walking/cycling path that also parallels much of the way.

This rat's nest of bridges and tunnels is four unrelated layers of transportation:

1. Old, very minor surface roads providing farmers access to their fields.
2. Over them, Two new major city-connecting surface streets cross here.
3. Cycling roads on both sides of the two surface streets connect in an elevated cycleway that allows transfer among any of the eight cycling roads without stopping or interacting with any motor-vehicle traffic.
4. Floating above this all is a full all-direction interchange between two major expressways.

Just to keep things interesting, there's a river just north, and a creek just south.

The look in Google Earth is impressive:

It was fun to poke around this complex at my leisure. This part of the highway was completed perhaps 14 years ago. I actually mention it in my fifth-ever blog post 12 years ago.

When I was done, it was time to get back to the major trunk road, which at this point was at a level well above the surrounding ground:

I rode up the ramp and encountered the biggest problem with the heavy backpack: it's side-to-side movement as I chugged up the super-steep ramp almost threw me off balance. It was a dicey 10 seconds.

While crossing the Uji-River flood plain, we have three lines of transportation all next to each other at the same level. In the center are two lanes in each direction for the expressway. These are flanked by two lanes in each direction for the Route One Bypass. This is all flanked on the outer edges by cycling paths. It feels quite odd when they're all parallel at the same level, but once across the river, only the expressway lanes remain elevated.

I'd ridden by on the road at the base of the steps many times, but had never even noticed that there were steps leading up to the bridge, or thought much about what the road above might be. It was gratifying to add a new piece to my geographical puzzle.

I rode down the steep ramp, only to be surprised at the center pause that the ramp didn't continue for the last step, so the dropoff was unexpected. At least I was less surprised when the same thing happened at the very bottom as well.

Anyway, I was now retracing the first few kilometers of the ride. Here's another photo from the “Meeting Up with Manseki” location, but five hours later:

I may have to head back soon, to pick up a gazebo or two.