Saturday, October 27, 2012

day 140 - 147, from Kyoto to Tokyo


Day 140, 115 km

I left the house of Christiane and rode along a river downtown to Kyot. It was a wonderful bicyclepath about 30 km, passing rice fields, tea plantations and a lot of sharon trees.

Finally I came to the center and saw the first big temple, a pagoda with five roofs. It was completely built of wood and it was 55 m high.
Next to it there were some more huge old buildings with Buddhas inside. It was not allowed to take pictures there.

 There pagoda was surrounded by a park with a pond in japanese style. In the pond there were big fishes and turtles., really nice!
You can see the pagoda in the left pert of the picture

 Then i went to the central station to visit the tourist information. The building of the station was a huge mall. I could go up on a terrace on the 11th floor.
 From there I could see the pagoda again amongst newer sky scrapers.
 I liked the modern architecture of that mall!
 Then i rode through Kyoto and found nice temples, shrines and a lot of other old buildings.
 Here is one of them:
 Another pagoda:
On the hill up to the (as I was told) biggest and most famous temple I was interviewed by a class 6. They had some questions about geography and their task was to ask tourists. I believe it was to exercise their English.
 This is the big temple. when you come from west
And here you can see it from southeast
 
There were many Japanese tourists and several Buddhas inside
 People were praying to them
 North of the temple there was again a hill of love. You could buy plates were you could write your wishes. Most were written in Japanese but some also in English
You also could buy printed ones in Japanese and English but the translation was not always so good (this is also common on all signs along the road in Asia)
 On the way out of the temple I found a huge bug.
 We became friends


Day 141, 115 km

 I continued east and chose a road close to the coast. Here you see a 6 m high tsunami protection wall.
 Unfortunately these roads often unexpectedly ended and I had to go back. The ports were on peninsulas about 5-10 km south of the ma inroad.
 But I wanted to find a cargoship to Canada,
 I went to a place called Timber Port in the Bay of Nagoya and smelled a lot of wood. But this ship came from Australia.

I also passed many shrines along the road. Often they were surrounded by beautiful old trees.


 Day 142, 175 km

I started the day with a bath in the ocean at the beach were i had slept.
The ocean was still warm (surely more than 22 degrees celsius) and it was wonderful!
After some kilometers I saw the mount Fuji for the first time. Really impressive!

This day I often had problem to find a road that was not forbidden for bicycles. Since I had been stopped by the day before (the police had taken my passport number twice and it took a lot of time) I really tried to find legal roads. But even when I was sure that I had not missed any signs the police stopped me at once as soon there were options to the fastest way. When I told them that there was no sign which prohibited me to take the faster way they said that for safety sake I should take the road which was slower and went through the center of the cities. I did not feel so safe there because there was less space for bicycles and many trucks as well, but i did not want to argue with the police since they had taken my passport number twice.
Here I was supposed to carry up my bike for a long stair again... 
 There was snow on the top of Mt Fuji
 Some kilometers east of Mt Fuji I had to pass Mt Hakone and climb up a long way (up to 870 m)
Everything grows very fast in Japan, even through the asphalt. Often the bicycle road was almost blocked
 On the top of Mt Hakone there was a national park with a big lake
 You could go across it by boat och you could hike around it.But i already was delayed to an appointment to a waldorfschool 30 km west of Tokyo.
Late in the evening I arrived. It was not so easy to see from outside that it was a waldorfschool.
On the gate I found this sign.
The buildings were former offices which did not look like a school building.
And the backside of the school was reinforced by a steel construction to make it more earthquake-safe.
I took the pictures above next morning
Day 144, 1 km

That day i had a resting day and was invited to see a man from the native north Japanese tribe. He showed a ceremony for class 6.
First he cut some pieces of wood which symbolised the god of fire.
He was really skilled in cutting and the pupils in their self made outfits were fascinated 
 I did not understand so much of the ceremony but it was to bless two big salmons.
After the ceremony class 6 made up fires and cleaned the fish

But then it started to rain and they decided to move into the classroom.and continue there. They made a delicious soup!



 I liked the atmosphere in the school.

All pupils were very skilled in activities like joggling and riding unicycles.

Day 145, 2 km

This day I had two lectures. First for the pupils of grade 9-12, then for grade 6-8. I also used the Internet of the school a lot to search for a transfer over the Pacific. As I wrote before want to avoid to take a flight because it makes so much emission of carbon dioxide. I want to go by cargo ship or sailing ship. I have read different arguments how much greener a cargo ship is. One says that 100 passenger on a cargo ship make as much emission as one on a flight, one source says per person-kilometer it is 36 times less on a cargo ship. That argument is strong enough for me even when a cargo ship journey costs twice as much as a flight and takes two weeks. I can use the time to rest and enjoy good food on the boat!
So I have decided to try to find a boat. If I don't find a boat within two weeks I will take a flight anyway...

Day 146, 75 km

I left the school and headed towards Tokyo. It was longer distance than I was told! The closer the center I came the higher the houses were. But there was not only high houses, also parking lots were higher than usual: 
A friend I met at the farm in Beijing hag given me a name and number to his friend Sun Bo, who studied in Tokyo. I met her at her school which was a building with 23 floors. She showed me the view of the highest floor.

 The view was amazing!
 Then we went to a park in the very center of the town and had a nice afternoon.
 It was a part of the Imperial park
 With many beautiful buildings.
 We watched the sunset in a fountain park
 And then we went to the main station. Sun Yang told me that the station recently was rebuilt in a style how they built 100 years ago
 Everything was new, clean and shiny.
 I went to the tourist information and asked about what to see in Tokyo. When I came out again it was already dark and the station was even more beautiful amongst all sky scrapers.
 I called a member of Warmshowers.org who invited me to stay at his place. Tokyo by night was very beautiful!
Day 147, 40 km

I spent the morning to find a ship to Vancouver. Finally I found a site called www.flightlesstravel.com. They had a lot of useful websites. I wrote a request to all of them. Then I took my bike and biked around in Tokyo.
I found out that Tokyo was a little like Venice, many bridges, channels and islands. The Venice of the far East?

 I also visited Sky Tree, right now the highest tower of the world (634 m)
 It was built in the middle of a mega mall. You could go up but you had to buy a ticket and then you had to wait 2-3 hours because so many people wanted to go up. Meantime you could go shopping in the mall...
 I continued my exploration of Tokyo and found many pedestrians in central Tokyo. Bicycles were allowed so I saw thousands!