Shikoku by folding bike – part 1

The trouble with travelling around Japan is that it can be so unreasonably expensive. Although the land of the rising sun may be world-renowned for it’s fast, prompt and efficient train service (and deservedly so), it all comes at a terrible price. Every time you buy a ticket to travel somewhere outside your own post code you feel like you’ve parted with an unreasonably substantial amount. No, I’m not going to suggest that the hordes of expressionless Japanese businessmen who inhabit those packed trains day in, day out have sold their souls for passage to their offices. It’s just that every time I board a Japanese high-speed train I feel like shouting “Why don’t you take my belt too? It’s all I have left now! It won’t fit me in a couple of weeks anyway, now that I don’t have enough money left for food!”. When I travel in Japan, I feel like an orphan who has scraped enough money together to buy a ticket for London, where the streets are paved with gold and you have to claw your way through the throngs of people offering you a job just to get out of the station. Not knowing how I’ll get by in my new destination without cash for food nor board, I often contemplate singing to passers by in the hope that they’ll think I’ve gone crazy and give me a few coins of pity money.

So, faced with some free time on my hands in the shape of the spring holidays, I began to plan wallet-friendly ways of acquainting myself with some unfamiliar parts of Japan. Hitch-hiking? Well, maybe, but I only had a week, and I wanted to go to one of the islands really far from where I lived. It’ll be best to save that particular adventure for when I have more time. Plus I had just watched “Jay and silent Bob strike back” and was a little nervous about having to follow “The book of the road” if I got picked up by any truckers. I suspect that the ways of lorry drivers are universal, and there’s probably some kind of trucker UN where all the countries’ truckers get together and think of sinister new ways for hitch-hikers to return the favour of giving them a ride.

With hitch-hiking put aside for the time being, I looked for a new way of getting to my destination. Then I found it: a ferry. For only ten thousand yen (fifty pounds, one hundred dollars, ninety two baby teeth on the Thai black market) I could travel in the time-honoured way of centuries of explorers before me: by sea. The ocean-worthy vessel would take me from Tokyo to the easternmost port of Shikoku. So it was settled: Shikoku was my destination.

But what to do when I arrived there? It seems I had found myself in a pickle. For the train prices in Shikoku were somehow even more expensive. It was unimaginable. It was like someone had taken the Bee Gees and found a way to make their voices even higher^*, and their songs even more irritating. What could I do about this problem? Without thinking, I rushed to the nearest shopping centre and purchased a folding bike. Why? Well, I like cycling. And they accept folding bikes on the ferry. Was it cheaper than going around Shikoku by train? Well, no, but by that time I had justified it to myself. In my mind.

I set out on a rainy Friday afternoon with high hopes and a spirit for adventure. Toting two huge bags and a barely-portable behemoth of a bike bag, I certainly looked the part. The part of Hagrid in the upcoming “Harry Potter: the musical”. Well, no, not quite, but at least the part of a hopelessly inept tourist who has packed far too much for himself to carry. The reason I had brought so much with me is that I had planned to cut down on accommodation costs by doing a bit of the old “wilderness camping”. With this in mind, I brought a tent, sleeping bag and other assorted bulky pieces of camping gear, all advertised as being “lightweight” and “durable” but were really just the cheapest pieces of tat I could find. People scrambled out of my way as I boarded the ferry, no doubt terrified of being bulldozed under the enormous weight of my possessions.

But once I boarded the ferry and safely stowed my bike and possessions away, I was free to walk the decks, like a captain who really should be manning the ship, but really is a bit of a poser and likes to be seen walking around with a pipe in his mouth. As I sat in the ferry restaurant, watching Tokyo move away and eating a nice beef and potato stew, I thought to myself “This really is the way to travel.”. OK, it took 18 hours, but at least I could lie down on the floor and sleep (a carpeted floor, mind you, and they even give you blankets!”. There’s nothing quite like reading a nice book with a lovely sea view and a cold can of beer. Indeed, many of the other passengers didn’t even need a book to enjoy the trip. Or the view of the sea. Although I can’t blame them for hitting the alcohol vending machines a little hard, I know it helped me sleep.

I arrived in the busy port town of Tokushima at around noon the next day. To call the place an unsightly concrete jungle would be a bit unfair, since at least the “jungle” part of that description sounds interesting and exotic, whereas the city itself had neither of these qualities. I spent the afternoon putting as many miles as possible between that town and myself, on my trusty folding bike. Let’s call it “Tonto”. After an hour or so I had left the aesthetic nightmare of Tokushima and was finally cycling through the kind of countryside that Shikoku is famous for. Cycling along a river and surrounded by beautiful mountains, I made my way serenely towards my first camp site. I had phoned ahead at one of the camp sites in the area, only to be told that it was full, so my plan was to check out a free camp site nearby. The only problem was that it didn’t exist. And I spent most of the evening cycling up a mountain to find it. By that time it had got dark, and I was hungry, so I cycled back down the mountain and scouted out a place to eat. A sign for a Japanese omelette (okonimiyaki) restaurant named “nande yanen” caught my eye. It was a phrase that a student of mine had once tried to teach me, but I had long since forgotten it’s meaning. I locked up my bike and went in.

*Helium? Doppler shift, maybe?