Lost In Japan: May 2010

I rode for three hours

and all I got were these three lousy photos.

Asuke Trail again today. painful fun. I said to someone yesterday that I was going to ride until my legs fell off, and I think I got pretty close.

I went up here - more than half walking. Not much of a picture, but it shows the beauty of a plantation cedar forest.

Then I started going down here. Muuuuccchhhh better. I've never managed to find the willpower to apply the brakes here to stop to take photos as it's so much fun flying along this bit of trail on top of the mountain.

More fun.

No more photos as everywhere else has aleady been photo'd, posted and discussed.

Fun times. Ride a bike - you'll like it.

My Big Day Out.

My new/old bike rekindled my interest in old bikes and old bike junk. It also got me talking to someone online who thought there might be a bit of interest in the old stuff Kato Cycle has lying around, so today being a rainy day I grabbed my camera and headed in there.

I took a ton of photos, and I'm going to use this post to talk about some of the cool stuff I saw, but there was so much that I'm not really sure where to start...but I guess a little bit about the shop and my relationship with them might help me sort it out.

I came to Japan in January 2001 and immediately heard about this shop, Kato Cycle, from a student of my English school. It was quite an effort for a newbie to get there by train, and on my first trip I found out the hard way that they are closed Wednesdays...welcome to Japan... anyway not too much later I got to see inside and it was like seventh heaven for a bike geek like me.

The student that told me about it took me there one day, and once I'd had a personal introduction to the owner I started on a friendship that I had no idea would span a decade. In that first year we went a bit bike crazy - first an XTR derailleur, then tyres, wheels, forks, Chris King headsets, computers and DH bits and pieces as we got into that too. Next came bike frames, a lot of what we bought they considered 'dead stock' (although to almost any Aussie cyclist it would've been a gold mine...) and they seemed to think that we were doing them favours buying all this old stuff...fine by me!

In that first year and a half I'd say I was there at least once a month, at first with our friend and student Masaru translating for us. Once we moved away we still managed to get back there one or two times a year, combining big purchases with road trips. In 2006 I moved back within an hour's drive from the shop, and renewed my regular (and expensive!) relationship with them. By this stage my Japanese was getting quite reasonable, and that helped the friendship along quite well. I also interpreted for them a few times when other foreigners came into the shop.

The shop itself is massive, and I've seen it modernize quite a bit over time, but it's been on the same site since the grandfather of the current owner founded it in 1947. They have hundreds of bikes on the showroom floor, three floors of storage above that and two other storage sites. I've heard that it's the biggest single bike shop in Japan...

...and now for something completely different...

More pics of the oldskool/new 'goose.

Glamour shot session this arvo.

One Man's Junk

is another man's treasure.

Yesterday's junk-pile find - old 'goose. I'd have done ANYTHING for a bike like this in the early '90s...and this machine is in almost-perfect shape.

good times.