I’ve started reading Josie Dew’s book ‘A Ride in the Neon Sun’. As I’m toying with the idea of doing a cycle tour of Japan at some point in the future I thought it would be good for research. As none of the areas she mentions sound even remotely familiar to me (well, apart from Tokyo, that is), I’ve dug out my 1991 Lonely Planet on Japan, so I can look at the maps and do a bit of reading around. So far, both books have confirmed my fears that Japan is:
- Extremely expensive
- Extremely overcrowded
- Extremely built up
- Extremely difficult to navigate due to the incomprehensible alphabet
- Extremely hard to have a varied and nutritionally sufficient diet whilst retaining vegetarian ideals.
They have also given me some new fears, such as:
- Lots of horrible, long, dark, heavily polluted tunnels to cycle through whilst being covered in oily, dirty spray and risking being squashed by lorries
- Dirty, polluted beaches
- Very few campsites
- Long, hot baths (I’m much more of a shower person).
All this and I’ve only just started reading the books. I’m going to have to do a LOT of preparation before I seriously think about embarking on this trip!
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