This post picks up from "Last Month’s Particularly Epic Cycling Adventure, Part 1", about a ride that I took with Nigel Randell and Andy Clark a month ago. Part 1 ended with us having reached Minetoko Pass (elevation 888m / 2,900') on a long gravel road.

The descent down the other side was often very rough, and the rain continued, but it was worth it because the views and general scenery were often gorgeous.

One thing that set this descent apart is that the forest it traversed seemed to be mostly original virgin wood, and not farmed ceder seen almost [...]

The mountains around Kyoto are such fertile ground for cycling adventures, I consider many of the rides I go on to be "epic adventures", but the ride a month ago hinted at in "Preview of an Epic Cycling Adventure with Andy and Nigel" stands out.

It was supposed to be a short, vanilla outing on well-known roads, but ended up being a fantastic adventure. Finally, a month later, I'm getting around to posting the longer version of the story.

Andy Clark and I met up with Nigel Randell at a convenience store at the foot of the mountains in northern [...]

I had the pleasure to have lunch today with Rick and Lily Hancock, visiting from Seattle. Rick has been reading my blog for years, and often comments, so we finally met "IRL" (In Real Life).

We spent all our time talking over ramen at Gogyo (五行) so didn't have much time for an outing afterwards, but walked over to the Rokkaku-do Temple for a few pictures.

As I described on this post six years ago, it's common at temples and shrines to pay a small fee for a random "fortune paper". If you get a good one, you take it [...]

I 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 [...]

The other day I got to participate in a relaxing countryside tour in the city of Otsu, next to Kyoto. The tour company, Tour du Lac Biwa ("Lake Biwa Tours"), specializes in unique experiences of things not generally open to the public (even to Japanese) combined with countryside food and hospitality, all presented in English.

この間、面白い事できました。このヴィデオ（NHKより）は簡単に説明します。

When I've gone on tours by them in the past (including this, this, this, and this) it's usually been as a "test foreigner" to give them feedback as they design their tours, and to share my photos with them. It's a symbiotic relationship, where [...]