Jeffrey E.F. Friedl's Blog

Japanese roads often have different rules between bicycles and cars, such as a bicycle being allowedto go against traffic on many one-way roads, or a bicycle being prohibited from certain road sections.However, the related traffic signage can be confusing even for Japanese natives.

Making it even more confusing is that certain kinds of situations have different signage in different parts of thecountry.

This article goes into some of the details as I understand them (which is imperfect, for sure).

First of all, under Japanese law, a bicycle is a vehicle, just as acar is a vehicle, so traffic signs and traffic laws fully apply to bicycles. For example, it'sillegal for any vehicle, including bicycles, to travel on a sidewalk... unless, of course, there'ssignage or local ordinance explicitly allowing some kinds of vehicles, as is often the case for bicycles on sidewalks. Bicycles are vehicles under the law.

(This means, among much else, that bicycles must come to a complete and full stop at stop signs, may not cross red lights, mustyield to pedestrians in marked crosswalks, and must stop at railroad tracks not controlled by a traffic light. I know cyclists whohave been stopped by police for some of these infractions.)

Let's look at some of the basic road signs to recognize as a cyclist.

Signs that explicitly prohibit bicycles table.signlist img { border: none; width: 180px ; height: 180px }

Road Closed
to all, even pedestrians.
no bicyclesNo Vehicle Access
to all vehicles.
no bicycles No Entrance
to all vehicles.
no bicyclesMotor Vehicles Only
(sort of)

bicycles definitely not allowed No Bicycles
that means youNo Non-Motorized Vehicles
including bicyclesPedestrians Only
no bicycles

Any of the signs above, unless augmented by additional clarifying signage, mean that you officially can't use the road whileriding a bicycle (though in practice things may be different, so don't base your understanding of thelaw on what you observe others do).

For example, consider the two blue signs above: in practice if you ride in a “Pedestrians Only” zone, it's may be that no one will care, but if you rideon a “Motor Vehicles Only” road, you can expect to be stopped very quickly by someone acting in an official capacity.

On the other hand, these restrict others but not bicycles:

Bicycles Only
bicycles okay Pedestrians and Bicycles Only
bicycles okay
Common for sidewalks No Motor Vehicles
except two-wheel vehicles
bicycles okayNo Motor Vehicles
(sort of)
bicycles okay No Non-Motorized Vehicles Except Bicycles
bicycles okay

Among the various uncommon signs that impact bicycles, I wanted to point this one out:

Riding side-by-side allowed

Without the benefit of this sign, riding bicycles side by side is illegal. If you're in the middle of nowhere and you'renot impacting cars, no one will care, but if you ride side-by-side on a busy street, holding up traffic behind you, you arewrong. Some cyclists I've met act as if they own the road and that the rules, whatever they are, don't apply to them. Don't bethat jerk. If it doesn't bother anyone, sure, do whatever you like, but if you're going to break the law, at least don't beinconsiderate to others.

Anywway, all the signs above might seem confusing enough, but it gets worse. Much, much worse.Here's a common set of signs seen in my part of the country, where a one-way road empties into another:

One Way · Do Not Enter
unless you're a bicycle, in which case feel free to enter

Let's look at the signs in detail:

Generally speaking, traffic signs inform of a restriction of some sort — here we have “no entrance” and “one way” —but a restriction can be made more specific by additional little signs under itcalled 「補助標識」 (“subsignage”, hojo hyoushiki).　 In this case, both have the subsignage 「自転車を除く」(“except bicycles”, jitennsha wo nozoku) under them, so these restrictions do not apply to bicycles. This road is not “one way” for bicycles, and they may travel either direction.

Some parts of Japan use different signage for essentially the same thing; we'll look at that later.

Here's a common sign that prohibits bicycles where most other vehicles may go:

No Bicycles or Other Non-Motorized Vehicles
though disallowed only from 8am to 9pm

This might at first seem as if it prohibits “bicycles and hand carts”, but on road signage,the hand-cart symbol officially signifies “non-motorized vehicles except bicycles”, so the above signreally means “no bicycles and no non-motorized vehicles except bicycles”.

In other words, it means what in English we would express by “motorized vehicles only”. So why isn't it expressed that way? Welcome to Japanese traffic law, which often comes across as if Yoda wroteit while trying to parody himself. Oh, are pedestrians allowed? Unlikely, because there's a wide sidewalk here.Mystifying. In any case, bicycles not allowed.

Here's the same sign (without the time limitation), and with an additional “no pedestrians” sign:

No Bicycles, Other Non-Motorized Vehicles, or Pedestrians

The same “no bicycles, no other non-motorized vehicles” sign makes an appearance here:

Lots of Signs

In the top center of the photo, one sign sort of sticking out to the right prohibits motorcycles from using the right lane, andthough a bit blurry in this photo, our “no bicycles, no other non-motorized vehicles” sign is near it, also applying only to the rightlane.

Oddly, pedestrians are restricted from the left lane but not the right, implying that pedestrians should use the right lane,which doesn't fit the vibe of this area which is that pedestrians shouldn't be here in the first place. I'm probably missingsomething important here.

An even bigger restriction — “motor vehicle only” — is used for highways and tollways:

In the photo above, the multiple sets of circle-with-a-slash restrictions (one each for “noscooters”, “no bicycles”, and “no pedestrians”) placed on the left side of the road are just an extrakindness likely placed at this specific location because they had a lot of trouble here; the heavylifting is actually done by the small circular blue sign a bit farther in the distance:

Motor Vehicles Only
(sort of)

(The small sign under the round blue one in this case is not one that makes the restriction more specific, but simply spells out that the road is a high-speed national motorway, and notes parenthetically that it's a toll road.)

I added “sort of” to the “Motor Vehicles Only” caption above because of quirks in how a Japanese legal term is translated todaily English. We'll see details later, but in this case I couldn't use this road with my 125cc scooter, even though in commonEnglish we'd consider it a motor vehicle.

Let's see another style of restriction:

The red circle on white with a slash means “closed to vehicles”, but there's a little clarifying sign under:

The small sign says 「原付・小特・軽車両」, limiting the “closed to vehicles” restriction to just the three classes of vehicle listed,which roughly speaking encompasses “scooters, small farm equipment, and non-motorized vehicles”. Bicycles are non-motorized vehicles, so bicyclesmay not enter this road.

This may seem complicated, but it's actually much more complicated than it looks.

Broadly speaking, Japanese law divides all vehicles into one of three main classes:

Legal ClassExamples軽車両
keisharyo

“Non-Motorized Vehicle”

(literally “light vehicle”)Most human/animal-powered vehicles

bicycles, unicycles, ricksha, horse-drawn carts, kick-scooters, parade floats, sleds, tricycles, push-carts, dollies, etc.

(Excluded: wheelchairs, walking aids, and toy vehicles for children are not legally “vehicles” at all)

原動機付自転車
gendoukituki jitensha

“Motor-Attached Bicycle”

Common shorthand: 原付 (gentsuki)
 Mopeds and scooters and motorcycles with a “small enough” engine displacement

those with an engine displacement of 50cc or less (some parts of the law)
those with an engine displacement of 125cc or less (other parts of the law)

自動車
jidousha

“Motor Vehicle”
(sort of)
 
 Non-rail motorized vehicles not accounted for above

cars, trucks, cranes, buses, farm equipment, motorcycles with “big enough” engines, construction equipment, etc.

(Trains and other rail vehicles are covered by totally different laws.)

Each class has a myriad of subclasses, some of which you may encounter on signs. Let's revisit the “scooters, small farm equipment, and non-motorized vehicles”sign from above:

「原付・小特・軽車両」

原付 (gentsuki) — short for 「原動機付自転車」, the broad “motor-attached bicycle” class seen above.
 小特 (shotoku) — short for 「小型特殊自動車」, “small special motorized vehicle”, a sub-class of the broad “motor vehicle” class seen above,encompassing things like farm equipment and construction equipment that fall within certain maximum limits of size, power, and speed.
 軽車両 (keisharyo) — the broad non-motorized “light vehicle” class seen above, which includes bicycles.

Sometimes it seems as if it requires a PhD in both language and logic to figure out some signs. Consider this example frommy blog a decade ago:

Can you figure it out exactly what the restriction is? See the article for the convoluted answer.

Here's another example:

Again, see the blog post for an explanation.

The ones above are convoluted but with some effort those who read Japanese can figure them out. But sometimes it's just impossible to understand the meaning without knowing the specific rules of precedence and association that dictate whatparts of the signs applies to what other parts:

Pedestrians
Only

except bicycles5pm-5amexcept Sundays and holidays
8-9:30am
Noon-1pm

I brought this photo to a police station and had a fairly-senior-looking officer explain in detailwhat this meant. Later, I happened to come across a few traffic officersmanning a speed trap and asked them, and got another detailed explanation... quite different from the first!

(All the officers I talked to said that the sign was horrible.)

Explanation 1

Pedestrians only, but bicycles allowed.This restriction against other vehicles applies only in the evening (5pm through to 5am),meaning that cars etc. can use the road during the day (5am through to 5pm).Also, the restriction doesn't apply during the two short periods on Sundays and holidays.

Explanation 2

Pedestrians only, but bicycles allowed from 5pm through to 5am.Also, on weekdays, these restrictions also apply during two short additional periods.

These are completely different (!!) and probably neither are correct. If those charged to enforce these kinds of signs have no idea what they really mean, howcan average citizens?

Let's see whether we can figure it out.... (Hint: we can't)

The separator line above “except Sundays and holidays” seems to strongly indicate that the three lines below it (“except Sundaysand holidays”, “8-9:30am”, and “Noon-1pm”) all go together, but the question is how do they combine and apply to theoverall restriction? The double and triple negatives make my head spin. Is it that the restriction is in force only during the twotime slots, but not at all on Sundays and holidays, or is it that on weekdays the restriction applies only during the two time slots? My current guess would be the latter, but ask me tomorrow and I might come to a different conclusion.

And then there's that separator between “except bicycles” and “5pm-5am”, making me feel that those lines don't go together andthat each applies to the overall restriction independently. That's what we see in Explanation 1. But if so, why would they use“pedestrians only” with an “exceptbicycles” modifier when there's a perfectly good “pedestrians and bicycles only” sign? Maybe that's just the way they do things: I came acrossa standalone “pedestrians only” with an “exceptbicycles” modifier just today. It makes no sense to me.

All that being said, how does the “5pm-5am” line combine with the bottom half of the sign? Does the bottom half add to the“5pm-5am” on some days, or replace it on those days?

The relevant Japanese law (around 第2章 第3-8(6)ア in this PDF) says that separator lines may be used for clarification,but it doesn't seem to help in this case.

Sigh, I have no idea.

For reference, here's a case where no black-separator line is used, but it's clear:

NO ENTRANCE

except bicycles
all day
300m ahead

Here's another example not uncommon in my area:

This is a standard “No Entrance” sign, with the little sign under limiting the restriction to 「自動車」(most motor-vehicles exceptsome scooters), but then the parenthetical 「二輪を除く」removes all motorcycles from the restriction. So, all motorizedtwo-wheeled vehicles and all non-powered vehicles (which includes bicycles) can go both ways.

Some Extra Notes

Vehicles that would seem to belong to one category can actually be placed in another, depending on a variety of special conditions.For example, a “pedal-assist” bicycle, which has a motor to assist the user while pedaling, but won't propel the vehicle otherwise,can legally be a “bicycle” if the motor is weak enough.

In the law (and on traffic signs),「自転車」(“bicycle”) has a specific legal meaning that includes specifications on size and on thenumber and type of people it's designed to accommodate. Generally, it's what one would consider a “normal” bicycle. But note that a tandembicycle — a bicycle designed for two or more operators — is not legally a “bicycle”, so it falls into the general non-motorized “light vehicle” category. We'll see later an example of where this can be animportant distinction.

However, each prefecture has its own laws about tandem bicycles, mentioned in short in this Wikipedia page. Tandem bicycles had been generally prohibited on roads until recently, but as of this writing most such restrictions have been removed.

Electric vehicles of all sorts, other than the pedal-assist bicycle just mentioned (and mobility-assist devices, etc. thatare not legally a vehicle), generally fall into one of the motorized-vehicle categories, all of whichrequires a valid driver's license to operate, and proper vehicular licensing to use on public roads.This (currently) includes even weakly-powered vehicles like electric skateboards, hoverboards, and electric kick scooters, thoughas of this writing the law is slated to change to allow unlicensed use of these kinds of things. We'll see.

The moment you dismount your bicycle and push it while walking, you are now a pedestrian and the bike is justsomething you have with you. This is a special rule that does not apply to most other non-motorized vehicles, such as push cartsand rickshaw and parade floats, which are initially designed to be pushed or pulled, and so are “vehicles” under all conditions.

Three-wheeled vehicles are placed into categories depending on a variety of factors, including size, whether they have an engine (and how powerful the engine is, and how it is interacted with), maximum powered speed, etc. Depending on these, they can be placed into any of the broad vehicle categories.

Trivia: ask the average Japanese person what 「軽車両」(keisharyo) refers to, and instead ofthe correct answer (“the broad class encompassing non-motorized vehicles, including bicycles”), you'll likely hear the definitionfor 「軽自動車」(keijidousha), which is a sub-class of automobile meeting certain size and engine restrictions that enjoys beneficial taxation and parking, and can be identified by the fact that their license plates use a black/yellow color scheme, instead of the normal white/green.

In some prefectures, bicycles are allowed in both directions on most one-way streets in this way:

Here, the modifier signs say 「自動車・原付」, which as we saw above arethe two motorized broad category of vehicles, meaning that the restrictions do not apply to the third, the non-motorized“light vehicle” category, which of course includes bicycles. So,bicycles can ride either direction.

As you'll recall, in my area the restrictions exempt only bicycles, but here all non-motorized vehicles are exempted. The difference between the two are all the other (non-bicycle) non-motorized vehicles, such as tandembicycles, tricycles, unicycles, etc. In my area, they are limited by the one-way sign, but in the areaof the photo above, they can travel both ways. What a weird local difference.

One last thing to note is the difference between these similar signs:

Road Closed
to all, even pedestriansNo Vehicle Access
to all vehicles (including bicycles) No StoppingNo Parking

If you made it this far, congratulations; you're ready to ride.

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The Chicane
Suzuka International Raceway
Suzuka, Japan

I attended a cycling event this weekend that was really fun, even though I didn't ride in it.

The Suzuka Circuit, best known for hosting F1 and motorcycle grands prix, also sometimes hosts bike racing. The entire event is officially called“The Suzuka 8-Hour Enduro”, though currently races are only three, four, and six hours.

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Arriving at The Track
7:27am

It's really more of an “event” than a “race”, where you can challenge yourself to do as many laps as possible within theallotted time. Those trying for more laps than anyone else are racing, but it's perfectly okay to just plod along and have fun.

Each time range (three hours, four hours, and six hours) has two kinds of race: solo and team.

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Setting Up in Our Pit
these are the same pits used by F1 racecars
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Pit Lane
340m of bikestands
2½ hours before the races start
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Finish Line, Just Outside Our Pit
(finish line for motorsports)
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Nancy
the bundle of positivity that invited me

Kyoto riding buddy Nancy has been doing triathlon training hard for the last year, and her cycling (the part that I see) hasimproved by leaps and bounds. She had originally planned to ride the three-hour solo event, but aftershe signed up for that, members of her triathlon team asked that she join their four-member six-hour enduro team for Suzuka.

While chatting during a ride a couple of weeks ago, she was lamenting having to leave one race entry unused, soI suggested that she invite Kata to ride it.

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Kata
finally confirmed that she can race

Kata was also on this same ride a couple of weeks ago, which is where both Nancy and I met her. Making small talk with me as we rode, she had mentioned that she used to do triathlons back home inHungary, so when Nancy mentioned that she wasn't sure what to do with her Suzuka entries, I suggestedthat maybe Kata could ride one of them.

And that's what happened. Kata was allowed to use Nancy's registration for the three-hour solo, while Nancy then joined the six-hour team race.

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Reviewing Course Information
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AS Kyoto Triathlon Team
Suzuka entry

Before the race, I wandered around the pit area a bit...

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Color Coordination On Point!
(the guys in blue in the background ended up taking #2 in their race)
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Entering the Home Stretch

The cycle event runs the course in the opposite direction to how the motorsports run it, so for F1 and the like, this is where they exit the grandstands.

I guess that they run it backwards in order to make the run up Pit Lane be slightly uphill instead of slightly downhill. WhenF1 and other motorsports are running, they don't let just anyone wander around the pits, so one can expect a certaincompetence among crew and racers. Here, anyone can wander around, making the pit lane a bit dangerous. Lowering the speed perhapsmakes it safer. That's my guess.

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Filing Toward the Start
lots and lots of cyclists
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The “Four-Hour” Group
waits to start
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The “Three-Hour” Group
waits to start

Those riding the six-hour events start first at 10:00am. Then the four-hour events start two minutes later, and two minutesafter that, at 10:04, the three-hour events start.

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Head of the Six-Hour Group
approaches to the close of their first lap

The course is filled with riders of all skill levels and speeds. The rule is that faster riders ride on the right, whileslowest riders are on the left. (This is, not coincidentally, the same rule on Japanese highways.) The lead group for each time range gets a motorcycle escort in front, reminding slower riders tostay to the left because fast riders are coming up quickly from behind.

It seemed to all go quite smoothly.

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Kids Can Join
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Couples Can Join
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Birds on Mamachari Can Join
(“mamachari” are the heavy, usually-rusty, mostly-indestructible city bikes ubiquitous in urban Japan.)
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I Finally Spot Kata
in time to take a photo, as she finishes her fourth lap

The photography did not start out well. I had brought the Sigma 50mm-500mm zoom for its versatility,but I hadn't really used the lens in many years, and had forgotten that its autofocus and image-stabilization features were broken. So I was stuck trying to manually focus on approaching cyclists with a razor-thindepth of field. The vast majority of shots were out of focus.

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Typical Shot of the Day

Also, standing in the marshals' area between the pit and the racetrack, looking up the track trying to spot a specific riderapproach among the crowd, it was very difficult to recognize them in time to take a photo. Over time I learned to set a stopwatchso that I could estimate when they would next approach, concentrating my concentration to that limited window of time helped, andover time, I got better at it.

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Nancy on the Ready
to start her first turn
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Event Staff
I think this lady, dressed up as an anime maid, was part of the event staff
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Nancy's Teammate Rolls In
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Passing The Baton
which is really a sensor on a leg band

The rider coming in rolled to a stop, and one person takes it off his leg and passes it to another who puts it onto Nancy's leg.

After watching various teams do this, I see some areas for improvement. For example, Nancy should already be completely clipped in, withsomeone holding her saddle to keep her upright. The guy coming in should take off the ankle bracelet himself and pass it directly to theperson that will put it onto Nancy's leg. Another person should stand well in front of Nancy and slightly to the side, to ensure that noother rider coming into pit lane will be too close to Nancy when she starts out. She can then start out and pedal a few times before needingto check traffic. This could all save five to 10 seconds each lap (which over the course of their 36 laps could have added another lap).

The rules for the mixed-gender teams are sort of bullshit. If even one lap is done by a woman,it qualifies as “mixed gender”, and apparently teams that really wantto win will have a woman do exactly one lap, leaving the big powerful men to ride for the next 5h50m.Not so for Nancy's team, where they split the work pretty much evenly, mostly riding in three-lapshifts (though scheduling is a bit complicated by the fact that pit row shuts down for about half an hour twice during the race, sowhoever's out at that time has to stay out until pit row is reopened).

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Off On Her First Lap
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Nancy Finishing Her First Lap

Nancy didn't start her stint until an hour into the races, and by then the many riders were strung out over the 6km course, soit was much easier to spot her coming.

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Looking Relaxed
11:19am
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Being Silly
11:21am

I eventually realized that I could move to another part of the course.... in fact, I could wander around anywhere on the entire course. I wish I had known this earlier!

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Another Mamachari
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A Different Perspective
Of Kata, 2½ hours into her race
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On The Next Lap
different yet again
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This Guy Bothered Me

Every time I'd see him in the crowd at a distance, for a moment I thought that someone was crashing, and that's a horrible, horrible feeling.

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Enjoying the Downhill
on her last lap

Kata won 9th place among all women in the three-hour race!

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The “Real” Racers

I didn't realize it at the time, but the guy center right in the photo above, in the light-blue kit, is Ryo Inoue, a name I've seen many times at the very top of Stravaleaderboards. I had figured that he's some young collage kid with incredible power, so I was surprised to see in a photoof him on the podium (he got #3 in the premier six-hour solo race) that he's a fair bit older, with two kids. With incredible power. His average speed for the six hours was 40.4kph (25.1mph).

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A Long, Gentle Descent
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Not as Bad as it Looks
even those tiny tires would be fine on the supremely-smooth tarmac of the racetrack
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Fast Descent
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Guts

This guy, out there cycling while I'm just strolling around with the camera, reminded me ofThe Competitor that I wrote about in cyclocross.

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Nancy on the Descent
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8th Place
mixed-gender six-hour team race

Kata came in 9th in her race, and Nancy's team came in 8th in theirs, great efforts!

All and all, it was a really fun day. I'll go next year, to ride.

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Beauty is Fleeting
(Former) Wedding Venue Rokusisui (旧六絲水), Kyoto Japan

This photo is from a blog post seven years ago, “Exposing forSingle-Shot HDR (Sort Of)”, using photos from a special visit to a newly-built about-to-open wedding venue in Kyoto. (Photosfrom that visit also appeared on “Heian Shrine Gate From a NewPerspective”.)

As lovely as the new venue was, it seems that they weren't able to make it as a wedding venue; they stopped doing business a fewyears ago (prior to COVID). The lovely building in the super-amazing location has been vacant since.

But the building won't be vacant for much longer, because the building won't be for much longer.It's being demolished! The five-story reinforced-concrete building is not even eight years old. Wow, what a waste.

Living right next to the building, a meeting was held to explain the demolition and its schedule, attended by tworepresentatives of the company doing the demolition. Based on their attire, it was clear that one was an office worker, and theother was someone who was likely to be the on-site foreman. They explained the schedule with attention to the concerns that neighbors would have(noise, dust, etc.).

When they were done, they asked whether there were any questions. There was a long silence, so I decided to ask my off-topicquestion. I said that what I really wanted to know had nothing to do with their work (the demolition of the building),but if they had information, I'd appreciate to hear: why is this almost-new building being demolished, and what will replace it?

This opened a flood-gate of discussion from the few other residents that bothered to attend.

In the end, the answer was "It's owned by a holding company in Kobe (a nearby city), and they truly don't know what they'll do with the land".

It's very hard to believe that they'll spend a quarter-million dollars to demolish a six-million-dollar building (costs are myinformed estimates) without knowing what they'll do with it, so it's likely that they'll make condominiums, which is, to currentarea residents, perhaps the most-objectionable thing that area zoning allows.

(My view is that it's their land and they can do whatever zoning allows. The building that I live in was built just 16years ago on land that had been more or less a big garden, so I'm sure the building was a shock to the surrounding residents. But it wasn't their land, it was the land of the person that made the building.)

Note: this article may not appear properly in news readers.

This article contains interactive aspects that are likely removed by most news readers. Please see this particular article directly on Jeffrey's blog for full functionality.

I recently heard about a very hard climb — over 3km/2mi at an average of almost 16% — not too far away.Many cyclists could not climb for 50m at 15%, much less do it for 3,000m. It's just ridiculously steep. This climb soundedto rival one the most difficult climbs in Japan, Kuragari West, which clocks inat 2.3km/1.7mi @ 17.3%.

Of course, I had to go check it out. It was quite the adventure.

The start of the climb was about 30km north of Kyoto, along the shore of Lake Biwa. To save energy for the hard climb, I took the easiest route I could think of to get there.

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Pretty Views Along the Way
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Bicycle Path

The path was much bumpier than the road. I would have preferred the road.

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Getting Near the Start of the Climb

Modern Garmin cycling computers have a “Climber Pro” feature that notices where climbs are in a route, and highlights them like this. In this case, the mild lead up to (what I considered to be) the climb is included here, increasing the length to 4.9km and reducing the average grade to “only” 12%.

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I'm Going Somewhere Up There
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The Road Up Starts Here

Even though the road starts here, and starts going up right away, I found out later that the considered start of the climb is 350m farther on, at this shrine gate:

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Start of the Climb
at an elevation of 126m

The reason it starts here, rather than 350m back at the turnoff, I was told, is that 1) this is where it starts to getsteep, rising at more than 10%, and 2) it's where the village ends, meaning that starting here avoids speeding cyclists annoying the elderly in thevillage.

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Straight Up at 13%

Within minutes, you're going straight up at 13%, which is not that bad.... until you realize that this is just the mild warmup for the kilometers of much worse to come.

One nice thing I noticed is that for much of the start of the climb, clean water is positively rushing down the gutternext to the road. It looked very clean and inviting. I'm sure that this is drinkable, so that means that you don't really need tobring a lot of water with you, even during the hottest days of summer.

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Drinkable Water
rushing down at breakneck speed

The road surface is very good here. I had been told by one person that the road pavement was good until just before the end, and by another person that it was so bad that it was one of the most dangerous roads to cycle on in the area. So far, it looked really good.

The quality of the pavement is very important for steep climbs on a road bike, because there are two real dangers that canhappen if the rear wheel loses traction. One is that as you're pushing down hard on the pedal trying to overcome gravity and liftyou and the bike up the mountain, suddenly there is no resistance and you can find yourself flying over the handlebars, or (formen) have a particularly unpleasant impact injury.

The other is that if the wheel slips, you lose forward momentum, and unless you can very quickly unclip your shoes from the pedals, you will fall over. I have not done this.... recently.

Things that can cause the rear wheel to lose traction on a steep climb: wet pavement, rough pavement, moss on the road (on a steep road, moss is death), sand/rocks/pebbles on the road, potholes, branches, leaves. Or, more commonly, many combinations thereof.

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Looks Steep

Garmin cycling computers have long had an “Elevation” screen thatshows either the elevation it thinks you've done so far, or, if you're following a course that haselevation data, a forward-looking graph of the elevation and where you are now, as seen above.

One used to be able to adjust both the vertical and horizontal scale of the graph, but for inexplicable reasons, in the currentstate-of-the-art Edge 530 model that I have, they don't allow the vertical scale to be adjusted. That makes small hillsessentially disappear (look flat), an horrible monster hills like the one I'm climbing now look merely “steep”. Sigh. The “Elevation” screen is not even mentioned in the manual.Sigh. Garmin units are really horrible, but they're still better than anything else out there. Sigh.

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The “Climber Pro” Screen
iPhone 7 iPhone 7 Plus front camera 2.87mm f/2.2 at an effective 32mm — 1/60 sec, f/2.2, ISO 25 —map & image data — nearby photos
Totally Soaked in Sweat

All the photos from now on are a bit hazy, because my phone was in my jersey pocket, and my jersey was completely soaked. I didn't have anything to clean the lens with.

It was my intention to take this climb very slowly, and to stop on occasion so as to not overdo it this first try. Frankly, Idon't know whether I could do this whole climb without stopping with the road-bike gearing that I had. It'd be much easier withmountain-bike gearing. In any case, I took the opportunity to take photos, or, more honestly, I took the occasion of taking photosto stop and rest.

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Still Not Too Bad
but with the crazy steepness, one had to pick a line carefully
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More Challenging
only one thin strip of clean road
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Entrance to the Konpira Shrine
金比羅神社

At one point I came around a corner to find what looks to be the entrance to the Konpira Shrine. Or, what we see is all that there is of the shrine? (I could see nothing up the mountain behind it.) I dunno.

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This is All I Could See
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Ridiculously Steep
right at the shrine

As you can see in the photo above, the road surface is great, but as the road goes up after passing the shrine, it gets very steep (approaching 20%),and suddenly has a lot of moss:

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Forced Stop
at 20%

This was the first time (but not the last time) that I had to stop suddenly because the road, and my situation on it, was not safe. As become more and more common, the center of the road was a thick strip of gunk, with strips of vaguely-clean area left by car tires. I was in the left-side strip on a painfully-steep section of road, when suddenly that left-side strip was covered in slippery moss. The gunk in the center was too much for me to try to cross over to the right side (remember, this is extremely steep), so I quicklystopped before a slipping wheel and gravity did it for me. I then moved over to the right side, and snapped this photo.

I wasn't able to start pedaling again. Believe me, I tried, but it was just too steep and slippery. I didn't want to walk (I have some pride), so I just inched forward by pushing down on one pedal repeatedly. This was perhaps the steepest section of road.

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Getting A Little Better

A couple of minutes later, I came across a spring by the side of the road:

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iPhone 7 Plus f/1.8 at an effective 28mm — 1/15 sec, f/1.8, ISO 40 —map & image data — nearby photos
That Pipe is It
Konpira Shrine Pure-Water Spring
金比羅神社名水
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Description
which I can't read

I was so tired by this point that I didn't actually read the sign that I took a photo of, so I didn't realize that this was the spring. I knew that there was a spring on this route, but Google Maps had it at the very top where the road ended (another 1.2km distant, 175m up). It turns out thatGoogle Maps was wrong, and I've since fixed it.

According to what I've learned since, the pipe goes about 80m up to the source of the spring. The spring produces the sameamount of water regardless of what's happening in the weather: the water that comes out of the spring is said to have been in themountain for 100 years, and that if it never rained again, the spring would still flow for 100 years.

In any case, I was happy to get some more water, and I discarded the remaining convenience-store bottled water that I had inpreference for this. It was very tasty.

And then I continued on.

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Not Good
on one of the steepest sections
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I Walked This Little Section
I didn't want to get a puncture on the rocks
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Nice View
the one and only sweeping view on the whole climb
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Nope
I think I walked past this section, too

Past the spring, the road got increasingly bad in every respect. When the road is so bad that you have to dismount to walk pastdanger zones, it's not really fun. Again, it'd be fine on a mountain bike, Iimagine, but I had to stop many times to work my way around dangerous sections.

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A Suddenly-Nice Section
the moss is not so fun, but it can be mostly avoided
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Biggest Dam
of the many dams up and down the road-side river, this was the largest

Nearing the end, the road gave up all pretense of being paved.

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Concrete
it looks like a bunch of cars drove through freshly-poured concrete

The ruts here were very deep, and I walked over this whole section. And remember, it's still ridiculously steep.

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This is the “Road”
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Entrance to a Hiking Trail
the rope in the upper right is to help people pull themselves up
( I wish I could capture the sense of steepness in photos )

According to one Strava segment, it took me 54 minutes to get here from the bottom. The fastest recorded time is 27 minutes, bya guy in 2013 back when the road was presumably in a better state. Given the current state of the road, I don't know that I couldhave done it in 27 minutes on my scooter. A mountain bike or a dirt bike would be better.

I tend to enjoy challenging myself on extremely-steep climbs, but even if the road surface had been pristine, I don't think I couldhave done this one without stopping. The combination of me and the bike is well over 100kg (about 6kg being winter flab that I'mtrying to lose), so I'm almost 2x the weight of real climbers. It's just too difficult for me now.

But the road was not pristine, and that takes all the fun out of it. In this case, the quality deteriorated more and more overtime, so a clear, safe, apparent “let's consider this to be the end” location didn't present itself. This bothered me because Ihad been planning to make a surveyed segment for this climb.

Strava segments are normally made by users after they've ridden a ride, and that user's GPS data is used as The Master Data forthe segment. Unfortunately, that data can be horrible, because consumer GPS units can be wildly inaccurate, especially in themountains. Heck, I've seen a short segment on a totally flat road in the city presented as a 28% climb, because the user that madethe segment had stopped into a cafe along the line, and the weather had changed while stopped, so when restarting their cyclingunit, the barometric altimeter thought they had suddenly climbed a mountain, even though they hadn't even moved.

I talk about it in detail in “Strava Segment Tutorial: Removing Suckage and Promoting Quality”,but in short you often can't trust the map track, distance, and elevation data associated with a Strava segment, and that's a bummer. To counter this, I make computer-generated segments using highly accurate road and elevation data from the Japanese government.

I've made more than 2,400 such “Surveyed” segments so far, and I wanted to make one for this climb, but I couldn't figure out a good place tohave the climb stop. If I were considering only mountain bikes, I'd stop here at the entrance to the hiking trail, but I also wantto consider road bikes. If only the road surface was good the whole way. As it was, I was bummed and disillusioned about this climb.

I left the bike and continued on foot for a bit to see the big rockfall that I knew to be just above...

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Huge Rockfall

This huge rockfall is where the road nominally ends (though it actually ended some time before). I looked around for the spring, as I said, not having realized that the one halfway up was it.

I turned and headed down.

When I got near the bottom, I explored some small side roads. On one, I saw this lovely bicycle just sitting in the forest, with no other sign of human presence around except for me and the road:

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Odd

Later, I found a little road that went up to a small mountain community of a few dozen houses, including one Really Weird haunted-looking.... structure:

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iPhone 7 back camera at an effective 57mm — 1/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 20 —map & image data — nearby photos

At first glance I thought it was a big concrete building in the process of being demolished, but as I got closer, I realized that therough nature of some of the structure was clearly on purpose, and that perhaps it was in the process of being built. But it looked abandoned. It reminded me of a grotesque and low-budget version of the Winchester Mystery House.

Later, I asked a local resident about it. Apparently, some guy had just been building there over the years, at his whim (muchlike the Winchester Mystery House), but he had died so it's just been sitting. I asked how long ago, and he couldn't say exceptthat it was before his time. I got the impression that it had been setting vacant for many decades.

Then it was time for lunch. In preparing for the ride, I'd found a pizza place that looked promising, so I headed there.

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FANTASISTA Pizza
Google-Map link
restaurant home page
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Entrance
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Cute

Judging from the restaurant's home page, I expected that the owner would be quite the character. He did not disappoint. Super interesting to chat with. He's an avid cyclist, motorcyclist, windsurfer, and go-kart racer.

He filled me in on a lot of info about the climb (which he guesses he's done more than a hundred times), the spring, Stravasegments, the kind of people who ride there, etc. He says that most road cyclists stop at the spring,what's called a “half climb”. That made alot of sense, since the road is mostly okay up to that point. The pre-existing Strava segment that goes all the way to thehiking-trail entrance has only 74 attempts registered, while the one to the spring has 476.

I ended up making a surveyed segment to the spring, “金比羅名水、鳥居から / Konpira Pure Spring, from Tori Gate [計測/Surveyed]”. Even though this is ostensibly the same exact route as the aformentioned “half” segment, it matches 490 efforts. The extra matches are because the source track is closer to reality.

Just to give an idea of the different quality of source tracks from which segments are made, here's an interactive demonstration for part of the climb up to the spring:

span.b241 { padding: 6px; border: gray 1px solid } Government Map   -   My Source Track   -   Other Source Tracks   -   More Source Tracks

mouseover a button to see that image

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Junpei Starts on My Pizza

While the onwer, Junpei, made my pizza, I took a look around.

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His Motorcycle
parked right in the restaurant
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One of His Many Bicycles
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Another Bicycle Upstairs
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Dozens of Jerseys All Over
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Fun Vibe Everywhere
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Chillaxing
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Pizza!
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Much Bigger Than I Expected
with a lot of toppings
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I wasn't sure whether I could eat it all, but I took my time and dined as we chatted. It was delicious.

During our chat, I'd mentioned that I'd filled my water bottles with water from the shrine's spring, so he asked for a smallamount, and used it to make me an espresso for me, on the house. Nice! Lots of cyclists visit after climbing to the spring, andits his policy that you get an espresso if you bring water from the spring.

As I eventually left, there was a lot of thunder rumbling in the distance, and a few scattered raindrops.

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Doesn't Apply To Me
“Because of their slow speed, bicycles should be on the path”
(I was doing 35~40kph along this road)

15 minutes after leaving the pizza place, I realized that I had forgotten one of my water bottles, so I returned to get it.Then the rain really started, and it was lovely to ride in a warm rain. I only wish I could figure out a way to keep my sunglasses from fogging.

The rain continued until I got to within 15 minutes from home, and the weirdest thing happened. As I crossed this short bridge, the road and everything around it went from being completely soaked, to absolutely bone dry. It was the weirdest thing. There was no transition, other than the 15m long bridge. 100% wet to 100% dry. Weird.

It didn't stay dry long, because after about five minutes the lightning picked up, and the skies opened up in torrents. It was lovely.

Here's the ride on Strava:

So, the idea for the day was simple: join Antti's farewell ride until they hit gravel, then go off on my own to find a spot toset up a hammock and relax with a book for a while.

It didn't work out that way.

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Gathering

Antti is returning to Finland after many years in Kyoto. He's left his mark on the Strava leaderboards, and on his friends'hearts. His farewell ride was to be a gravel affair; I have no interest in riding on gravel, but I thought I'd join for the roadpart, bringing along my hammock to set up somewhere in the countryside to relax after reaching the gravel.

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Christoph's Quick-Draw Banana
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Heading Out
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Into the Mountains
of northern Kyoto, toward Kumagahata
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I'm Wearing a Backpack
with a book and a hammock
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Dude, Using a Phone while Riding??
(taken with my iPhone)
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Lots of Rain the Last Few Days
has filled this debris catcher above a small waterfall
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Checking Which Way to Go

They decided to head up a road that is part of my Kyoto “Tree of Pain” ride (a ride with more than 4,600m/15,000' of climb). On the Tree-of-Pain ride I don't take it very far, because that would make the treelook lopsided. The paved road continues on to a 3.5km climb at more than 11%, which I'd done once before,but only the one time because it requires a generous interpretation for both “paved” and “road”. The whole way is strewn with rocks and all manner of debris, and for somestretches there's not even a pretense of pavement.

But that's what they were going to do today.

iPhone 7 Plus at an effective 28mm — 1/1000 sec, f/1.8, ISO 20 —map & image data — nearby photos
But First, Water
I'd ridden near hear six dozen times, but didn't know this vending machine existed
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Landslide
probably from last year; they're common in these mountains
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Now on the Hard Climb
Harder more for the surface “quality” than the steepness, but both are hard

I figured that I'd bail some time during this climb — my hammock was calling, after all, and I hated gravel — butas we went, I somehow talked myself into doing the whole climb, even though the last ~600m is steep gravel. I guess I wanted tocomplete the segment. They'd continue on with their gravel play and I'd return down this horrible road back to civilization.

map & image data — nearby photos
Still Going Fine at This Point
photo by Christoph Militat
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Mini Landslide

The road was even worse than I remembered. We had to walk some sections due to the sharp rocks, ormini landslides. It wasn't particularly fun, but it was nice to ride with friends. To make it worse, myrear derailleur was getting increasingly unsmooth and noisy, and eventually it got to the point where Icouldn't move the pedals backwards. Adjusting the Di2 indexing didn't help, so I figured thatI must have bent it slightly somehow. Sigh. I'd have to go to a shop after returning to the city. To make matters worse, the walking on the rocksbroke one of my cleats (that locks my shoe into the pedals), so I couldn't put in power while pedalingwithout my foot slipping out. Double sigh.

At least I had my hammock to look forward to.

map & image data — nearby photos
Par for the Course
map & image data — nearby photos
Happy
to be almost at the top
photo by Christoph Militat
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At the Top

At the top, I lamented about my derailleur situation. Antti came over to look at it and found that the bolt holding it to theframe was super loose. Doh! I'd never thought to check that, never having had it come loose in my cycling career. A few turns of ahex wrench and it was good as new. Thanks Antti!

The others spent some time discussing the relative pros and cons of continuing in each of the two directions that the gravelroad split from there. It turned out, I was told, that if Iwent the one direction, it would have some steep gravel sections that I might have to walk, butit would lead fairly quickly to a proper paved road that I knew. The other direction, which they decided to go, would have been much harder on my road bike. I didn't want to descend on the long horrible road we'd just climbed, so I thoughtthat a few minutes of gravel walking would be worth it to get to the paved road quickly. Other than myderailleur and cleat, it'd been a great day, so off I went on the short butunknown gravel section.

And there began my real troubles.

The gravel path went softly downhill for a while, then plummeted steeply down for a while further. "Well, I'm definitely not going to want toride back up that, so I'm committed to this route, I guess."

But after about 800m, I came to an intersection and had to check the map. According to my map, which was clearly incomplete,the main “road” (rough gravel path) that I was on did not lead quickly to a paved road, but it was more in the general directionthan the alternative (which was not on my map), so I continued straight.

A few hundred meters later, I came to another fork. Thistime the alternative was on my map, and though it didn't lead to the paved road on the map, it went in that direction. This must be the road,so I took it. Very steep, and there was increasingly junk car parts strewn along the side, so I felt that yeah, I'm getting closeto the proper paved road. Until it ended in the thick, steep forest, 250m from the road:

map & image data — nearby photos
Looking Back from a Dead End
up the “road” I'd just descended

Sigh. I walked back up, pushing my bike. (Remember, I can't really ride up anything steep with my broken cleat.)

iPhone 7 Plus at an effective 28mm — 1/1900 sec, f/1.8, ISO 20 —map & image data — nearby photos
Well, Okay, This is Nice
iPhone 7 Plus at an effective 28mm — 1/30 sec, f/1.8, ISO 32 —map & image data — nearby photos
Yeah, Paved Road!

Continuing down, the road suddenly became paved (and got even more steep). Yay, this must mean that I've almost reached a proper road!

Hope was shortlived, as the pavement quickly gave way to gravel again. Sigh.

I came to another fork, this time where the main path I'd been on suddenly started going steeply up, parallel with the nearest properroad. The offshoot went toward the proper road, so I took it, diving down into a ravine.

iPhone 7 Plus at an effective 28mm — 1/1250 sec, f/1.8, ISO 20 —map & image data — nearby photos
Fork
I'd come from the right.
Behind me the road continued up sharply.
I took the descent to the left.

Here I got within 200m of the proper road, but again the path just ended.

iPhone 7 Plus at an effective 28mm — 1/180 sec, f/1.8, ISO 20 —map & image data — nearby photos
Looking Back
from another dead-end
iPhone 7 Plus at an effective 28mm — 1/120 sec, f/1.8, ISO 32 —map & image data — nearby photos
A Thousand Tadpoles
in a puddle the size of two pool tables

This is getting tiresome. I started to walk back up,then I realized that I had lost one of my cleat covers, which I had been using to make walking on the rocks easier. So, the whole timeI'm pushing my bike back up as I return toward the main path, I'm scanning the rocky ground for my lost cover.

I didn't find it, but I did eventually realize that I'd now lost the other one. Triple sigh.

I really didn't want to continue on the main path. By this time I realized that it wasn't going to connect to a proper road forseveral kilometers. I had hoped that it would all at least be downhill, but now I had this steep climb to look forward to. Icouldn't ride such a steep road uphill with my broken cleat, and that's just as well because I was in no mood to do it. I pushed the bike for a long time.

Eventually it started downhill again, and the road was ostensibly paved (again, using the words “paved” and “road” generously),so I thought that finally my ordeal would be over soon. How quaint.

Small Roadside Waterfall
where I filled up on hopefully-tadpole-free water
iPhone 7 Plus at an effective 28mm — 1/1250 sec, f/1.8, ISO 20 —map & image data — nearby photos
Rock-Strewn Road
at least nicely paved in this section
iPhone 7 Plus at an effective 28mm — 1/900 sec, f/1.8, ISO 20 —map & image data — nearby photos
Now This is Getting Ridiculous
these are chunks of rock, not “gravel”

The road got somewhat nice and steeply downhill, so now I hoped it'd be a breeze to return to the proper road.....

iPhone 7 Plus at an effective 28mm — 1/1000 sec, f/1.8, ISO 20 —map & image data — nearby photos
Aw, Fuck

I came around a curve, and found that the road had disintegrated and was covered by a jumble of fallen trees due to alandslide. There was no freakin' way I was going to retrace my steps, so I very much wanted to get past it.

iPhone 7 Plus at an effective 28mm — 1/850 sec, f/1.8, ISO 20 —map & image data — nearby photos
This is What I Have to Deal With

I have some experience climbing through/over this kind of jumbled piles of trees(see “Surveying Supertyphoon Jebi’s Damage North of Kyoto, Part 1”and Part 2), but for this I had to take a different tack.

I left the bike and walked back uphill far enough until I found a place where I could climb up the mountain on the non-slideside, and make my way across to just above the landslide. I could see from there that the road just beyond the logjam was clear, and that I could probably get back down to the road safely. Good enough.

iPhone 7 Plus at an effective 28mm — 1/640 sec, f/1.8, ISO 20 —map & image data — nearby photos
View from Above the Blockage

So, I returned to fetch the bike.

iPhone 7 Plus at an effective 28mm — 1/580 sec, f/1.8, ISO 20 —map & image data — nearby photos
No Way Around This
iPhone 7 Plus at an effective 28mm — 1/850 sec, f/1.8, ISO 20 —map & image data — nearby photos
Looking Back After Getting Past

So, I was safely past. My shoes were waterlogged and my legs were covered in bloody scratches, but I had gathered no leaches and nobroken bones, so I felt triumphant. (I see now that it took just 13 minutes for me to get past, but it felt at the time like itwas an hours-long endeavor.)

You'll notice how devoid of rocks the road is on the downstream side of the blockage, and that's because it was a stream. Water was rushing down the road, edge-to-edge, and that had cleaned away all the rocks. Yeah.

So, past this obstruction, I continue back to civilization!

Or not.

iPhone 7 Plus at an effective 28mm — 1/260 sec, f/1.8, ISO 20 —map & image data — nearby photos
Just Around the Next Bend
iPhone 7 Plus at an effective 28mm — 1/620 sec, f/1.8, ISO 20 —map & image data — nearby photos
Nope, This One Defeats Me

While risking my life trying to get around the previous jumble of trees, it was very much on my mind that the last thought thatwent through some people's mind right before they died was “Yeah, I can do this!”.

I still had a long way to go before reaching a proper road, and I didn't know how many more of these landslides there might bebefore then. I had climbed up into this second jumble to see whether I could find a way past, and I couldn't. But even if I did, I might not be able to get past the next one, and I might not be able to return. It was just too dangerous, so I bit the bullet anddecided to retrace my path all the way back to where I'd left the others, then descend on that horrible road we'd ridden up.

Getting back around the first jumble of trees was even harder from this downhill side, and I still don't know how I wasactually able to do it. The embankment that I had to scale was extremely steep without much to hold onto.

But I made it, and slowly walked back up the mountain.

The whole time I was descending the horrible road we'd ridden up, I just knew that I'd geta puncture, as the cherry on top of the day, but I didn't. I've been usingContinental Gatorskin tires for about five years, and have not had a single puncture flat since. (Well,I've had three pinch flats, which were because I hadn't kept enough air pressure, and a few flats because the tube seams had just given way due to age or poor manufacturing; the tires haveperformed perfectly.)

Eventually I made it back into cellular range, and found a message from Antti saying that they were having beers by the riverin the city, so I decided to forego the hammock and go directly there. I felt so stinky and disgusting that I thought aboutheading home to clean up first, but in the end I found them all chilling.

iPhone 7 Plus at an effective 28mm — 1/400 sec, f/1.8, ISO 20 —map & image data — nearby photos

In the ensuing discussion, it turns out that I had been told to make a specific turn just ~200m from where I left them, but Ihadn't heard that part, nor even seen that turnoff when I went by. (I did see it on the way walking back, and figured thatthat must be the way. I was very tempted to try it, because I really didn't want to descend the horrible road we'd allridden up, but no, I wasn't going to take any more chances today, so I stuck with retracing my steps.)

iPhone 7 Plus at an effective 28mm — 1/900 sec, f/1.8, ISO 20 —map & image data — nearby photos
Relaxing in the Hammock
iPhone 7 Plus at an effective 28mm — 1/1150 sec, f/1.8, ISO 20 —map & image data — nearby photos
Saint Nigel Brings me a Beer
anyone who brings you a beer after such a day is a saint
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Delicious
map & image data — nearby photos
Ross Gives the Hammock a Try
and discovers the uncomfortable truth about how gravity shoves everything together toward the middle
photo by Nigel Randell
iPhone 7 Plus at an effective 28mm — 1/720 sec, f/1.8, ISO 20 —map & image data — nearby photos
Neil and Alwyn
giving the hammock a try
iPhone 7 Plus at an effective 28mm — 1/120 sec, f/1.8, ISO 25 —map & image data — nearby photos
Some of my Battle Scars
iPhone 7 Plus at an effective 28mm — 1/120 sec, f/1.8, ISO 25 —map & image data — nearby photos
My Poor Cleat
iPhone 7 Plus at an effective 28mm — 1/800 sec, f/1.8, ISO 20 —map & image data — nearby photos
Finally Enjoying my Book

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1 sec, f/4, ISO 100 —image data
Japanese Candle
A Photo I Took in 2012

I got a surprise today while walking in the underground arcade north out of Kyoto Station, when I noticed on the wall some photographsthat I took eight years ago.

iPhone 7+ — 1/40 sec, f/1.8, ISO 20 —map & image data — nearby photos
Today in Kyoto Station
Newspaper Article from 2013 on Display
The Article
by Alice Gordenker

I did the photography for Alice's article as a fun project, as described in two blog posts at the time,“Japanese Candles”and“Japanese Candles, Followup”.

The article is still on the Japan Times web site, here,and originally looked like this:

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/4 sec, f/2.5, ISO 100 —image data

The two candle photos bookmarking this post are the originals for those used in the article.

I was in the area to renew my driver's license, which went quite smoothly, so that's taken care of for the next five years.

Done and Dusted for Another Five Years(yes, I photoshopped all important data to be different from reality)

I used to blog six days a week — this will be my 2,635th post — but I've been taking a break for a while, so I hope I canremember how to make this post. If you're reading this, I remembered.

I haven't been posting on my blog this year, but I've still been working, and have just released a feature for Lightroom
that's interesting enough to warrant a mention here: the Compare Photo Edits
feature of my Bag-o-Goodies plugin.

As the name implies, it reports on the differences in how two photos have been edited. This includes not only
develop changes, but also editable-metadata changes. It also reports on whether collection membership is the same.

It can be useful in figuring out, for example, the difference in look between two photos, or to figure out why a virtual copy exists.

Sometimes one creates a virtual copy and ends up not doing anything with it, so it's an exact duplicate of its master or of a sibling virtual copy.
These can be found catalog-wide via another new feature I just released, Find Superfluous Virtual Copies.

iPhone 7+ at an effective 32mm — 1/500 sec, f/2.2, ISO 25 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Yours Truly

Overlooking the Ise Bay

at the 185km (115mi) of a 326km (202mi) bicycle ride

I'm coming out of blogging hibernation to write about a bicycle ride I did
yesterday. I'm pretty happy with myself for it, so in keeping with using my blog as a
diary, I'm putting the story here.

the ride at Strava

There aren't many photos, both because I had only my cellphone and wasn't stopping a lot, and because the stupid iOS app I was using (Halide) decided to not actually
save all but one of the photos that I took in the first eight hours. )-:

So, having seen friend Vincent's ride to Ise City last month, I thought I'd give it a try. Vincent's group took the train back, but I thought I'd cycle back, making it a round trip.
At 326km (202 miles), it displaces last year's 304km adventure with Gorm as my second-longest ride,
following my longest (408km two-laps-around-Lake Biwa ride) in 2017.

Yesterday was my longest solo ride, my second “double century”, and my 40th “century”.

It took 16 hours; the first few hours were in the dark, as were the last
few hours.

The morning dark was sometimes lit by a lovely full moon,
but it was mostly cloudy, a condition that would persist most of all day. And unlike the weather forecast (“warm and sunny!”), it was cold and sprinkly with strong wind much of the day.

It was mentally much easier than I expected. The key seems to have been
that I approached it as two separate rides: a 180km (112mi) ride to the cafe in Ise City
where I would have lunch, and then, by the way, almost as an afterthought, just a short 140km (87mi) ride to get back home.

The first 45km (28mi) were on a flat bike path that barely counts as cycling, so by the time I
actually started riding on mountain roads, I had only 135km (84mi) until that ride ended at the
lunch cafe. This could be tough for me if there were a lot of mountains or I
had to do it quickly, but neither applied this time: I had no particular schedule, and this part
of the route had only 2,160m (7,090') of climb, which is nothing to sneeze at, but it's well within the realm of reason for
me.

Once off the bike paths and onto the “real” ride, it didn't start smoothly.

iPhone 7+ at an effective 28mm — 1/30 sec, f/1.8, ISO 125 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Scene of the Crime

looking back to where I'd come from

( the highlighted marks on the curb are almost certainly from my tires )

At the 47km point, in a wide-open road in the middle of nowhere with pristine pavement, I crashed in the most monumentally-stupid way I can imagine.

As I approached a slight curve into an intersection, my cycling computer beeped a navigation notification, and I glanced down
for just a moment. A split second after returning my concentration to the road, I rammed straight into the sweeping curve of the
high concrete curb.... a sweeping curve that had been plainly visible as I approached during
the prior 45 seconds. I was going a relatively-lazy 23kph (14mph).

Oh, how I wish I could see the look on my face in the 0.1 seconds between realization and impact. It's
absolutely inconceivable to me how I did what I did. I spent much of the next 14½ hours of the ride contemplating it. I didn't come up with anything. I'm still utterly dumbfounded.

This was the second “real” crash in my five-year-old cycling life,
and considering the sheer unadulterated stupidity on display, I was extremely lucky and came away
relatively unscathed. I suffered a compound fracture of my pride, but after
that there's just a bit of road rash on my knees, my left knee is a swollen and
should make a swell bruise, and I ripped holes in both knees of my new winter kit, the
most-excellent Velocio ZERO
winter bib tights. They have a repair service that I now get to try.

(A day later, the half-dollar-sized circle of road rash on the skin of my knee hurts, but no other pain.)

I brushed myself off and checked the bike; it was fine. I continued on, and at one point thought
I should maybe pour some water over the wound on my knee, which I could most
definitely feel, but could not see because the big hole in the tights was inexplicably 6" above the wound. After another
kilometer, I came across a vending machine and thought I
should fill up on water, only to find that my wallet was gone. I trekked back to the site of the
crash and picked it up.

So, with my ride having now started in earnest, I entered the mountains and started to tick off the kilometers. At first they
went very, very slowly. Sometimes I'd grind into the wind for what seemed like 15~20 minutes, only to notice that I'd gone only
one kilometer. Literally. I don't know how long it actually took, but it was very disheartening.

The stretch from between 50km (31mi) into the ride, and 80km (50mi) into the ride, was the most mentally-difficult of the
entire day, but once I crossed the “100km until lunch” mark, I brightened up. Then when I got to “90km until lunch”, the halfway point of the ride to lunch, suddenly I felt that everything was downhill from there, so to speak. I was halfway there,
and after lunch, I'd just have to ride home... the ride home almost didn't even count, mentally. It made no sense to me even as I thought it, but the feeling was there and I was happy for it. Mentally, I was in great shape for the remaining 235km
(146mi).

Two and a half hours, and 50km (31mi) after the crash, I finally came across a
convenience store, so I took the opportunity to put a dressing on my
knee (which requires me to strip the bib tights, and hence why I didn't do it at the scene). I de-stuck it from the inside of the tights, and applied a sheet of Mepitel Film
(similar to Tegaderm) from the first-aid stuff that I started to
carry after this ride where a member crashed.

Anyway, I
felt a bit better that because the wound was now dressed, I wouldn't have to rip off the scab when I got home.

At the convenience store, I also enjoyed a coffee and a rice ball. The 19-minute stop was the only major stop during the first 180km
to the cafe for lunch.

The route was lovely, with few big thoroughfares. I went across quaint bridges and big dams, and had many lovely vistas. But as I mentioned, the stupid Halide app ate all the photos.

At some point I was calculating my overall average speed (about 21kph / 13mph), which includes climbing up mountains, stops for photos and traffic lights
(and crashes), etc., and realized that I might be able to get back to Kyoto in time for a salsa dance party. I've been dancing salsa for the
last year or so, and really enjoy it. So, I used that to drive my pace just a bit.

During the last hour or two of the to-lunch ride, the wind, which had been intermittently gusty, started to solidify into a brisk tailwind. It was lovely, but I knew I'd pay for it on the return.

Once I arrived to Ise City, I took photos at a shrine, and in front of the train station. Of course, they're gone like the others.

Just about noon, I arrived at the Funae Cafe for lunch, and felt that for the most part,
my ride was done. At least, all the hard parts!

iPhone 7+ at an effective 28mm — 1/30 sec, f/1.8, ISO 40 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Lunch

My standard karaage chicken set lunch

While waiting for my order, I pulled out my phone to upload a photo, and found that all the photos so far, except from the crash site,
were gone. So I switched to the native camera app for the rest of the day.

I noticed that the restaurant had slow-drip cold-drip coffee, which I had been talking with someone about during my previous ride, so I gave it a try...

iPhone 7+ at an effective 28mm — 1/30 sec, f/1.8, ISO 64 —
map & image data — nearby photos







iPhone 7+ at an effective 28mm — 1/30 sec, f/1.8, ISO 32 —
map & image data — nearby photos

It was extremely smooth, but mostly devoid of flavor. I'll have to try some others before coming to any general conclusions.

iPhone 7+ at an effective 28mm — 1/1700 sec, f/1.8, ISO 20 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Bike Stand

tears of happiness

I rolled out at about 1pm in good spirits. Before heading back, I popped up to see the ocean...

iPhone 7+ at an effective 28mm — 1/3000 sec, f/1.8, ISO 20 —
map & image data — nearby photos

At the Bay of Ise

near where it opens up into the Pacific







iPhone 7+ at an effective 28mm — 1/2000 sec, f/1.8, ISO 20 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Near the bay was very flat with little protection, so the wind was fierce, and completely against me. I struggled against it for 10km, and also struggled
to reroute when long sections of the bike path were closed for construction, but I remained remarkably sanguine about everything. Normally I fret and
just want to give up, but this time I was in a great mood.

iPhone 7+ at an effective 28mm — 1/4600 sec, f/1.8, ISO 20 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Disappointing Bridge

the view on Google Earth made it look much more cool

I then had to go through 37km (23mi) of more-or-less city, mostly on a big bypass with lots and lots of truck traffic. If the wind were
with me I'd be able to get it done in an easy hour, but the wind was definitely against me, and it took two hours of mindless grinding.
Slowly, slowly the mountains got closer, and I knew that my reward would be having to go up steep slopes that would cause me to be even
slower than I already was. The whole time, I'm calculating whether I could get back in time for 9pm salsa.

It also started raining consistently. Not heavy, but also not stopping. The temperature also dropped down to 5° (41F).

I had not planned for the rain at all... the forecast was sunny and warm all day. At least for Kyoto. I neglected to check the forecast
for where I was actually going to be. Doh! I would have imagined that I would have froze, but the clothes I had were excellent.

I had only the aforementioned Velocio winter bib tights, the Rapha deep winter base layer, and a Rapha long-sleeve core jersey. And that was enough, in the non-stop rain and strong wind, to keep me comfortable.

iPhone 7+ at an effective 28mm — 1/30 sec, f/1.8, ISO 32 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Final Stop

With 64km (40mi) left to go, I made the second convenience-store stop on the ride home. By this point
I was still mentally in great shape, but I was getting tired. (I'd been up
since 3am.) So, I tried the second “Red Bull” of my life (the first having been last year on the long ride with Gorm.) That and a
coffee and some Coke seemed to do the trick... I felt great the rest of the way home.

I felt great, but was still pretty slow, even on the descents. Tiredness, combined with dark and the rain made me ease off
quite a bit. For example, on one long stretch leading into the last hour of the
ride, I averaged only 35kph, while my best on that stretch of road is a much
zippier 41kph.

Still, the downhills in the last couple of hours helped the overall average, and I arrived home at 8:14pm.

My knee wasn't a pretty sight.

iPhone 7+ at an effective 28mm — 1/25 sec, f/1.8, ISO 200 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Ouch

but could have been so much worse

All the blood makes it look worse than it is. And if nothing's touching it, it doesn't hurt. The biggest problem for the near term will be when I have to wear non-baggy
pants.

Another casualty of the ride was my toes. Unlike how my great kit kept me warm, my shoes
(Fizik R5 Artica winter shoe) did little, and my toes were frozen for much of the ride. In the shower, I was shocked to see that they had turned gray. I'd never seen such gray
skin on the body of a live person... it was a bit scary. But I massaged them under hot water,
and the color slowly came back.

In any case, I got cleaned up and made it to salsa dancing with 10 minutes to spare.

Overall, it was a great ride. I got to enjoy 228km (142mi) of new roads for me, and score
my second double century. It was much easier, mentally and physically, than many lesser rides
in my past. I'm not why, but I do know that the splitting of it mentally, into two rides,
was just amazing for my psyche. I hope I can do that in the future with equal success.

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 @ 21mm — 1/80 sec, f/7.1, ISO 800 —
map & image data — nearby photos

A Slow Start

to the 2019 fall-color season

at the Kotoku-ji Temple (庚申山広徳寺)

in Koka-city, Shiga Prefecture, Japan

I made a few outings to photograph the fall colors in and around Kyoto this year. On the way to our first main destination, we made an impromptu
stop at this little-known, out-of-the-way Kotokuji Temple. It turns out that the maple have only just started to turn, but it's still a quiet,
lovely place to visit.

Nikon D4 + Sigma 35mm F1.4 DG HSM — 1/160 sec, f/4, ISO 640 —
map & image data — nearby photos








Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/500 sec, f/2.5, ISO 2200 —
map & image data — nearby photos








Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/500 sec, f/2.5, ISO 3200 —
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Mix of Colors

I love how the same branch can have green, yellow, orange, and red








Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 450 —
map & image data — nearby photos

View From an Observation Platform

with some lovely low-lying fog

I'd discovered this temple a couple of years ago while on a bike ride to
explore the general area, a couple of hours away by bicycle from my home in Kyoto.
The 1km-long driveway to the temple is notable for its steepness; the average
grade of the climb is over 10%, though a small dip in the middle means that the overall average grade is only 7%.

iPhone 7 Plus front camera — 1/1000 sec, f/2.2, ISO 25 —
map & image data — nearby photos

On My First Visit

July 2017








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A Year Ago








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Most-Recent Visit

two months ago








Nikon D4 + Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 @ 14mm — 1/60 sec, f/14, ISO 1250 —
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Relatively New

the stonework dates from only 1895








Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/800 sec, f/2.5, ISO 100 —
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Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/800 sec, f/2.5, ISO 100 —
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Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/500 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1100 —
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Detail

in both the roof tiles and eave woodwork










Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/500 sec, f/2.5, ISO 2500 —
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Stone Fence

likely also dating to 1895








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Nikon D4 + Sigma 35mm F1.4 DG HSM — 1/160 sec, f/4, ISO 640 —
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Nikon D4 + Sigma 35mm F1.4 DG HSM — 1/160 sec, f/4.5, ISO 400 —
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Rich Moss

It wasn't much from the fall-colors perspective, but it's a quiet, lovely area, that's a favorite to visit on bike rides, so I wanted
to share it with my photo companions, and now with my blog.....

I've just released Jeffrey's Collection Mechanic Lightroom Plugin.