Many of you would know that I get great enjoyment out of creating bicycle routes that are interesting and safer.

One of the tools available to help me in Australia is Google Maps, but I find it makes routes that can be classified as worse or worser. So often, I am ‘hand making’ the routes with a combination of Google, Strava, Streetview, local PDF maps etc. This approach can take some time and trust me its harder in place that you don’t have local knowledge or fluently speak the language.

But what if you could bottle my spirit and then sprinkle it as required on a map to create the bike routes?

Well in Japan they have done just that with Navitime. In the past this was a Japanese only app. Now, however, they have released an English language version of their app – JapanBike – with additional popular cycling route information. It’s also available for Android.

What might take me an hour to put together now takes minutes. Find the spots I want to visit pop them in and then choose my route style. Instead of worse and worser that Google offers, I get the the choice of Recommended, Short, Safety, Few Hills, Many Hills, Main Streets, Back Streets, Cycling Road. Usefully it shows where bicycle parking and toilets are.

The gold continues – I hit the export button and it delivers me a file that I can use with Beeline! Handy navigation on my handlebars. You may have seen Helen’s post about our ride in Tokyo. The route was completely my style with shortcuts through parks and the like – there is no way I could have done better. It does have a monthly cost but it will pay for itself in one ride.

I’ll add some photos of our current view just to make this post less texty!