Arrival: PDX to Narita: our taxi is waiting!

In the fall of 2007 we toured Japan for 5 weeks, by bicycle. From our home in Portland, Oregon, we flew in to Narita airport (the country's principal airport, about 40 miles east of Tokyo), and cycled from there to Fukuoka, at the western end of the country. Other than to take a taxi to and from the airport at both ends and for several ferry crossings between islands, we cycled the entire distance - about 1400 miles.

Here is our route. Even at 1400 miles, it still only spanned about half of Japan.

We arrived in Narita on October 7th, just as the final typhoon of the season was winding down. Our first night's stop was at a ryokan in Narita, about 10 miles from the airport. We decided to take a taxi to our room, leaving our bikes still packed in their travelling bags because the plan was to have them mailed for us from our first hotel to the end point of our trip. The taxi ride was cosy, to say the least. I wasn't certain we could get everything into one car, but no problem - a bike in the trunk, another (along with all of the luggage and the smaller passenger) in the back seat, and the larger passenger in the front worked fine - especially for the larger passenger.

Our taxi barely had room for us, our bikes and our bags. We stuffed Rachael's bike in the back seat with her, and mine was hanging half-out of the trunk, held up by bunji cords.

Rachael and I have done a fair amount of overseas touring over the years, primarily in western Europe. This was our first visit to the orient though, and we had more apprehension over what we might find than we'd felt in years. We hoped and expected to see many wonderful things, but had fears of typhoons, frequent downpours, cultural embarrassments, stressful or hazardous cycling conditions, and unrecognizable or unpalatable meals.

We were particularly worried about navigation. To prepare ourselves as best we could, we equipped ourselves with bicycle-mounted GPS's and mapped out our entire route in great detail before we left: down to the specific streets, and right to our hotels. I'm convinced that our trip would have quickly broken down in chaos and frustration without these, in a land where we couldn't read or even sound out the characters.

Our Garmin GPS - the most essential gadget in our kit, by far.

Happily, all of our hopes and few of our fears were realized, and we had a wonderful experience. We had a few very wet days but in general had terrific weather. The roads proved to be on the whole nearly as safe as we've encountered on other tours, and the Japanese people proved to be wonderfully open, helpful, and tolerant of our minimal understanding of their ways. The cuisine was quite unfamiliar; and even though we both had unfavorite dishes (particularly at breakfast) that didn't look like food to us, on the whole we had some fine meals and were pleasantly surprised. And, to top it off, we had a perfect trip mechanically - no equipment problems, and not even one flat tire.

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