Golden week, Lake Biwa and Haircuts

Hi There!

Golden Week just concluded here in Japan! As I mentioned last time, most people had at least Tuesday thru Thursday off and some were able to take Monday off. The week is a very busy travel week for Japan - travelers fully book out most hotels and if a hotel does have any availability, the prices can be quite expensive!

I made it to Lake Biwa last Saturday (April 30th). I left Kobe in the morning and rode the train up to Notogawa, which is a small town near the eastern shore of the lake. Biwa is the largest freshwater lake in Japan.

I had spent a lot of time in the weeks leading up to the trip looking at various bicycles. You might remember that I bought one a few weeks after getting to Japan, but it is quite large and has only a few gears, making it good for getting groceries or handling small tasks around the neighborhood. Taking it on a long trip would be impossible.

Originally, I thought that I might buy an electric assist powered bicycle and actually ran with that idea right up until about the day before I decided to buy a regular road bike. I realized that carrying an electric assist bike around on trains in Japan would be difficult (they seem to weigh around 40-50 pounds) but the key dealbreaker would be that most of the ones I looked at required you to take this large charging station with you in order to charge the bike. If I was going to travel primarily by bike between Japanese towns, carrying as little as possible would be important.

So I ended up buying a Giant brand road bike, similar to the one I have at home. The bike store staff was really helpful, even though I could not speak much Japanese and they could not speak much English. It was nice to buy the bike at the store because they were able to give advice on what kind of accessories to get given what I hoped to do with the bike (take it on longer, overnight journeys). You will see a picture of the bike with the bags I bought for it in one of the album's photos below.

Back in America, I have two "pannier" style bags, which are bags that you attach to the back wheel of the bike to take on long trips. Here in Japan, rather than again buy these types of bags (which can be expensive), I decided to buy a saddle-style bag, which is a long looking bag that extends out from underneath the seat. Paired with a backpack, I thought that this would probably allow me to carry what I needed to take with me on trips.

For clothes, I have learned recently that hiking clothes tend to be pretty sturdy in terms of offering style and water resistance while also being fairly lightweight. Combined with some smaller hiking shoes, this would allow me to not take as many clothes with me and also allow me to do hiking when not biking. These types of clothes also do not need to be washed as often, which means you do not need to take as many clothes with you on trips!

Speaking of bags earlier, one thing that I have found out about Japan is that you cannot take your bike on public transport without making some changes to your ride. In Chicago, it is common practice for people to just walk their bike on the train and carry it fully assembled within the car. On America's Amtrak, you also can carry your bike onto the train, but usually they will have you store it in special spots - either in a luggage area or in a car with extra room.

Japan requires any bikes taken on trains to be put into a bag. For the bag that I bought, this meant that I would have to take both wheels off the bike to make it fit into the carrier bag. Once you get to the train platform, it is preferable that you enter either the first or last car of the train, as there is going to be space near the conductor for you to place your bike bag.

So, a few days after buying a new bike, a bag, and completing a partial disassembly, it was off to Lake Biwa!

As written, I got off the train at Notogawa but quickly realized I had made a small mistake - to take the tires off my bike, I had to deflate them. But, when I went to add air back into them while putting my bike back together, I found out that my bike pump did not have the right adapter with it to match my tires. Thankfully there was a bike store nearby that was able to help me air the tires and get an adapter.

Tires filled, I rode about 5 miles to the shores of Biwa and took a ferry for Okishima. This is a small island, but I believe it is the largest one within the lake.

I had also read that it would be a "cat" island. There are several animal islands like this around Japan that the internet touts as almost overrun by certain types of animals. Cat Islands are maybe the most common but I have heard of "bunny" islands as well.

Okishima would turn out to be somewhat disappointing cat-wise, I hardly saw any cats so I am not sure how it earned its reputation as a cat island. There were some very small hikes to do on the island with nice views of the lake, so I did those during my visit instead of taking cat pictures.

After leaving Okishima, I got back on the bike and rode up to Nagahama, arriving a few hours after sunset. The next day turned out to be very rainy, so I did not do much on the first day in Nagahama, but there were several nice stores to check out. The rain stopped late in the day, allowing me to run down to Hikone and check out the castle there - it is perched on top of a hill in the middle of town.

Many Japanese towns have old style castles that are now tourist attractions. Nearby Himeji castle is one of the more famous ones not far from Kobe.

My second day in Nagahama looked to be a good one weather wise, so I took the opportunity to hike Mt Ibuki. Ibuki is one of the "100 Famous Mountains" of Japan. I do not know the exact origins, but I have learned while hiking that Japan is known for this list of mountains and you can buy it in a guidebook form or internet list.

Ibuki turned out to be a challenging hike. The ground was uneven and rocky and about half way into the hike you are faced with a pretty steep ascent with many switchbacks, eventually reaching a height of 1,377m (4,518 ft). The weather changes between the trailhead and the summit, getting much colder and windier at the top. I even saw snow up there for the first time in many months!

After hiking down from Ibuki, I would be leaving Nagahama the next day. I had hoped to maybe spend one more night in a hotel and go farther around Biwa by bike, but there just were not any hotels available for the night I wanted to stay. So I decided to hit the bike, go as far as I could and then go back home to Kobe after the ride.

I ended up making it roughly 60 miles before I decided to get on the train. That is one of the many nice things about biking in Japan - train stations are plentiful so if you get tired or need a break, you can hop onto the train to complete your journey or head back home.

The lake was full of cyclers making the same loop as me - it seems that the common way to complete the loop is by going counterclockwise around. The north side of Biwa has a few ups and downs and was the most difficult part, but after that it was mainly flat riding.

The return to school on Friday was relaxing. The art teacher at our school got married during the break - one thing that was interesting that I think I heard was that her ceremony was on Thursday and she was back to work on Friday.

These types of things do not surprise me in Japan any more. But, I do want to try to confirm next week that that her returning to work so quickly was what actually happened.

Other than that, I got a haircut on Saturday at a new barber shop. I cannot remember if I mentioned it before but the first time I got my haircut in Japan, there was a bit of miscommunication about the razor size which led to me getting much shorter hair than I had wanted. Turns out that Japan measures razor length in millimeters whereas in the USA it is measured usually (where I would go) in eighths of an inch. So I had asked for a "7" on top which I thought would get me 7/8ths of an inch but actually got me 7 millimeters.

But, since then, I have learned my lesson, but that particular barber shop does not carry razor heads that support a 7/8th inch cut. So although I was comfortable with process at that shop, I wanted to try a new place and see if I could get a better cut.

Even though my Japanese is limited, I am comfortable enough with handling most common situations now, even if that means lots of gestures and potential awkward moments. Getting a haircut in Japan can be a process - some places have you first order a haircut "ticket" at an electric terminal near the front of the shop before you can get a cut. Kind of like taking a number at the DMV.

It is just a haircut, right - how bad could it be?

But with any new process that you go through as a foreigner, there is always a small internal debate as to whether I feel up for the challenge that day because you know that there is going to be potential communication difficulty. It can be limiting in some sense - you may not go out and do everything that you would want to do or maybe even if you do do something, you are not able to completely customize it to how you want it because of low ability to communicate.

But, I have been through enough awkwardness here that I have learned that as long as you are willing to be patient and you can make person working with you comfortable, you will get what you want most of the time. I think that a lot of Japanese are nervous about working with foreigners. I have had a few store clerks be very visibly uncomfortable while working with me.

My sense is that the Japanese worker wants to create a positive experience with the customer and that is sometimes not possible if there is a language barrier that causes some area to be unclear.

Thankfully my haircut "order" is rather simple to achieve. I know that some other friends come out of the barber with different hair every time due to communication difficulties. It continues to be a valuable experience to see and understand the struggles that foreign people deal with in any country.

Until next time,