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Well, I’m back. From the Cape, from my mini-meltdown, and from Japan, where I’d booked a bike tour as a splurgy birthday present to myself. I don’t think I mentioned that plan in my last post. It was sooo fun. Riding bikes through hot, humid coastal areas, every route a little different from the day before . . . along the sea, over hills, through quiet little towns, my water bottle fortified with salty, grapefruity electrolytes.
I didn’t think (much) about the rest of the planet while I was away. I’d finished writing Chapter 3 of my book on the plane, and emailed it to my agent. Spent a day with my mom in SoCal (Mexican food for lunch; California wine from my Dad’s dwindling collection with dinner), got my flight to Tokyo in the morning, and was on the Noto Peninsula ready to ride a day later. (Or was it a day before? I have no idea how that dateline thing works.)
It was a far-reaching, week-long bike trip, but I’m still a little shy to admit that out of the 14 people who’d signed up, 8 of us were on electric “pedal-assist” bikes, including me. My guilt isn’t over the energy that was required to charge the battery on my e-bike (although that would be on brand for me), but because I love to ride, and have spent longish days on a (regular) bike in the past (like in Ireland, before the pandemic). But I wanted to do ALL the hills and all the valleys on this trip — to see everything — and still be back by happy hour. I also knew that temps in Japan would hover around 90 degrees Fahrenheit most of the time, not counting the heat index. That said, once my muscles warmed up each day, I kept my bike on the lowest setting (“eco” mode) for much of the time, shifting manual gears with my right hand as the terrain required. And all 14 of us (plus our awesome guides, Nick, Paul and Gorka) rode with whoever was nearby, whether on a humbling e-bike or a self-propelled one. When the mini cans of Asahi came out of the cooler at the end of each day, no one cared who was riding on what. My only concern was whether those tiny cans would be recycled.
We’d met early the first morning in the lobby of a hotel in Tokyo’s Haneda airport, and did introductions all around. I almost instantly became the “problem child” of the trip when I misplaced my tiny boarding pass between security and the gate; for some reason they don’t use electronic boarding passes in the gloriously high-tech country of Japan? A very polite kerfuffle ensued, and while I was waiting to re-board the plane with Nick and our translator Atsushi, I asked the latter how to say “I’m sorry” or “excuse me” in Japanese. “Sumimasen,” he told me. “It’s a good word to know. It’s used a lot here.” For better or worse, I got to practice it quite a bit.
A quick flight north to Wajima, a tour of Sōji-ji — a stunning Zen Buddhist temple and monastery (which took me back to my own days on the cushion — “Just sit, and expect nothing”), and a simple lunch, and we were on our bikes!
The Japanese countryside is, shall we say, minimal. We could ride for miles, past homes and/or businesses — it was often hard to tell — and barely see a soul. Maybe it was the heat, keeping everybody inside? Or maybe there weren’t many “everybodies” to be seen — there’s been quite a population decline in Japan. Young people going off to college, and not returning to their small villages. The trend is so prevalent that the government has been offering some of the many abandoned houses (called “akiya”) in the countryside at low prices. Millions of them, apparently. Hey, maybe that’s a housing market I haven’t been priced out of.
There also wasn’t a trash can in sight — even when we got to Kyoto, where we spent our last few days. I think the idea is that it’s your responsibility to dispose of your refuse, not the government’s. One early afternoon, after the bike tour was over, I’d gotten some takoyaki (gooey, fried dough filled with bits of octopus) from a small storefront window, and wandered around carrying my leftovers for hours . . . until some point when I realized I wasn’t carrying it anymore. I felt horrible about it, because I’d obviously set it down somewhere and forgotten to pick it back up. I’m sure whoever found it was probably like, “Eff’ing tourists!” — except that the Japanese are way too polite for that; apparently they don’t even have curse words. I did ultimately discover that businesses who sell disposable things seem to have places to dispose of them, and some of the ubiquitous beverage vending machines on the streets have a small bin next to them for the empties.
Anyway, the jet lag has finally subsided now that I’m back, and I suppose I could review what I missed here in the US of A while I was gone. We survived another potential gov’t shutdown, which is nothing that new, although I’m still unclear what that would’ve meant for us regular people had it happened. Apparently national parks lock their gates, which costs tourist towns — from the Everglades to Death Valley — about $70 million a day. I assume that’s all of the towns put together; if not, I’m in the wrong business. And lots happened in Congress last week, including the death of the great but very old Dianne Feinstein, and, oh yeah, the Speaker of the House got ousted, for the first time in history — and I am not overly surprised by either. And I have some wicked asthma today, which I imagine is due to another round of Canadian wildfires north of here, the fumes of which have reached down to Florida. Although the sky isn’t brown where I am, like the last time my cough tasted like smoke.
In fact, I’m tired. I’ll get back to this tomorrow . . .
TOMORROW
Or is it today? Whatever it is, my asthma now seems to be connected to other symptoms, but who knows if it’s RSV, the new Covid strain, or just a bad chest cold . . . ? And on a world level, a friend of mine texted me last night — from Israel. She’s there on vacation with her hub, her mother and her brother; she said it’s “the most f**ked up s**t I’ve ever lived through,” and she grew up in Colombia in 1980s. They’re praying their flight home in a few days doesn’t get cancelled, like a bunch of other flights have.
Sigh. I wish I was back on the Japan trip. Can I do that? Wanna come with me . . . ?
. . . to putting on cycling clothes and sunscreen each morning before nice hotel breakfasts with the group, attempting to identify the food inside each little lacquered box or bowl.
To daily briefings of where we’ll be riding that day (up to 40 miles on a full day) from Nick or Paul.
To flying down the hills after a long climb, past a huge Shinto gate marking a spot where the regular world meets the spiritual, past rice paddies that actually smell like rice, past workmen or schoolchildren, and shouting out to them “Konnichiwa!” and having them answer back, “Konnichiwa!”
To pulling off for a sweaty, yummy lunch, and ending the day at our hotel or ryokan. Donning a yukata (a lightweight, cotton Japanese robe, seen in the slide show below) and joining the other women from the trip in the ladies’ onsen for a soak, and their telling you to try the cold plunge, even though it sounds insane, but you do it, and once you’re up to your neck in the little tub of icy water, it feels great. (Or if you’re a dude reading this, joining the dudes in the men’s onsen for whatever they do.)
And then dinner. In case you haven’t figured it out, I LOVE Japanese food. Miso soup at breakfast. A tuna donburi bowl for lunch. One day the group of us had teishoku lunches made by a former sumo wrestler at his roadside resto. I ate dried strips of blowfish along with a tangerine at one of our watering stops. Pickled plum onigiri at another one. In fact, at each of our daily refill stops, the team had a new Japanese treat for us. And dinners were beyond, including a few multi-course kaiseki dinners at our hotels. I think my favorite “meal,” though, might’ve been on the penultimate evening, when we were on our own; I went with a few others to an izakaya (a tapas-style Japanese pub), ordering a tall mound of potato salad with smoked scallops, a plate of karage (boneless fried chicken with Japanese mayo), a stack of cucumber chunks layered with pesto, and whatever else sounded good — all washed down with Kirin and sake.
How about a little SLIDE SHOW of some of it??
And can we talk about how civilized everyone is there? How spotless the streets are? How well dressed people are? I don’t mean “dressed up,” but certainly neat and clean, in an all-over subdued palette of black, white, and sort of an ecru — the color of unbleached linen. Of all the hundreds of people I passed while walking around Kyoto, the few who wore a different color (or never mind the word “different”: change that to “the few who wore color“) were not Japanese. Same with anyone wearing something worn-out or sloppy looking; they were usually tourists, and usually Caucasian. On the first of my two solo days in this smallish city, I’d donned something summery that I thought would fit in well — a simple, feminine, cotton dress with a few ruffles at the shoulder — but who knew that a light purple floral would stand out so much that someone would actually recognize me walking through an outdoor shopping center? It was Motohiro, one of the guys who’d helped out with the bikes on the trip. “Debra!” he called out when he saw me. “Moto!” I answered and gave him a hug, before we each went on our ways. [You can see the dress in the slide show; look for me having a whiskey with some of the guys.]
Even in the Nishiki Market, the famous Kyoto food hall of 130-something vendors in a loooong covered passageway, I got in trouble for eating a soft-serve ice cream cone while walking. I didn’t know that it’s protocol to step into the vendor’s shop where you’ve purchased your snack, or eat or drink the item in front of their stall. “Sumimasen,” I said to the person who pointed out the hand-written sign, and I sheepishly made my way back to the little ice cream place with my soft-serve twirl of half matcha and half roasted green tea ice cream. Which of course was divine.
What else did I love about this adventure on the other side of the planet? I love the clipped rhythm of the language. I loved the little tray you put your money on when you buy something, and onto which the cashier then places your change. I love that I don’t feel a not-so-thinly-veiled war going on between two halves of the population. And I loved the friends I made, from Chicago, Denver, LA. I really hope I see them again.
Since I’ve been back, and I’ve gotten together with friends here at home, they say, “Tell me about the trip!” or “How was Japan?!” I hope sharing it here, through my little “Citizen Deb” lens, is an okay way to use this forum every now and then.
Even though I’m called to it, I don’t find it easy being a writer, mentally or physically. My body likes to move. I like to explore new things, to be with people, to wave my fellow cyclists to pull off when one of us comes across an elaborate procession in a tiny village. And to crack up that evening when none of us can figure out the massage chair outside the doors to the onsen because the instructions on the remote control are in Japanese, so we just keep pressing buttons to see where the chair pokes us.
So I tell my friends, the trip was great. Japan was great. I love the austerity there, the manners, the fact that it’s so goddamn organized. I have to confess that this problem child left her eyeglasses — gold aviator frames with progressive lenses — on the first of the two trains we took from the countryside to Kyoto, tucked onto the pocket of the seat in front of me; and that thanks to our trip guides — who do everything from fixing a broken bike chain on a hillside to setting up a sake tasting right in the parking lot where our ride ends for the day — my glasses were delivered to our hotel two mornings later. Can you imagine that happening in the U.S.?? That said, despite all that organization and meticulousness really appealing to the Virgo side of me, I think it would be hard for me to live there. My Leo likes to roar sometimes.
I wonder if I’ll go back. Who knows? I’d go back to that izakaya in a MINUTE. But I’d like to check out Seoul, South Korea. And I still want to see the Antarctic! And I’m looking at my next Backroads bike trip, if I can ever afford it again; I’m thinking Puglia, in southern Italy, where my dad’s father came from. I know which town Grandpa Castellano was from and everything — hopefully some of the family is still there. And I understand you can buy cheap houses in Italy, too. Plus, ya know, Italian food.
Subscribe and comment below. I’ll try to get back in my lane next time I’m here — back to being your friendly environerd — once I ease back into my own little village and stop dreaming of soba noodles and Japanese whiskeys. And get over this bug. Until then . . .
xo,
Deb
(Leo sun, Virgo moon — or so I’ve been told — and near the cusp of both)
Alexandra Neil
Citizen Deb 
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