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 to meet him...

Kosuke Fukui, whom I've known for about 25 years, fills some of his retirement time by helping out with the business operations at the restaurant, which also produces fresh tofu for other upscale restaurants and supermarkets. That's how I found out about the restaurant in the first place. Anyway, he'd seen my name on the reservation list, so popped over to say high, looking dapper as always. He also appeared on my blog eight years ago.

The Yuba lunch is wonderful, with a rich variety of tofu-based dishes that leaves one a bit overwhelmed as to where to start...

Yuba is very simple... slowly heat soy milk (real soy milk, not the horrible almond-flavored stuff one often finds in The States) until the top forms a thin skin. The thin skin is yuba, and can be skimmed off and eaten directly.

Some patience is required, though with so many other dishes in front of you, you're not at a loss for something to eat.

In our case, six minutes passed between the photo above and Jim taking his first bit of yuba...

After stuffing ourselves silly and thanking Kosuke for a fine meal, I thought to pop over to a relatively-unknown cemetery nearby to show Jim its amazing view. I figured it must have had a side entrance near where we were.

Unfortunately, I instead spent 15 minutes demonstrating my inept knowledge of the area's small side streets, and we ended up all the way at the main street at the bottom of the hill.

Oh well, we'll just head in the front entrance to the cemetery, and pass all the way through it to exit near the entrance to the Kiyomizu Temple, which Jim wanted to visit as well.

(Jim had come by bicycle, so was dressed accordingly, with pantlegs tucked into his socks.)

Inside it was as interesting as always, with a lunar landscape of gravestones....

We got all the way up to the exit at the top of the hill to find it locked, so it turns out that the “no passage to the Kiyomizu Temple” signs we'd seen at the entrance weren't just trying to keep the riffraff from passing through... there really was no passage.

Part of one hillside had given way during a typhoon at one time or the other, so they closed the area to through traffic.

We had to head all the way back down the hill, then back up again to the Kiyomizu Temple. All in all my short little side trip ended up being 3.6 hilly kilometers (2¼ miles). Sorry Jim! At least you were well prepared for it having hiked so much in the mountains the past couple of weeks.

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 I get to do really fun stuff I'd not normally have access to (unless I paid to go on the tour, of course), and they get my considered opinion and some pictures for their web site.

My blog write-ups about my experiences with them probably sound like advertisements; I think they're really great and the time I had with them was one I want to share. I've been living in Japan on and off for 25 years, yet these tours have let me experience new things most Japanese don't even get to do.

Anyway, this time was a bit different, as they were hosting the mayor of Otsu, the city where most of their tours take place, to show what they as a tour company are doing to promote the area, and to explore how to work together with the local government. I was one of three long-term foreign residents of Japan invited to join the discussion (and the tour) with the mayor.

Otsu is a medium-sized city with a population on par with Honolulu or Anaheim, and in land area with San Jose or New Orleans. Being immediately adjacent to both Kyoto and Japan's largest lake has garnered it a rich part of Japan's history, yet the separation from Kyoto by a small line of mountains has kept much of it free from the urban sprawl that has been crowding out Kyoto's nature more and more over the last 1,200 years.

The Mayor of Otsu for the last several years has been Naomi Koshi, who surprised me both by showing up in jeans and a T-shirt, and by being fluent in English. Her clothes were perfectly appropriate for the activity, but somehow I had a more stuffy pre-conceived image of “The Mayor”. Seeing her this way made me feel immediately comfortable.

It turns out that Naomi is a Harvard-educated lawyer who has practiced law in both New York and Tokyo. She grew up here in Otsu.

The adventure this time was a version of Tour du Lac's “Lake Biwa Electric Bike Tour”, abbreviated in several spots to accommodate the mayor's schedule.

The bikes are electrically assisted, so it's not at all the cycling that I do, but it certainly was a perfect fit for a relaxing tour because we could go up into the hills with absolutely no effort.

The bikes used by NORU tours in Kyoto, which I've written about before, are not electrically assisted, but they don't need to be because of the flat routes they take. On this tour in Shiga, we'd be going way up to a rice field in the hills, so the electric motors were much appreciated. It took a bit of experience to figure out that paradoxically, the less effort you put, the faster you went: the electronic motor would do all the work if you just lightly moved the pedals, but would scale back to leave you in full control of the power if you leaned into it.

So, the entourage of cyclists, TV crews, newspaper reporters, photographers, tour staff and city staff headed out for the day's tour...

Despite being just a few minutes from the station, the area was remarkably serene. Normally the tour would go in to explore the shrine area, but on our abbreviated tour we merely stopped for a photo...

The next stop a short distance away was at the house of local artisan Masao Iwasaki, who specializes in a distinctive type of pottery.

His house is hundreds of years old with a lovely thatched roof, but due to the abbreviated schedule of the day, I didn't get a chance to explore it with my camera as much as I would have liked.

He's turned one of the rooms into a gallery/showroom open to the outside, so you can just walk up to check out his work....

We stole a few moments to go inside...

His style is quite distinctive, and can perhaps be a bit overwhelming when so much is displayed together in one presentation, so I found it better to concentrate on an individual piece at a time.

The little park is one that you literally won't find on the map, but the locals (such as the tour leaders) know it and bring their kids to play in the water, or do yoga in front of the wonderful view. There's nothing particularly special about the place... it's just a quiet, lovely place to relax.

You may recognize this general view as one that appeared often in “Pleasant 105km Bike Ride From Kyoto, Along Lake Biwa, to Takashima’s Shirohige Shrine”. It was, as seems to be the theme for this tour, lovely.

This shrine played a part in Japan's war-torn history 500 years ago, saving some important relics from a powerful warlord trying to obliterate all opposition in the region. But on our abbreviated time table, we didn't do more than stop by the parking lot.

I've written about the rice harvest many times, such as “Stages of the Rice Harvest” and “The Rice Harvest, Old-School”, and many others (including here, here, and here). This tour would be the first time I'd actually get to try it myself.

(This part of the tour is obviously seasonal, so I suppose other times of the year you might participate in planting, or just visiting.)

As the farmer explained how to harvest rice, he pointed at the blade of the sickle and, well, let me quote him: “It's very sharp, so if you cut your finger, it hurts.”

This is perhaps just the curious geek in me, but I love to listen to experts talk about things I know little about. For example, the Sarah of my recent post “Bridget and Sarah’s Tour-de-Kyoto” is an expert in food preparation on a huge mass-market scale (e.g. preparing 100,000 boxed lunches for an airline or supermarket chain). I'm familiar with the end product but have only a vague imagination for the challenges that go into the design and preparation of that end product, so I find it fascinating when someone can shed real light on it. As I chatted with Sarah, I sensed in her a “this must be really boring and no one ever asks me about this stuff” reaction, but I found it interesting.

So in the same way, I found it interesting as the community elder explained a difference in how they tie the rice bundle now compared to when he was a kid. I didn't even fully grasp what he was saying, but was fascinated by the fact that it was something that anyone gave a thought to. But, of course, they must give it a lot of thought, as it's an important part of the process; if the knot fails or is too tight, rice production suffers. Such detailed thought about such a seemingly-trivial issue illustrates to me how much thought must go behind so many aspects of life that we don't have a personally-detailed understanding about.

I gave it a try as well. The sickle is indeed very sharp and easily cuts through the rice stalks. Four cut handfuls make a bundle to be tied...

The rice we're harvesting is a special rice intended for sake (Japanese rice wine) production. I asked how it was different from normal Japanese white rice, but I didn't fully understand the subtle nuances. I asked in Japanese; I should have asked in English through one of the tour leaders.

In any case, the sake is made at an old brewery in downtown Otsu that one can visit as part of a separate “culinary feast” tour. I did this tour last year and to my shame I haven't written about it yet, but it was really interesting. Public access to the brewery is normally limited to just a modern storefront, but as members of the tour we were ushered through the back door into the bowels of the 100-year-old complex, where we were given a tour (and samples!) by the n^th-generation headmaster brewer running the place.

On the way to the next part of the tour we stopped for just a minute at a mini shrine related to one of the bigger ones we'd stopped at earlier, for another touch-point on the history of the area. I think more interesting to the foreign visitor is how the mini shrine (at the left of the photo above) seems to be on the property of the nearby houses, such as the one being gestured to on the right.

The shrine and its historical significance are a source of pride to the community, and part of that pride is evident in how the line between personal and shared space is more flexible than what we're used to in The West. Having lived here so long I've gotten used to it, but this was the first time it was pointed out to me so clearly. It's one of the many little tidbits that make Japan so “foreign” and interesting to western visitors.

We then visited a couple of houses in the community...

The stove above immediately caught my eye as looking old and interesting, especially with the style of writing on it that says in Japanese “No. 1 Stove” and “Newest Style”, and in English script “Lead Type” (which I suppose is a reference to a kind of metal rather than leadership, but without hearing it pronounced correctly it's up for speculation).

So while I'm writing this article I was surprised to find that this stove is still for sale new for $700. Seems a bit pricey, but perhaps it'll pay for itself because it burns the discarded husks left over after the rice harvest...

There's rice and water in the pot being held above. It's put on the stove and that's it: in 15 minutes the rice is ready to eat.

While the rice was cooking, we moved to the house of one of the farmers, and had a lovely bento lunch made with local produce.

There were two separate TV crews following us around. The national broadcaster (NHK) ran this video that evening.

The lady tending the garden in front of her house had nothing to do with the day's events, but she happened to be nearby and happened to be working on her garden, and since it made a quaint scene, I thought to snap a photo. But just as I was about to take the photo, one of the tour leaders also noticed her and started chatting like the neighbors they were, to which the happy smile was added to the scene.

We said good-by to the Mayor Koshi, who was taken away by car, and to the news crews who then went their separate ways. We then had another pleasant ride back along the lake to the train station where we'd started out....

The lakeshore was lined with flowers, so I had to stop everyone for one last photo op...

So that was my Tuesday. At the risk of overusing the word, it was a lovely day.

One of my favorite photos of the day was one of the first I took, shooting backwards as we rode up a hill to the first shrine. I had hoped the focus would be on the mayor, but her smile was so big that it's clearly evident even out of focus, complimented by Steve's in-focus smile:

I haven't posted anything in a week, or even read email in a week, because I've been working on some new software projects.

The lack of externally-visible productivity (sorry if you've written and I've not responded) is not because I bought a new bicycle, but while we're on the subject, BTW, I did buy a new bicycle. 🙂

This is a long article written mostly for my own memory. I won't feel bad if you don't read it all

The Old Bike

If you've seen any of my many cycling posts, you'll know that since I started cycling earlier this year, I've been riding a Trek 7.3FX “City/Fitness” bike that I picked up used at a local shop, seen in many of the photos on this recent blog post. I've ridden it about 3,500km (2,200mi) through the mountains around Kyoto.

It's light by non-cyclist standards, weighing in at 13.2kg (29lb) without drinks or luggage. Compare that to the normal mamachari (“Mommy chariot”) that I bought when I returned to Japan 10 years ago, which weighs in at 22.2kg (49lb). But by cyclist standards, where 7kg (15lb) bikes are common, the Trek is heavy, and so I've been told many many times “Dude, if you get a lighter bike you will positively fly up the mountains!”

I liked this because I was a strong powerful rider in their mind without actually having to be strong and powerful. If I actually got a real road bike, I'd be discovered for the slow lumbering give-upper that I am.

Also, physics doesn't back up the thought that the bike weight would have such impact. Sure, it sounds like a big deal to cut the weight in half, but when trying to chug uphill you're not just pushing the weight of the bike, you're pushing the weight of the bike and the rider (and all the stuff I take with me, like my camera, lots of drinks and food, etc.). My weight of 85kg (187lb) dwarfs that of the bike, mitigating the savings. I calculated that moving to a 7kg bike would cut the weight I have to push uphill by 6%. Big whoop.

But then, weight is not the only factor in what makes a bike fast. There's the aerodynamics of the bike, and of the position it puts your body in. There's the amount of friction in the wheel hubs and other moving parts, and of the tires on the road. There's the “rotational weight”, which apparently can have a big impact, so saving weight on the wheels makes for a bigger benefit than the same weight saved elsewhere.

And then there's the psychological factor... if something about the bike makes you feel faster, you will be faster.

I don't think this will all add up to much, but it'll add up to something, so I went ahead and bought a new bike. If nothing else, at least it will shut up the cacophony of “man, you should get a real bike...” comments.

The New Bike

The new bike arrived a few weeks ago, but it was a long, convoluted road to my front door.

After much research, I bought a bike from Rose, a German manufacturer. A number of friends have bikes from German manufacturer Canyon so I looked into getting one there, but at the time they didn't have any in my size.

Preparing a bike to order at Rose's website is really great because you can customize everything about the bike, and they present a huge menu of options. I chose the X-Lite CRS 3100 Di2 as my base, but then was given the option to customize:

• frame size
• frame paint scheme
• crankset (crank and gears that the pedals attach to; I got Shimano Ultegra Semi-compact 52/36)
• sprocket (the set of gears at the rear; I got Shimano Ultegra 11-speed 11-32)
• wheels (I got Shimano Dura Ace C24)
• tires (Continental GP4000 S II 700x25)
• seat, seatpost, stem, handlbars, handlebar tape

Their system makes sure that all components work together (some tires can't work with some wheels, for example), and shows an image of the result updated in real time with the changes you make. It's very spiffy.

I selected fairly high-end gear because I didn't want to outgrow the bike any time soon. When I got into photography a decade ago I was fortunate enough to read this article on tripods by Thom Hogan which teaches that there are two ways to buy a high-quality tripod. The first way is that you waste money on successively-better inferior equipment until you finally buy something that's actually good, or, the second way is that you just buy something actually good right away.

I think this advice applies to a lot of things that are meant to be used for a long time, like furniture, luggage, lenses, suits, etc.

So, I researched as best I could, and relied on the informed opinions of friends I trusted.

Once you've made your selections at Rose's web site, actually placing the order is a much less enjoyable experience.

They say that they accept PayPal, but it turns out that this is only for customers in the EU. At least this tidbit is mentioned in the small print on the site. As for credit cards, not mentioned anywhere on their site is that they accept only “3D Secure” cards, which is something I'd never heard of. It turns out that it's not common in The States... none of my cards had it, nor my parents' cards (I was visiting them when I first tried actually placing the order).

The last resort is a bank wire transfer, so with that method of payment I finally placed the order for my bicycle.... but when I got the wire details, I realized it was a dead end because they don't accept standard international wire transfers, but only wires on some obscure little system used in Europe. Another tidbit they failed to mention on their site.

I couldn't believe how difficult they made it for me to give them my money. They seem to be set up for worldwide sales, but judging by my experience, they appear to have never sold outside the EU. I was ready to give up, until my brother Steve came to the rescue: he had a credit card Rose would accept.

So with his help I placed my order. I had to rebuild the order from scratch; I would have liked to have just updated the payment method on the original order, but for inexplicable reasons Rose doesn't allow anything to be changed once an order has been placed. Absolutely nothing can be changed, even if the order wouldn't move to the next stage for over a month.

Yes, my order would just sit there waiting to be built for five weeks because, I suppose, one of the components I customized was backordered. I was willing to wait.

Meanwhile, I returned to Japan. Upon entry I told the customs officials about the impending arrival of the bike, and they had me declare it as “unaccompanied baggage”. As such, things would go much more smoothly if the phrase “unaccompanied baggage” would be written on the box somewhere, and I had to beg Rose to add the phrase to my mailing label. It took some back and forth because they really really really don't want to change anything about the order after the “order” button has been pressed, but they finally did it for me, thankfully.

Six weeks after ordering, it finally arrived to my door.

I was excited when it arrived, of course, but with the willpower of Zeus himself, I set the box aside unopened for five days because I had family things that needed my attention and so didn't want the distraction of the new bike.

Unboxing

Finally two weeks ago I opened the box...

When the box first arrived, I posted a picture to the “Cycling Kyoto!” facebook group, to which I unsurprisingly received replies like “Nice box!”. My reply to that comment was "Dude, it's HUGE... I can make a fort, a pretend store,.... really, the ideas are limitless. So cool.".

A week later when I actually opened the box, I followed up with....

You wouldn't think that a bicycle would need much of a manual, but there were separate manuals for many parts, including five different manuals for the electronic shifters (separate manuals for front derailleur, the rear derailleur, the controller, the battery, and the shift levers).

Most manuals came in at least a few languages, but the manual for the battery (just a battery!) seems to have come in all languages...

One of the crank arms (where the pedals attach) had a huge gash in its metal on the inside edge, something that had to have happened before he bike was assembled at Rose. To their credit, when I contacted them about it, their first immediate reply was that they would send a replacement and so would I be able to install it? That was cool.

To swap it out requires specialized tools, but would take only five minutes, so I said I could have a bike shop do it. But then I also said that I'd consider just accepting a credit to my account and deal with it completely myself. If this idea appealed to them I thought they'd propose an amount, but instead they replied “Great, we've credited you €50”. Uh, okay, I would have like to have been given the option to accept or decline, but sure, that seems reasonable.

There wasn't much assembly to be done, but part of it was hooking up the battery (that of many manuals) in the seat stem to a wire coming from the frame. A special tool was included to facilitate this, but it was impossible to use. I think they installed a wire backwards or something, and I sent them photos to let them know about a possible problem in their assembly process. But I could work around it easily enough.

The bottle cages, which I had bought separately, are to be installed with two simple screws each, and this proved to be a much more difficult task for me. I somehow installed the first cage upside down, so I had to take it off and reinstall it. Silly me. But then I inexplicably did the exact same thing with the second one. Am I old enough to use the phrase “senior moment”?

Day 0 Test Ride

I'd never ridden a bike with drop handles, so was a bit worried how I'd handle how it handles. As a little test, I cycled over to NORU Kyoto for a cup of coffee and to show off the new bike.

As I explained above, I wasn't too hopeful for how the low weight (7.2kg without drinks or luggage) would help me when climbing mountains, but I did have hope for how the large 52-tooth front gear would help me on a fast straightaway. With that in mind, on the way home I gave it some gas on a 600m (⅓ mile) straightaway where the speed limit is 50 kph.

I kept up with the cars, so figured that I did it sort of well. I'd find out the details once I got home and uploaded the ride data to Strava.

Finally before returning home, I wanted to see how it felt on a hill, so I gave a try to a little hill that rises 47m over 600m (150' over ⅓ mile) for an average grade of 8%.

What I found out is that exherting oneself on the new bike is no more nor less tiring than on the old bike... hard is still hard. I didn't give it 100%, but the 70% I gave felt like 70% on the old bike.

So I returned home and uploaded the data to Strava, and was a bit surprised to find that despite not having given it my all, I actually beat my previous best time on the straightaway section by two seconds, to log a time of 50 seconds with an average speed of 47kph (29mph).

This was the second fastest time of all the 316 people who have recorded attempts of the segment at Strava, which might sound impressive except for the fact that most folks riding the segment don't realize nor care that it's a segment; they're just cycling by on the way to or from somewhere.

Still, it's rare that I get into the top anything, so I'll take it. If I go there some Sunday morning when there's no traffic, I'm sure I can beat the 46 seconds currently listed as the top time (but if any of my friends actually make an effort at a time, I'm sure they can do it faster than I can).

More surprising still was my time on the little climb near my house where I beat my previous PR by 13 seconds to log a time of 1:15. This put me in sixth place out of 526 riders who have logged the segment with Strava. This was better than the 6% improvement I thought I might find, so I was pleased.

Day 1

The next day I went out for a quiet ride with Michael Edwards, and we did a “Heart Loop”, a common Kyoto route described here.

Michael was feeling sluggish due to jetlag, having just returned from a visit to The States, so we took it easy, and I got the chance to start to get to know the bike.

Michael is a fast guy, so his “taking it easy” on the first little climb out of Kyoto (3% for 1.5km) was still faster than I'd done it the first time. But it felt easier than the first time, so that boded well.

When we got to the farming village of Ohara, we stopped for some photos...

When I was configuring the bike at Rose's website, I could choose black or white for the stem (the short segment that connects the handlebars to the bike frame), and for some reason I thought that white might make for an interesting accent. I realized that I was wrong on that point the moment the bike arrived, and the white stem just looks out of place.

As I write this article a week later, it's already been changed for a black one, but not for vanity reasons. More on that later.

Most bikes tend to look generally the same to me except for paint and color, and mine is no different, but Michael's is unique and stands out with some very futuristic aero features, such as non-round spokes and his new handlebars, which look like something Darth Vader would fly...

I'll have to do a photo session with Michael and his bike with my good camera, so I can do both justice. You can't tell in the photos above, but his bike is very cool; I hereby dub it “blade”. 🙂

We continued on, and on the first big climb (7% for 1.7km) we rode slowly together and it was very easy. When I got home and checked the data, I was shocked to find that I'd missed my PR by only a slim margin (6:15 vs. 6:01). If I'd known at the time it would have changed how I felt about the rest of the ride... it was really shocking to me that an effortless lazy stroll on the new bike could end up being almost as fast as a fairly hard effort on the old bike.

Then there was a long downhill where I tried go quickly. I had hoped the larger gear on the front would allow me to continue to accelerate as long as I had power, but I quickly “spun out” (reached the limit for how fast I could pedal), and so my speed was similarly limited. I was disappointed, and not surprised when I returned home to find that I'd beat my PR by only four seconds (2:27→2:23).

Then we came upon a short little uphill sprint that I like to try my best on, so I hit it fairly hard. Like the little uphill sprint I tried the previous day, I didn't feel any faster, just equally tired. Thus, it was one of the biggest shockers for me when I got home... it turns out that I crushed my PR on this one, despite giving it only an 80% effort. My previous PR was 1:44 on a day that I got a running start at it and gave it absolutely everything I had, but today I did it in 1:19, an improvement of 24%.

Again, I didn't know any of this while I was out riding.

After a long lazy climb back into the mountains, we came to Mochikoshi Pass (持越峠), a short but brutal climb that rises at a 10% grade for 1.1km. Unlike, say, the much more difficult Momoi Pass where the brutality is in trying to merely complete it, the brutality of Mochikoshi Pass East is in trying to do it quickly. The steepest section is at the beginning, leaving little left in the gas tank for the remaining bulk of the climb.

Michael, who had been one of the more vocal “dude, if you had a real bike...” crowd, suggested that I could do the hill in five or five and a half minutes. Considering that my times on previous attempts had been 6:27 and 7:05, anything below 6:00 seemed far fetched, but to make an informal timing I left a stopwatch running on my handlebar-mounted phone, and noted its times when I crossed the starting and ending points of the segment.

It was horrible. I was breathing so hard for the entire run that my throat got cracked and dry. It was not fun at all.

But I did it in about 5:05, which perhaps made up for the pain that persisted in my throat for the next couple of days as the pain turned into a mild cold (or the pain was an early warning for a mild cold). I was stoked... the bike really did make me faster.

Michael was still in “taking it easy” mode, so I'd left him behind at the start, and was likely not visible to him on the hairpin-filled road after the first 30 seconds, yet based on how I started he was able to predict that I'd done it in five minutes. When I got home to check, it turned out to have been 5:01. Amazing observation skills, Michael.

We took it easy for the rest of the ride back to Kyoto, stopping by the Hasegawa cafe for coffee.

We then stopped by the “Nasty” 21% grade. As I mentioned in my update on riding clipped in, its an ultra steep section like that still makes me worried about falling over, so I thought I should just get it over with.

I was quite apprehensive about it, especially since a large group of riders arrived just after us and so any falling over would be done in front of them.

My concentration was not on speed, but on simply not falling over, and it turns out to have been no problem. It also turns out that I again crushed my PR, going from 39 seconds to 33 seconds. As I write here, Strava has issues with this particular segment, but I believe my 33-second time is the 3rd best overall.

So, that was my first real ride, 57km (35mi) filled with new personal records and hope for the future. Michael and the others were right: I would be fast on a new bike.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned about the throat pain, I did come down with a cold for a few days. Once it was mostly better, I went out for a ride just to try to chase the cold away with some physical effort.

Ride #2

On Ride #2 I did some exploring of new mountains, and some short climbs. I didn't exert myself too much, but still made a few new PRs, so that was nice.

The electronic shifters are nice, but they are not as smart as I'd hoped. You can press the button to shift gears very quickly, and it tries to move the derailleur faster than the gears can actually shift, so if you're not careful, you can get some clunking and skipping.

And even if you're careful, it still clunks and skips at times under heavy load. It's much better than what I had before, but it's not at all perfect. It's nice and I don't feel the need to change it, but using it still requires skill.

Ride #3

The next day I went out for an easy ride with Anthony, 43km (27mi) along a river and back.

We went as far as this park that I wrote about 8½ years ago, which is absolutely stunning during cherry-blossom season. When we were there, it was “just” simply lovely.

It was a trivial ride for me, but quite an accomplishment for 12-year-old Anthony, who hasn't ridden his bike much lately. I'm glad I made him get a shower right away after we returned home, because he then fell asleep and didn't wake up until it was time to get ready for school the next morning.

Ride #4

I was feeling better from my cold, so the next day I did a more ambitious ride of 110km (68mi) with lots of climbing, with Manseki. We had great fun exploring new mountains to the southeast of Kyoto.

It's interesting to compare the photo above with this photo (also by Manseki) at the same location on a ride in March, going the other way. It was one of my first long rides, and the climb absolutely killed me.

The jersey has text at the bottom saying “Give Your Brain The Night Off”. I thought this might have more “character” than the rolling billboards that cyclists tend to wear. Some cyclists are actually paid to wear their sponsor's logos (such as Sarah, seen here, who I believe is sponsored by Aussie retailer bikebug). I'm not good enough to be sponsored by anyone, so instead I'll go with “character”. 🙂

Moving off into uncharted territory, we climbed a road up Mt. Tanakami (田上山) that I'd seen on Google Earth, which is great for finding unmapped logging roads and the like. I've since added the road to OpenStreetMap.org, and the segment to Strava. I currently have the “King of the Mountain” (best ever) record, simply because I'm the only one to ever log it with Strava. 🙂

There's a nice view from the top:

For context, the bridge seen in the background of this picture can be made out near the upper left of the photo above.

Descending the other side of the mountain involved a kilometer of gravel and fording a stream, but we were soon thrown into our next climb.

I don't know what road the “16%” sign was for, but it wasn't for the road we were on, because the climb was not bad at 7% for 4.6km, followed by the most lovely fast descent where I could average over 40 kph for more than three minutes.

It ends near some nice rice fields, where the harvest has started.

I had been hoping to make it as far as this remote temple, but we were taking it too easy and time was running short, so we turned around at the gate of The Miho Museum.

On the way home we stopped by the Sajo Towson (茶丈藤村) cafe, which is run by a cyclist friend of Manseki. We'd stopped by on that ride in March as well.

I had some Terabe Mochi, which was a waste because I scarfed it down but its delicate flavors are better suited to a slow lingering enjoyment. I should just bring some home next time.

The proprietress, Maria, kindly gave us an extra little snack, some kind of semi-sweet translucent jelly-like “noodle”...

Getting closer to home, we swung by this lovely little segment that I discovered while on the kicking-my-cold ride two days prior...

Feeling mentally comfortable on the bike, I made PRs on the last two climbs before home, where I tied Gorm's time on Kosekikoshi Pass (小関越), and shaved off a few seconds from the climb up the hill at Keage (蹴上げ東), which I last PR'd after the 230km ride around Lake Biwa.

All in all, a good day.

Ride #5

Finally, my most recent ride was another heart loop. It was a group ride where we mostly stuck together, but I still made a bunch of PRs, including averaging almost 60 kph (37mph) for the two minutes down the fast downhill I mentioned from Day 1.

Twice I hit a five-second average of 70 kph (44mph), but that seems to be my limit. I've been told since then that gains beyond that are to be had in aerodynamics, so I'll have to follow the advice in this well-timed GCN video on aero-riding.

I couldn't repeat my 5:01 time on Mochikoshi Pass, even though I felt I tried harder. The first initial climb just killed me, and I had nothing left for the rest. I did a 5:10. I guess this tells me to take it easy on the first climb, then use the saved energy on the “easier” (everything's relative) last ⅔ of the segment.

So, that's my experience with the new bike. After 309km (190mi) I feel pretty comfortable with it, mostly.

It's my first drop-handle bike so I've still got to get used to the various riding positions it affords. They're so different from anything I've ever experienced that I don't have the knowledge to differentiate between something I've just not gotten used to yet, and something that's misadjusted. So with this in mind, I went to someone who does have that knowledge, and stopped by for a followup bike fitting at Vincent Flanagan's PedalForth.

Since this was a followup to my earlier bike-fitting session, Vincent started right in with the measurements of the bike's current setup, and asking me how I feel about that current setup.

I felt mostly good about the bike, but felt that maybe the reach to the handlebars was a bit long, and that I wasn't sure yet how to get the most power through the pedals. Now when riding hard, I sometimes feel I'm not being particularly efficient. I don't know whether these are issues of the bike setup or just my ignorance on how to ride this kind of bike.

Vincent did his thing, and we ended up moving the seat up by 23mm (⅞"), the handlebars back by 32mm (1¼") and up by 21mm (⅞"). They sound like small changes, but they made a world of difference and suddenly the bike felt “right”.

As a bonus side effect, the re-positioning of the handlebars required a shorter stem, so I was able to get rid of the white one that stuck out like sore thumb.

It felt great on the ride home, but unfortunately a busy schedule and another mild cold have conspired to keep me off the bike. I can't wait to try the new setup on some real climbs...

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 abandon...

Bridget's time of 41 seconds is almost certainly earns her the “QOM” (Queen of the Mountain — fastest female) award, but due to problems with Strava's system many faster irrelevant entries pollute the data, so we'll never know.

I was really reluctant to give the steep hill a try with my new clipped-in shoes/pedals, but I figured that if I was going to fall over, I should fall over with my current bike instead of the new one on order, so I ended up giving it a try, making it my fifth attempt overall...

I didn't fall over (yeah), and my time of 39 seconds tied my personal best. (I've since done it in 33 seconds, but that's a different story.)

Now back in the city we stopped by a bike shop to get new tubes, and later we all met for okonomiyaki and yakisoba...

And so ended Day 1 of their Tour de Kyoto. Day 2 would be tomorrow.

To be continued...

I stopped by NORU Kyoto today, which reopened after a summer hiatus. I'd mentioned them last May in “Discovering Kyoto’s Wonderful Toji-in Temple on a Tour with NORU”.

I picked up a nice quick-dry T-shirt from Morvélo, a British cycling brand.

I think that NORU is the only place to get them in Japan, though I suppose you could get them directly from the company if you didn't mind paying more plus shipping.

It's much more expensive than the 500-yen Uniqlo T's that I wrote about three years ago, but also much more comfortable and stylish. The price is on par with comparable T's from the Under Armour brand that I like so much (and whose stock I own), but I've got to admit that I like the Morvélo style better.

I learned today that “vélo” means “bicycle” in French.

I almost bought this retro-looking jersey, which to me looks like a movie poster from the 1930s, but held off until I get a better feel for what size will be appropriate when I start riding a real road bike.

I also picked up a Chapeau! base-layer T-shirt whose fabric felt so good when I came across it on the rack that I just had to have it. I think I'll wear it around town as opposed to waiting for it to be cool enough to wear it while cycling.

Chapeau! is another British cycling brand that I think is exclusive in Japan to NORU. “Chapeau” is of course French for “hat”, but it's also the cycling term for “kudos”, a verbal “hat tip” recognition of something well done.