Early morning train
The benefit of an early morning train journey is cycling through Tokyo streets with limited traffic and not too many people on train platform!
Spoto!
Ah… Brompton cyclist spotted near Blue Lug last night. Lots of signage discouraging bicycle parking near train station and shopping area. 🚲🙈
Shopping parking
Doing a bit of shopping in Ginza, and need to park your bike..? No worries, Mitsukoshi has bicycle parking accessible via lift, with direct access to the store.
Cycling Tokyo by night
The above photos were taken during a night ride on Tuesday with Kanga, a Brompton cyclist who has lived in Japan for decades.
When cycling on holiday quite often you are on a high paying attention to everything around you, frequently stopping to check your phone, are you in the right place… and at the same time paying attention to everyone around so you don’t run into people walking or cycling. It can be exhausting.. but exciting at the same time.
On Tuesday night we organised to meet up with Ryan (Kanga) an Australian Brompton rider who has lived in Japan for a number of decades. We previously met at a Brompton in Palace meet years back, and he agreed to take us go for a night ride – and as you can tell by the photos – it was a fabulous ride through Tokyo.
The start was at Tokyo station… as we dodged the pedestrians, cyclists as we made our way through the maze of streets, buildings, and over bridges. I could try and explain the directions we took, but let’s face it I got no hope in remembering the names of places, but I did recognise a number of the buildings.
Our destination was Odaiba… and the foreshore which features an amazing view of the rainbow bridge lit up along with all the surrounding buildings. On the water there were a number of boats with colourful with lights We headed towards Toyosu to look at the view of the bridges and buildings which at night – and what a view!
Crazy…
Apparently some times you just need a bag for leaks..
Ah…
There is nothing better than an echire croissant… these are the best. The small of butter in the area is divine!
Tokyo Biennale 2025 inspired ride
Wednesday’s ride was inspired by the Tokyo Biennale.
Held every two years, the Tokyo Biennale is an international art festival that sets the city of Tokyo as its main stage. The festival aims to dig deep into the city, as it is created together with the area’s local citizens, as well as a wide variety of artists and creators from around the world. The theme of the Tokyo Biennale 2025 is “Wander for wonder.”
It was a loop route of about 20km that started and finished at our hotel in Suidobashi. We took in the sights of Tokyo Dome, Hongo, Ueno, Akihabara, Bakurocho, Nihonbashi, Kanda and Ochanomizu.
The first part of the ride involved visiting Tokyo Dome and then travelling through some small streets with traditional scenes of Tokyo life ending at a Yayoiken a chain store that did provide a lovely breakfast.
We continued on through Tokyo University through some more back streets towards Ueno Park adjacent to Yanaka Cemetery. We stopped of for some matcha and wagashi before arriving at Toeizan Kan’ei-Ji Temple. One of the two main sites for the biennale. There is usually some obvious parking for bikes. But this time it wasn’t so obvious. We negotiated with the biennale staff, who negotiated with temple staff for us. We ended up parking our bikes out the front entrance!
We then headed through Ueno Park towards the second of the two main venues. Etoile Kaito Living Building. This involved 6 floors of art in an abandoned department store building. But my stomach was grumbling for lunch so en-route we stopped off for a quick bite from a food truck.
A bit of holiday fatigue was setting in towards the end of the day. So not so many photographs of us weaving through the busy entertainment district of Kanda. But, I can show the Comfort Stand in Ochanomizu where we had our first coffee of the day and some cheesecake.
Once again credits to the Social Media Manager for the most excellent photos.
If you’d like to do this ride you have until 14 December!
Yoyogi to Higashi-Nakano via Shimokitazawa
Horray for wi-fi on a plane. I planned this route on the way to Japan high in the sky JL52. I was using Strava to plan this route – but is quite surprising that a premium paid product is almost useless for route planning in Japan. I typed in Tokyo as a location and it kindly offers suggestions of restaurants in the United States. In any case, I persisted using a combination of Google Maps (very useful for street view) and Strava to plan this route. The goal was to start and finish at trains stations along to Sobu line – the line that is literally only a few steps from our hotel.
You can get this route from https://www.strava.com/routes/3419161344007497190
The route includes a the opportunity for many good coffees! We had one from Little Nap Coffee Stand, a ride around Yoyogi Park, Blue Lug (if it’s open!), Planet of Curry, some vintage shopping, great back street riding in some interesting areas, and a afternoon tea at Petite Patisseries Yuki. If you had more time you could add a ride through/to the old Olympics site, visit Harajuku and cat street and Nakano Broadway.
Here are some photos to whet your appetite. I have to credit these photos to our most excellent Social Media Manager!
Today’s breakfast
I just love Japanese style breakfast… thanks for finding this for today Kym!
What you experience when cycling…
Watching Japanese movies, TV and anime often there there shots of train crossings.. so on our ride to breakfast this was perfect timing…
… additionally if you’ve ever wondered what it’s like cycling through Yoyogi Park… here is the view from the cycle path..
