We had a nice social group ride to Onyu Pass, 75km (47 mi) of mountain roads north of Kyoto. The entire trip was about 150km (93 mi).

The first three hours would be just moving north, and would cover most of the length of National Route 367, thereby mostly mimicking the start of my recent “Stupid Cycling Tricks” ride.

I've cycled these hairpins eight times so far, but had never stopped for the view. Today was a relaxing ride, so I indulged. The big tower in the center is the subject of “Kyoto’s “I Fall” Tower” almost eight years ago.

Salvo had been getting into and out of an aero position just to stretch his back, and had to laugh when I asked him to repeat the process for the camera. But repeat it he did...

We all rode together for the first while, but I eventually had the idea to try to get some shots of the group from above, which meant going ahead enough to be above them on one of the many cutbacks.

Not coming across any good views of the road below with people in them, I eventually gave up the idea of getting a picture and decided to give a real effort for the rest of the climb.

First I had to catch Ionut.

We're more or less evenly matched, though he's a bit on the stronger side, but I had the advantage of not having put in any real effort so far this day. He had done the previous climb in a monumentally-fast 21 minutes, while I had taken 37 minutes of lazy chatting and photography.

Plus, he hadn't done this climb before so had no idea what to expect or how best to pace himself. It was my fifth time.

So, I beat him to the top by 10 seconds.

I'm really happy with my level of fitness these days (compared to my earlier self). Despite the slow start and the pauses for photography, my time of 24:16 was a new PR (personal record) by three and a half minutes. Compared to others in my group I'm still solidly a middle-of-the-pack rider; to get into KOM (“King of the Mountain”) territory I'd need to shave off an additional four minutes, and that's not going to happen.

(UPDATE: it didn't happen for me, but it did for Ionut, who got himself into shape and by the next summer he crushed the KOM.)

“Manseki, why did you take the group shot without me?”
“Don't worry, you were in background.”

The road continues on toward Obama and the coast, but the northern descent is not paved so I've not used this route for any of the times I've ridden to Obama (this, this, and this).

The main metrics for cycling as a sport are speed while climbing, speed over long distances, and intense sprint speed at the end of a race. But I tend to really enjoy fast descents, and tend to be very good at it, so that's what I'll talk about. 🙂

Everyone had started the descent before me, but I quickly caught up with them and then spent the bulk of the descent placing myself such that my bike's two cameras (one facing forward, the other backward) might get good views of others, in case I ever find the energy to edit the footage into an interesting clip.

So, considering that I spent most of the time riding with the group and no time trying to make a fast descent, it's not surprising that it wasn't my fastest descent of this mountain by a long shot. What does surprise me, though, is that even though it was only my third fastest, it was still faster than anyone else registered on Strava has ever done it. 🙂

After climbing and descending Hanase Pass, we returned to Kyoto hungry and satisfied. Some of us got together for nabe and drinks. It was a fun ending to a fun day.

The only downside to the day for me was the descent to Kyoto from Hanase Pass. I was shocked to find that I had made a PR, even though I had stopped at one point to put on my windbreaker, and had generally ratcheted back the pace due to the encroaching darkness. It's not a descent that I try to go fast on anyway, because some sections of the road are brutally bumpy, making parts of the descent decidedly unfun.

So, the PR was unexpected but not unwelcome. What was unwelcome was that the mount used to hold my front camera (Cyclic Fly12) and cycle computer (Garmin Edge 820) to my bike — a $60 K-EDGE Garmin Mount XL — snapped when I hit one of those bumps. The whole thing would have gone crashing to the ground at high speed except, thankfully, I had a backup tether for just such an eventuality. I had been thinking earlier in the ride that I should just get rid of the tether because the mount seems so strong.

Well, the mount is strong, but the bolts holding parts of it together, not so much:

The mount arm is actually two separate pieces joined with two small bolts, an odd design that creates a weak-link-in-the-chain point of failure in otherwise robust construction. I'm guessing that in this case, one of the bolts worked itself loose early in the descent, causing a lot of stress on the remaining bolt during subsequent bumps, eventually giving way on a big bump. The video of the descent becomes quite shaky leading up to the failure, lending credence to this theory.

This “one bolt worked loose” theory surprises me for a couple of reasons. One is that I had specifically checked the bolts for looseness earlier in the ride, trying to track down a rattling noise from the area. The bolts were secure. (It turns out that the rattling is coming from within the Fly12 camera.)

Furthermore, I thought that I had secured the two bolts particularly well, even using Loctite 222 to prevent them from working loose. I had noticed one bolt working a bit loose a month or so ago, so took care to make them snug with the Loctite. Apparently it wasn't enough.... perhaps next time I should use Loctite 262 High Strength Mil-Spec Red Threadlocker :-/

I can understand a design like this from an ease-of-manufacturing point of view because it lets you create separate halves for connecting to the bike and connecting to whatever accessory you want to mount, letting you then combine them in endless ways rather than having to specifically manufacture every permutation of bike-side/accessory combo. Still, it seems to place an inordinate amount of trust on two little bolts, and on the user's ability to tighten them properly and maintain vigilance that they remain tight.

I reached out to the company to ask about a similar mount with unibody construction, and to their credit they responded quickly with a desire to understand the failure and to make things right. (Merely by responding they have done more than TiGRA did when my TiGRA iPhone mount failed catastrophically, destroying my iPhone; TiGRA didn't even respond.)

I'll send the K-EDGE folks a bunch of photos and the video that shows the failure was during a ride (and not, for example, during a crash), and we'll see how things go. Not sure I'd want to trust the two-dinky-bolt design again. We'll see.

Update: As I write in “Update on my Bike-Mount Failure: K-EDGE Comes Through”, I'm trusting the mount again.

Congratulations to Tetsuo Azuma for his restaurant acá1° having been awarded a Michelin star, the only Spanish restaurant in Kyoto to have earned the honor. For comparison, Osaka, which has double the population, has none. Tokyo, which has about 10 times the population, has three.

After working and apprenticing in Japan, New York, and Spain, he opened his own restaurant in November 2013. I was his first customer.

We've seen Tetsuo on my blog before, a year before opening his restaurant, in “Father/Son Photo Shoot: Tetsuo and Issei”.

The thin-sliced ham calls to mind the tasty Spanish ham and beer five years ago that led, in a curious way reported on that post, to me meeting Tetsuo in the first place.

I've been to his restaurant a number of time since, of course, but seem to have photos from only a few visits. (Somehow I guess I wanted to concentrate on the food instead of the photography?)

I'm no good at food photography anyway, and using a phone camera certainly doesn't help, but like everything he prepares, his grilled vegetables are amazing, much more-so than the photo might allude to. Grilling vegetables is such a simple thing and we've all done it, so why don't mine taste like this? 🙂

I'd brought Fumie there for a date night, and she liked it so much we went back the next week for our anniversary. I must have mentioned the occasion when making the reservation, because he surprised us at the end of the meal with a bonus dessert plate:

Last year we brought Fumie's folks for a family dinner, and for that I actually had a real camera...

Somewhere along the line he changed from a menu system to a set course, where you show up and get the day's meal. When you make your reservation, you can mention allergies and special requests, but for the most part it's a set course.

The flavor and presentation are decidedly adult, but he's not at all kid averse, so while us four adults had the day's set-course meal, he made a special plate of kid-friendly tastes for 13-year-old Anthony. The presentation is still top notch, though.

To be able to abandon a menu and tell customers “show up and I'll decide what to give you”, well, I thought that it must be a testament to how well the restaurant is doing. I imagine it lets him concentrate more on specific dishes that offer variety over time instead of limiting oneself to what you can provide all the time. As a customer, you give up flexibility for a more unique, tasty experience. I suppose.

(Another friend has a two-Michelin-star restaurant, and he's never had a menu; he didn't even want to be listed in the Michelin Guide and tried to get them to take his restaurant out, but apparently to no avail since it's still listed.)

A similar testament to how well he's doing is my inability to make a reservation at short notice; he's too popular for a spur-of-the-moment date night. You know, one would think that having been his first customer would get me free meals for life and maybe even a kidney or two, but no, I can't even get a next-day reservation. First-world problems. 🙂

One thing Tetsuo does better than anyone I've ever seen is prepare food at your table. He brings it over in bulk, perhaps does a final slice or mix, and then dishes it out to the plates as seen above. The impact of how he does it is completely lost in these words, but it's amazing. The quiet care and precision of his movements exude the sense that you're witnessing a true expert at work, a feeling all the more enhanced by his humble demeanor and a total lack that it's being done for show.

It sets a mood of anticipation, and very high expectations that don't fail. It really added to the experience when he did this for our table.

Fumie is a particular fan of paella and we've tried it at many Spanish restaurants in the area, but his paella is the only one that can match what she had in Barcelona. Every time we try the paella at a new place, we're disappointed. “It's not as good as Tetsuo's.” I'm a particular fan of his black squid-ink paella.

While we're talking about what he's spoiled for us, I've got to add in there sangria. I love a good sangria, and he makes his own that's simply amazing. A glass of it ends with an apple slice at the bottom, the slice having been soaking in wine and other fruits, so to pluck it out and eat it is a slice of heaven.

(Sadly, like the whole restaurant, it's a bit pricey for my normal level, but since we're indulging in the first place even to go, in this I let myself indulge even further.)

Now that he's listed in the Michelin Guide with a star, I suppose that reservations will be even harder to get. Best to call well ahead. (I don't know about his staff, but Tetsuo is perfectly fluent in English. I also suppose he speaks Spanish as well.)

(Only iPhone photos today, sorry)

The other day I went for a ride with Ionut and his friend Suzuki-san (view on Strava). We started with the two-part climb up to th Ushio Kannon Temple in the Yamashina area of Kyoto.

The first part is 2.1 km (1.3 miles) at 8%, which isn't so bad unless the road is wet, in which case it's suicide. In the most-steep areas entire width of the road is inexplicably painted red (perhaps to warn you to the steepness?) but the paint makes for a ridiculously slippery surface when wet.

Here's a photo from a ride in June when it was wet:

The paint develops a sheen of green moss that also appears on the non-red areas, but the paint seems to both foster the moss, and increase its slipperiness. It was sufficiently dangerous that time in June that I was scared to even hobble along by foot.

Anyway, I don't recommend this road when it's wet.

It wasn't wet this most recent time, and in trying to keep up with Ionut and Suzuki-san, I set my PR (personal record) for the first part of the climb, so that was nice.

That first part leads to a parking lot, from which a second, more sinister climb emerges, the 460m at 18% (max 32%!) “Final Death Climb”. Here's the video from my bike's front camera:

(There's also a video of the climb last January, from my bike's back camera.)

This was the fourth time I've done this climb, and I'm still scared every time to start it, praying that I don't lose footing and fall over. So far so good. I thought it would have been the slowest time I'd done it, as I didn't put that much effort (relatively speaking) into it, but it turns out it was my fastest of the four efforts, so hooray for a new PR here, too.

Back to the recent climb with Ionut and Suzuki-san, at the end of the video you can see a member of the temple staff come out to chat and offer us a refreshing shiso drink.

The guy is very friendly, and we ended up spending an hour with him as he kindly showed us around.

Adherents stand under the water, usually in winter, for five minutes at a time to pray (similar to what this guy is about to do). We were offered the opportunity to do it, but we politely declined. 🙂

We did pose for a photo, though.

He showed us some of the temple's treasures, old and new, including a two-part carving of a dragon. One part can be seen above, the tail diving into the ground (the other part is the head emerging). It was carved just a couple of years ago, by a chainsaw artist!

Like many temples, this one has a big bell, but at this temple, one is encouraged to stand in the bell when it's rung.

It's not as loud as one might imagine, and being so close, you can hear the rich tone for a long time. I stood listening for about 40 seconds before I was called out.

He explained about a festival coming up where they do Buddhist chanting. This is a lyrical kind of chant that leaves non-native Japanese speakers like me wondering “is this really Japanese? Do native Japanese actually understand it?”. This time I asked, to which the quick answer from the two Japaneses native present was “no” and “no”.

That's why he has a cheat sheet available, showing the pronunciation. The actual chant books they use were 100+ years old, airing out on the temple's tatami floor in preparation for the festival.

(We've seen this kind of chant lyrics on my blog before, at the top of “Setsubun Festival at the Heian Shrine: Intense Burn Begins”.)

From the train advertisement poster, dated January 1938, one can see that this temple used to be directly related to the famous Kiyomizu Temple a few miles away (last seen on my blog here). That temple has a very brisk tourist trade and they make money hand over fist. As the story goes, they apparently got tired of paying a tithe back to the head of their sect, so a bit over 50 years ago they left the sect (and the relationship with this temple) to stand on their own and keep all their profits.

He's also got some photos from up on the mountain above the temple. Similar views are seen when riding up by bicycle, as I did here.

Having spent so long at the temple, Ionut was running out of time for a ride, so we just headed over to Otsu to Sajo Towson (茶丈藤村) for coffee and sweets, and to introduce him to the cyclist owner, and the cyclist waitress seen on this blog post.

Ionut quickly headed back to Kyoto and his errands, while Suzuki-san and I took a longer route through some mountains toward Uji. Suzuki-san is much faster than I am, so in trying to keep up with him (and trying to beat dusk), I ended up making PRs on all four climbs back to Kyoto, so that was nice.

I didn't have clear eye protection with me, and it was too dark to safely wear my sunglasses, so no PR attempts on the descents. I don't like going much beyond 30kph (20mph) without something to protect my eyes from bugs and raindrops. Even as it was, I ended up averaging 45kph (28mph) on this descent, which eye-wise is relying on luck more than I'd care.

A couple of weeks ago we had a nice social ride out to Miyama Japan. It was my third and most-relaxing visit, after the initial shock of a tough ride a year ago that was my longest ride at the time, and again via a mountains route not long after with Gorm.

This time we took a less-mountains route to get there, though for some it would be their longest ride by a factor of two.

It's while inspecting our route on the map for this ride that I came up with the silly idea of riding the entire length of National Route 162. (Most of it is not narrow like this.)

We paused to see the Iwato Ochiba Shrine, which is spectacular in autumn. The nearby photos link shows many nice fall-foliage photos from this shrine. We'll have to stop by again toward the end of November to see it in full glory.

At this point we'd gone about 50km (31mi) and still weren't halfway, though it was already approaching the longest ride ever for Alicia and Stephanie. (Kumiko, I know, has done a 230km/143mi ride, because it's documented here, though today's ride already had about as much mountain climbing as that entire ride had, so they're each challenging in their own way.)

Joey's Bar was a wonderful place to relax, chat, and sip on coffee, so we ended up spending way too long there. Finally we moved along toward the quaint village of Miyama...

Unfortunately, Jamie had been feeling increasingly ill, and had to abandon the ride at Miyama. The ladies returned to Kyoto via the route we came, while I headed back via a route that was more mountainous, but perhaps quicker, to fetch my car. Manseki stayed back to keep Jamie company.

The relaxing nature of the ride was over, and I lit the afterburners (which for me is more like a kid's fourth-of-July sparkler) and headed back towards Kyoto over Sasari Pass. I'd done the western climb to Sasari Pass — 5.6km/3.5mi at 6.2% — only once before, and absolutely hated every moment of it. It's felt unrelenting and steep. With that preconceived notion this time it was more tough mentally than physically, as I'm in much better shape now, and those numbers (any distance at 6%) otherwise doesn't faze me.

After descending the other side, I got a message that Jamie had been able to get a lift from a local, so I no longer needed to speed to Kyoto for my car. So, I returned back up to Sasari Pass and all the way back down the other side, to meet back up with Manseki who would be heading this way from Miyama.

The timing was great as I arrived at the base of the climb just as Manseki was arriving from Miyama, so I turned around and we headed back up.

It was my third ascent to Sasari Pass that day. After descending toward Kyoto, at just about the spot I'd turned around the first time, we stopped by a cafe for coffee.

This cafe is in the middle of nowhere. There's not so much as a vending machine for miles in any direction. The coffee and bread were wonderful.

Manseki and I then returned to Kyoto over Hanase Pass. All in all the extra climbs up Sasari made it a longer day for me than most, and the ride totaled out at 139km (87mi) with 2,570m (8,425') of climb:

Here's the Relive.cc video:

Though we returned in three different groups, we all made it home fine, and everyone had a nice long ride under their belt.

After a wonderful ride with friends beyond Kyoto's Mt. Atago the other day, I returned the next day for 110km (68mi) of solo exploration in the same general area.

Early on in the ride I passed through Arashiyama in western Kyoto, with its famous bridge. We've seen it before on my blog in rain and in sun and crowned by a rainbow. Today was fairly bland, but a big bird was doing a batman pose, so that was something.

There's a path along the river southwest of the bridge that leads up to a temple with a great view that I visited some years ago, but apparently never posted about. Anyway, the path is fine for a road bike for a while, and from the path I got the photo at the top of the page.

Eventually the path ends as far as bikes are concerned:

It's probably not as bad as this climb, but I didn't have the guts to try it just now.

The road through the bamboo forest in Arashiyama is a public road open to cars, but folks treat it like their living room, wandering about aimlessly with their eyes glued to their camera or phone.

I then made my way up and over Mt. Atago, setting a PR (personal record) by a wide margin, which pleases me because I kept my effort low enough to not kill myself.

I missed beating my KOM time (“King of the Mountain”, the fastest time by a male) on the Nishigaya Dam Descent by three seconds because I saw a big monkey run across the road ahead of me, and didn't want to chance that there would be others. It's one thing to see wildlife at the side of the road when slowly grinding uphill, but quite another when plunging downhill at 70kph (45mph).

Then for the first time I did the long fun New Momiji Descent, and likely got the second-fastest time, but my activity doesn't match the segment for some reason. Sadly, the Strava support staff member assigned to my query about it is either really lazy or a complete jerk because the cut-n-paste responses have little to do with my actual question. It must be depressing to have a job you just don't care about. Sigh.

It was chilly (15℃/59℉) on the descent, so I was happy to find a coffee shop, but no one was around. I walked in and called out, but the place was deserted. Weird.

Much nicer than this, and sort of reminded me of this. I paused to fill up.

It wasn't unknown, actually, because I had done my homework. It's a short 180m at a steep 18% access road to a water-storage tank...

Pre-ride research had brought me to this page that includes info about this little climb. The photos at the time (three years ago) show little vegetation, but now it's overgrown and encroaching on the road in a photogenically-pleasing manner....

I moved around to try minor roads I'd never been on.

I discovered a lot of new climbs and fun descents, and make some nice PRs (including one climbing Kyomi North) without having killed myself in the process, so that was very nice.

Less nice were the two flats I got at the end. I think the second flat was a tube that was bad to begin with, though it lasted 10 minutes, so I don't know.

All in all it was a great outing. As a bonus, for the first time this year, I was actually ahead of my arbitrarily-picked 7,000km (4,350mi) goal for the year, which, after four months of unplanned travel, I didn't think I'd be able to make.

(I still might not make it, with less riding in the winter, but it looks promising.)

Here's the Relive.cc video of this ride...