Everyone, you’re welcome. I had fun doing it.
I’ll never be doing a “live” journal anywhere, with daily updates. This is because I spent my career in an industry that only entered the computer era kicking and screaming. Until the last few years, everything was pen to paper, then, when we finally got tablets, it was just checking off the boxes. As a result, my keyboarding skills are truly glacial, so a blog post that would take the average computer savvy person 10 minutes to write takes me an hour or more. I would really prefer spending that hour soaking in an onsen, or chatting with someone in a pub! Reliving my tour by going over my paper journal though is something I find enjoyable. Then I can do these reports at my leisure.
Yes, Ian, that’s the Raven ( which I have named, story to follow!). I’m still experimenting with loading patterns. Last trip was rear panniers only plus bar bag. I went for 4 panniers plus bar bag this time as I had trouble fitting everything in last time. The Raven handled it just fine, and I had lots of room, but I wound up with an even heavier bike. Part of that weight was things specific to a trip to Japan. I had with me a “rinko bag” for covering the bike to travel by train, and “omiyage”, small gifts to give to people. I had packed a dozen 50ml bottles of Ontario maple syrup in decorative bottles. I thought “ thats only 50g of syrup per bottle. Yup. But the bottles themselves were 150g! Next time (yes, there’ll be a next time) it’ll be Canada flag key rings at 30g each. The plan for next trip (not Japan) is to get out the scale and be ruthless. I’m going to try going back to 2 panniers and just bring less. I am going to add an Arkel frame bag that only weighs 180g and gives me 4L of space.
And the name of my bike is now………..Nozomi.
I can hear the heads scratching from here, so I’ll explain.
The Tokaido Shinkansen, the main bullet train line in Japan, running between Tokyo and Osaka, has three levels of speed. Not the speed of the trains themselves, they all go just under 300 km/h between stations. Some trains make more stops though.
Kodama trains stop at every station.
Hikari trains stop at only the larger stations.
Nozomi trains make the 515km journey from Tokyo Station to Shin-Osaka Station in 2hr31min, making only 4 intermediate stops.
So…..I have named my bike after the fastest train in Japan.
![Grin ;D](https://thorncyclesforum.co.uk/Smileys/default/grin.gif)