Golden Week 2010

It was the 4th bank holiday in the last 7 days and the last official holiday of Golden Week 2010, although many people will be taking Thursday and Friday off as annual leave. The weather has been great, sunny and warm and today I encountered a mini heatwave in Otsuki - officially 29.5 degrees but I read a thermometer at a ガソリンスタンド saying 32 degrees, summer is on its way.

Its a great time of year to be cycling, as the koinoburi (flying carp wind socks) are out for childrens day on May 5th and make the scenery even more colourful. Often many flying carp are strung from long ropes tied across narrow valleys.

Also the rice fields are now being flooded with water for the first time, and this is good news for frogs. The sound of the frogs croaking in the rice fields is a distinctive sound of this time of year, late spring.

Most of the TCC regulars have taken off to tour parts of Japan over this holiday, but as I was recently in Okinawa I've been based in Tokyo and used the holiday to explore more toge in the Tokyo/Yamanashi/Kanagawa prefectures. Toge means mountain pass, and the kanji 峠 has the components mountain, up and down which is a very iconic representation of the word for mountain pass, and sums up the 3 rides Ive done over the last week.

The first ride was based around Takao san and featured closed road sections east and west Jimba onsen as well as Wada toge north. Small mountain roads are often closed due to landslides, but its easy to get around the gates on a bike and often the roads are in excellent condition and of course traffic free. You often see monkeys on these roads, and some people have encountered wild boar on the deserted roads. Ive done this circuit before, its only 75km but theres no flat, and with 2000m of ascent its an excellent training route which can be done in a morning then get home early.

The second ride took me to new passes, and started with one of the toughest climbs in Tokyo, Kazahari rindo. Again, this rindo is closed to traffic, but several walkers are about on this climb. The main road climb passes Tomin no mori parking area and both routes meet at the top, around 1150m but the rindo route is much steeper, must be over 14% in places I'd guess. Being so high, the cherry trees are still blossoming up here, the mountain tops are dotted with sakura for miles around.

The northern descent of Kazahari toge is my favourite descent in the area. About 15km descent down a smooth, wide road with great views over Okutamako lake below. But it does attract many motorbikers, racing up and down the hill, so its quite scary at the same time. Okutamako is a reservoir, and is the source of the Tamagawa river which flows out to sea beyond Kawasaki and Haneda airport. Below the dam theres a series of long tunnels, I would never cycle up these but downhill is fine. In the photo, just over the bridge is our favourite ramen shop, a great stop to warm up in winter (before the snow) or shelter form the sun the rest of the year.

The target for this ride was Yanagisawa pass (1472m) and Daibusatsurei Toge (1600m) Yanagisawa is the high pass on route 411 continuing west from Okutamako towards Kofu. Its not a steep climb, but it goes on for mile after mile, plenty of traffic but maybe this is holiday traffic for people avoiding the 45km tailbacks on the main highway. At the top you can see Mount Fuji in the distance, and in the soba shop theres a picture of the old 500 yen note (no longer in use), which has a scene of mountain Fuji taken from this mountain pass.  The descent is fast, and passes over some new extremely high flyovers which have scary drops either side, so I just rolled onwards, trying to admire Fuji san straight ahead whilst not going over the edge.

Daibusaturei toge is a tough climb, over 700m straight up with several steep sections. The summit of Daibisaturei is over 2000m and the pass at 1600m  is full of hikers refilling water bottles with mountain spring water and eating at a lodge ready to set off for the summit.

After a very long descent southwards the road eventually reaches route 20, and the choices here are go through a 3km tunnel, climb another 400m pass to avoid the tunnel or get the train back from Kaiyamoto. It felt great to have been over the 3 big climbs, and to save more for the final golden week ride.

So today was another day of exploration starting again in Musashi Itsukaichi with the ascent of Kazahari rindo. After the lake the route was Matsuhime toge, from the north. This climb is relatively easy if long and the shade of the tall pine trees was very welcome. The 18km descent down to Otsuki is very slow at the top as the road has many hairpins, blind corners and narrow sections so it not until below the large dam that the road widens and you can stop worrying about the brakes overheating.

At Otsuki, I was so tempted to take the train back as Id already done 85km and the temperature was around 30 degrees. But after some glucose and caffeine from the combini, and a rest in the shade I summoned up enough strength to head south another 10km then over the final major climb over route 24 out of Tsuru town and over to the Doshi road. This was a nice easy climb, again very long but Id do this one again.

To have the koinoburi pointing your way along the Doshi michi is all you can hope for, as this route drops from Yamaguchiko in the west all the way to Sagamihara, on the foothills before the Tokyo plain. So its downhill with the wind behind, and the total 185km for the day was large, but thoroughly enjoyable, scenic and great to explore more of the distant hills before the summer arrives.