Search ResultsI started helping out Australian professor Jim Breen with his "edict" online Japanese-English dictionary in about 1989 when it had less than 3,000 entries. It has more than 230,000 now. In all the intervening years we'd met in real life only once, about 15 years ago, so I was very happy to meet him for lunch today as he finishes up a long hiking vacation in Japan. He mentioned an interest in Yuba, so I knew the perfect spot, Junsei Okabeya (清水順正 おかべ家), which I wrote about several years ago here. It's near the Kiyomizu Temple, so I went there [...] View full post » Finally getting around to finishing Day 1 of "Bridget and Sarah's Tour-de-Kyoto", after Part 1 and Part 2 last week. After many flats and a nice visit to a rural temple, we headed south toward Kyoto... My favorite little secret restaurant in the middle of nowhere. Clicking on "nearby photos" above shows the many times I've posted from here. The girls were starving and were finished with their curry before the photo above had finished writing to the camera memory card. On the way home after lunch, we stopped by Kyoto’s Nasty 21% city-bike hill climb, which Bridget hit with [...] View full post » I had a wonderful little bike ride today, 48km distance with 1,720m of elevation gain (30 miles of distance with 5,600 feet of elevation gain). (The report of the ride at Strava reports longer distance and less elevation gain, but I trust Google's elevation data for Kyoto more than I truest my phone's GPS/GLONASS unit's elevation.) Things didn't start well. I went downstairs to my bike to find the rear tire quite flat, likely a slow leak from the spoke problem I had on the ride last week. I'd ridden 70km after it was fixed so I thought it was [...] View full post » For my first "real" cycling ride after my USA vacation, I had a lot of Under Armour clothes to choose from. I've been enamored with the brand for a while, so took the opportunity while in The States of actually being able to find my size to buy about a thousand dollars worth of the stuff, from sportswear to casual wear to jackets. With sportsware I'm partial to loud vibrant colors, especially for visibility when road cycling. But perhaps in retrospect I shouldn't have quite gone so full throttle. Still, with this getup I bet I could always get a [...] View full post » Today I made my first "real" bicycling ride. Normally the bicycle is just for transportation from one place to the other, and not my first choice for either exercise nor pleasure, but I recently replaced my 10-year-old mamachari ("Mama Chariot", heavy, built like a tank, and can carry oodles of kids and stuff) with a lighter cross bike. 今日は初めての本物の自転車でツアーイング。新しい友達と一緒に55キロの山巡り。大原と貴船を見に行きました。 Through the Cycling Kyoto Facebook group I learned that some folks would have a "slow easy" ride today, so I thought it was a good opportunity to give it a try. We ended up going 55km (34 miles) up into the [...] View full post » |