It was my absolute dream for most of my life I still can’t believe it actually happened! I frequently look at the thousands of photos I took from my tiny 2 megapixel camera phone to remind myself it wasn't all some vivid and wonderful dream.
I have to say, bike riding in Japan is quite the different experience, especially compared to Colorado. I stayed in a small village named Nagahama in the Shiga prefecture. Kyoto’s about an hour by train.My purpose there was to learn Japanese puppetry (人形浄瑠璃―Ningyou Joururi) and improve on my language skills before my last semester of Japanese classes.
Every morning I rode this bike
(RIGHT) to the Tonda Puppet house. It had three gears, a self-powered light, a conveniently large basket in the front and of course a bell (that I overused quite a lot).It was a bit scary not wearing a helmet, but biking in Japan is a lot safer than in the US. There are almost no cars and everyone is just so wonderfully courteous!
And of course, every morning: THIS is what I got to ride past:
It was like being in a movie and SO unreal! There were just rice fields, distant mountains and clear blue skies (except when it rained).
Something interesting I noticed about Japanese bike riders is that you'll almost never see someone just riding a bike for the heck of it. People mostly just use bikes for getting place to place.
Also, most Japanese people are Buddhists, Shintoists or both, so there's a general fixation on the sanctification of nature, which of course means,
NO MOUNTAIN BIKING! (GASP!)
Here’s another picture of the main shopping center in Nagahama. The streets are really made more for pedestrians than cars or bikes. They're so narrow you can BARELY fit two cars side by side (and that's two JAPANESE cars that are considerably smaller).There are so many of these pictures to sort through! But I'll be sure to post some more pictures of my biking adventures in Japan soon!
^_^
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