Escape from, or into Tokyo:





One of the best choices to make when riding in Tokyo is to escape town on the Highway to the lower density suburban areas. The traffic speed ranges up to 50kph, perfect for motor pacing. There is a tacit respect for bikes that is sorely lacking in most of the US, so even roads like this are possible to ride on. Just stick to the left and look out for sudden stops, scooters, people going the wrong way, students on shopping bikes chatting on their kaitei, you know... The usual alertness thing. The best highway is Koshu Kaido, which generally is absent of busses. This pic shows my basic view for the majority of the ride, there's always a vacuum from the cars that helps you whiz along, then there are those moments when you can slip stream. 9/10 times you can get some pretty fast rides out of central Tokyo and even faster coming back. Then others, like today there was some incredibly frustrating traffic jam, however it is legal to ride the sidewalks so you don't have to stand in the gutter woofing down Co2.
You may notice how clean and smooth the gutter looks. The beautiful road quality makes it possible to stick to the left as far as possible.
Riding in traffic, or "traffic surfing" is a constant reality here that you either learn to live with or you just don't ride. There is no where to go to ride "easy" and the flow of traffic often dictates when it's time to go "hard". Even the pedestrian paths are crammed with folks.



So after about forty five minutes to an hour you get to a trail that parallels the Tama river. It's like the Sawyer camp trail in density of traffic and width, though the Tama trail is flat and goes much longer. The trail is an artery that can take you to the suburbs and beyond to roads that will get to the mountains. Generally if you don't have all day the best area starts in the hills in this photo. The areas of Tama new town, Tama center, Hino and areas further West can provide some short, relatively challenging hills and cute quiet nature looking roads. The more I ride back in those hills the more I learn to link up roads and make it as traffic and stoplight free as possible.



You say you can't get out of town. So unless it's Sunday your options are limited to early morning or late evening. Since I'm usually with my wife at night I can only vouch for mornings. There are about six places that I found I can ride around in a loop making left hand turns so as to make a sort of cycle circuit. This is what all the early morning riders do. Sometimes I can meet up with some early birds and trade pulls around, but this is rare and I usually will end up riding by myself. Unless I do the 625 am ride with my club Piacere Yama, at Kokyo, the Imperial Palace. Kokyo is the most traffic laden of all the early morning haunts. It's appeal lies in the length of the circuit and the power hill that rolls up to about 50 meters above the city. Kokyo would actually be a fantastic race course if they could clear the cars for one morning. By the way, even out in the countryside it is not uncommon to see the traffic light every fifty meters. In a country in which 1/5 of it's citizens works in construction this should not come as a suprise. Of course if I stopped for every light I came to it would be useless to get up early in the morning. So, yes, I run the light as long as I'm to the left and the traffic merging right is light. I have done this in front of police and most of them do not care, however there are certain intersections they are very picky about. At Kokyo the club does five laps or about 25km, a short and at times very intense work out. There have been times that I've waited and no one in the club shows up, no one that is except Suzuki San. 68 year old Suzuki San shows up at Kokyo every morning without fail. He's a big fan of the keirin track bike races and has won money there. It is my plan to go with him in the near future and write a Ranting Report about it.



Akiyama San is one of the best racers in the club. He likes the hill climb and does a few of the hilly circuit races every year. Outside the city there are a couple of these circuits that are made just for bike racing. There is one that was designed for the world championships and is used every year for the Japan Cup. I did a report about these "cycle courses" a while back.



The sticky heat and humidity is around 24 hours a day. This is seven in the morning. However at the time of writing this things have cooled down.



Here's the club. They take their eating and drinking quite seriously.
Thanks for reading