Ride 3: Shibuya to 相模湖

75km (due to detours); cycling time: 9am to 3:30PM; weather: sunny, 20C noon then low teens towards evening; wind: slight

Given a fairly late evening in Shinjuku, the morning start was delayed.  Got breakfast at Family Mart and left Fukudaya just before 9AM. Goal for the day was to at least hit Hachioji (八王子市) and then see how far I can go from there before starting to look for a place while it’s light (before 4PM).

Getting out of Tokyo took a long time. Then plan was to take Route 423 and then 118 to hit Route 20 which I take more or less all the way until Matsumoto. Both Route 423 and 118 were tiny – bearly enough to fit two cars and didn’t look like national highways at all. The neighbourhoods of Daizawa and Funabashi just went on and on – mazes of tiny streets and inter mingled with railway tracks. Though fairly interesting to observe these neighborhoods and see people go about their lives (a lot of women carrying small children around on seats built into front handlebars of bicycles – a great innovation I thought), I took not just a couple of wrong turns, even with Gallileo. OpenStreetMaps was not all correct and was easy to mistake a side street for the main road!

After passing Chofu (调布市), the city thinned out substantially though traffic lights were still too frequent to make riding enjoyable. The weather was ideal for riding and could already see Mt. Fuji clearly in the distance. After 国立市, took another wrong turn and followed Route 29 rather than Route 20. This was easy enough to fix and getting back to Route 20 took me across a beautiful bridge with another unobstructed view of Mt. Fuji.

I arrived in 八王子 around 12:30, had ramen for lunch by the main road and put some more air into the rear tires. On the road again at 1PM, I decided to try a small local road which follows the motorway because Route 20 from Hachioji to 相模湖 goes over a big hill and I took my chances that this little road would be an easier ride. Unfortunately, after a 5km ride, mostly uphill, some of which I had to push, this road came to a park entrance and no more road. The motorway was above me to my right and about to go in a tunnel. I knew there would be a tunnel but thought that there must be a way of at least pushing my bike through the tunnel to avoid climbing the hill. Well, turned out there was no way of doing that. The motorway was also fenced off so completely from any potential access points, that I couldn’t even take a proper look at the tunnel entrance to gauge my chances. Lesson learned. In Japan, don’t take my chances! And where possible plan ahead!

So detouring back, I took Route 20 and climbed steadily for an hour. At this point, I pushed the bike for a few hundred meters and all of a sudden I was at the top of the hill. There was a café there and I asked for a Coke, to find they had only Coke Zero. No point drinking no suger, so I opted for a Japanese sports drink instead. Put on my windbreaker and tracksuit bottoms for the way down. Really nice ride with speeds between 30-35km/hr, occasionally hitting 40km/hr on long straights. So at 3:30PM, and 75km laster, I rolled into 相模湖.

With a little more experience than before, I went to the train station, found the tourist information center and asked for hotel suggestions. No words of English at all (would be nice if tourist office could speak at least a couple of words right?) but very friendly and keen to help. From her expressions, seemed finding a place was not easy, but the map she gave me showed 5 or 6 ryokans. She also gave me a brochure for a business hotel – but that was in the next town over!

相模湖 is a hilly town next to the lake. 4 of the ryokans are not far from the lake, and I tried these first. The first one, 清水亭 didn’t look that great and so I went to find 藤家which should have been next to it. Wasn’t easy to find and but it looked quite run down. Given my experience at Narita, I wanted to find a more professionally run place where I could get internet and neither of these places looked like they would have it. Next I went further up the mountain to 大正馆, not before witnessing a bunch of people filming a horror movie in a really creeping looking carpark (a shortcut). That ryokan seemed deserted and I couldn’t find a way in even though some lights were on. Creepy indeed.

Further up the hill is a much better looking ryokan called 桂月. Owners are super nice but again no word of English. I managed to find out they have a room available but no internet. Determined as I am to find a place with internet, I backtracked along Route 20 for 1.5km to an onsen (天下茶屋) which was advertised at the tourist information place and looked quite neat. By this time, it was already quarter to six and completely dark. After some climbing, got to the entrance to the onsen, which is by the road. Surprisingly, the main building itself is down a very long, steep and windy footpath – at least 200 meters! So leaving my bike, I went down by myself (in case I had to push the bike up again). From the response I knew it wasn’t good, but since I’ve made such an effort already, I called Naoko and she kindly spoke to the owner, who said they have free rooms, but only for two people! How strange…

Anyway, went all the way back up the path, found my bike and rode back into town stopping by another two places – both said they didn’t have availability. Now I was getting a bit concerned! Either bad luck or these guys didn’t want the hassle of dealing with non-Japanese speakers. Book ahead I think for small towns!!

For some reason, I wanted to check out 清水亭 in case it had internet. So all the way down to the lake I went again, and carried my bike across the shortcut to the carpark. The filming people are gone but the carpark was still pretty creepy! When I got to 清水亭 all lights were out and couldn’t get anyone after knocking. At least I had my torch… At this point, I was pretty resigned to whatever works and called Naoko to say I’m going back to 桂月 and asked is she could kindly do the talking for me after I arrived.

So 桂月 is where I’m at. The room is comfortable and I’ll sleep soon to attack the road to Kofu nice and early! For tomorrow: I can record my journey now since moving the laptop to the front panniers and connecting the charging cable to the iphone. This function seems to use up the battery so I didn’t use it continuously before. Even though the laptop doesn’t quite fit the front bags, it’s been good on the hill down to 相模湖and I will use this set up tomorrow.

In the evening, thought about my itinerary for the next few days. Next day at Kofu, take two days to Matsumoto and then make way to Takayama. Think Skyline Road is closed so not sure how to access some of the places. Will see in Matsumoto.