Cycling Culture in Japan
A short trip to Japan, to visit family, friends and suppliers, was a welcome break from Seattle’s winter. It’s always fun to immerse ourselves into the vibrant cycling culture that inspires us in so many ways.
One highlight of recent trips to Japan is riding with Makoto Ayano, the founder of Japan’s most popular cycling news site, cyclowired.jp and his group of gravel racers.
Initially, we planned a two-day ride on the Boso Peninsula, but rains led to road closures and required an alternative. Cue the Cyclo Gypsy Gravel Fondo, a 100-km monster ride in the mountains that surround Mount Fuji. Riding with two Japanese national champions, plus both the male and female riders who hold the records for traversing the length of Japan, can be intimidating. They certainly know how to ride!
The course climbed and descended for hours, alternating pavement with rough gravel. The pace was high, but everybody was super-friendly, and we chatted during the interludes between the steep climbs and vertiginous descents.
We even got a brief peek of Mount Fuji while stopping on the shores of Lake Hakone. As always with this crew, it was a truly memorable day out.
After the ride, I packed my bike in its Rinko bag. A Shinkansen bullet train whisked me back to our base at 200 mph (320 km/h). It’s nice to be able to travel so quickly to meet friends for a ride!
My next outing was a visit to my friend Meisei. Together with Natsuko, he introduced me to H. Hirose, the great and much-missed builder of cyclotouring bikes. That was more than a decade ago, and we’ve been on many rides together since. This time, Meisei had a special find for me: a Patterson’s House Mini-Velo. It’s a remarkable bike: Where most mini-velos have 20-inch wheels, this one’s wheels are tiny—no larger than the chainring!
With such tiny wheels, that chainring obviously has to be huge—60 teeth, to be exact. Other interesting features include a frame made from four small-diameter tubes that double as chainstays.
There are a lot of interesting details on this bike, including cut-down brake levers to match the bike’s diminutive size. Meisei didn’t just want to show off his find: I was able to ride it!
It was quite unlike any bike I’ve ever ridden! At first, it felt incredibly unstable. The tiny wheels have almost no rotational inertia to stabilize the steering. But after the first few turns, I adapted. It quickly became second nature to balance the bike with tiny inputs. I rode through the neighborhood, a huge smile on my face. When I got back to Meisei’s garage, I didn’t want to stop. So I rode another lap. The faster I went, the better the bike felt. It’s not a performance bike, but it’s much faster—and much more fun—than I thought.
Meisei also brought out his Sano-Magic—a bike he wrote about in Bicycle Quarterly 80. Built from mahogany—including rims, fenders, handlebars and even the saddle—it’s the first cyclotouring bike Sano-san has built. (All the others have been racing bikes.) I got to ride this bike, too. It’s amazingly light—the frame itself is lighter than most carbon frames—and has a ride quality that’s unique to Sano-Magics. They are intended to flex with the rider’s pedals strokes, but they feel subtly different from the ultralight steel bikes I usually ride. Perhaps the closest I’ve experienced was a Jones titanium bike.
Since the frame is made from wood, Sano-san dials in the frame stiffness based on the rider’s preferences. In fact, the stiffness can be reduced at any time by shaving off more material! Meisei’s Sano-Magic is a special machine—truly the only one of its kind—and I was lucky to ride it. How much fun it would be to head on a multi-day tour on this!
There were many other treasures to discover. Above is the beautiful rear rack from Meisei’s first touring bike, a Silk he bought while he was in college. It was a production bike, so the rack was adjustable to fit different frame sizes: The struts are held by eyebolts, so they can be adjusted to keep the platform level.
Having my Firefly—one of my favorite bikes!—with me in Japan was wonderful. It enabled me to explore and commute whenever our schedule allowed.
I enjoyed rides along what I call ‘Japan’s longest gravel road’…
…which is used to maintain the levees along the Edo River that protect the Greater Tokyo area from flooding.
Following those roads and the bike path on top of the levee toward the mountains, I found lovely places to ride.
I stopped at the castle that used to protect the strategic location where the Edo and Tone Rivers split their courses.
I even took my bike shopping, parking it with all the city bikes in the automatic bike parking lot that are a feature of every Japanese shopping mall.
Not everything on this trip was bike-related. While visiting friends and suppliers in Kyoto, we went to the railroad museum with its amazing collection of steam locomotives. I love the functional beauty of these huge forged components: form follows function.
In one of Kyoto’s temples, there was an exhibit of mid-century furniture by Poul Kjaerholm, the Danish designer. It’s a different functional beauty from the steam locomotives, but equally inspiring.
On our last day in Japan, we visited the Tokyo Handmade Bicycle Show. The fun started before we even got to the show—this is the bike parking lot for visitors. It was full of beautiful cyclotouring bikes, classic racers, even a trike, plus carefully kitted-out bikepacking and gravel rigs.
Inside were exhibits from a wide range of builders, from Toei’s beautiful classic rando bike…
…to innovative cargo bikes and much, much more. We’ll cover the Tokyo Handmade Bicycle Show in the Spring 2025 Bicycle Quarterly that’s in the works right now. It was a fun trip, with many great memories.
More information:
- Bicycle Quarterly subscription
- ‘Shop visit to Sano-Magic‘ was published in Bicycle Quarterly 67.
