Okinawa Touring Day 1: To Okinawa

English | 日本語

It's still dark and windy outside.
Today is the first day of cycling in Okinawa, and I'm going to ride my own bike from my home in Machida to Narita airport to catch a plane as same as Hokkaido touring in the last year. There are some reasons to do that, the one is the cost saving of transportation (about 3,000 yen by train or 6,000 yen by bus!), the other is in order to check the condition of my bike and myself by riding about 110 km. In fact, I was going to do that on the trip to Vietnam before, but it was raining at that time. It would be ok to ride in the rain, but I was hassle too much after arriving at the airport, so I decided to go by train. I'd like to continue this style of starting the touring in the future.

By the way, the route to Narita, I mostly took a walking route on google map (not available for cycling route in Japan). Sometimes I'm made to take a strange route, but it's a bit charm. I thought the route suggesting by google map was the same route as last year, but it seemed to run from Shinjuku to Asakusa to Funabashi to Narita in this time. My flight will departure at 2 PM, so I'd like to arrive at the airport before 12 PM, which means I'll leave 7 hours before, at 5 AM. The bike with luggage is very heavy and tiring to ride at high speed, so I estimated the time at an average speed of 15 km/h, including rest periods.

My touring style is to ride a bicycle and stay at a random place, occasionally staying at an inn, and if I'm in Japan, I also use internet cafes and super public baths. I cook my own meals using local ingredients, sometimes at a restaurant. This way, I can get to know the area well without spending a lot of money. I don't often go to the tourist-filled, decorated places, because I travel because I enjoy the route, not because I'm looking forward to getting to site seeing in my destination.

I can hardly feel a headwind when I was cycling today. That means it's a pretty strong tailwind. I'm so glad it wasn't a headwind. But that's why I get blown around so much in a crosswind. I didn't use the pannier bags that are often used on bike trips, and instead I usually carry my luggage on the front and rear carriers or towed a trailer, so I was extremely vulnerable to crosswinds.

The route was smooth, and I didn't get lost until around halfway to Asakusa, which took about three hours. I thought we'd be able to arrive in the morning with this, but I got fooled by the navigation system on google map and ended up getting lost quite a bit further down the road. Come to think of it, I remembered the same thing last year when going to Hokkaido.

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In the end, I arrived at Narita Airport Terminal 3 at 12 PM on schedule. I unloaded my luggage and started folding my bike, but it was more difficult than I expected. So I'm going to make a note of some improvements for the next time.

• Remove the handlebar.
  (I was going to leave it loose and bent, but the width doesn't fit)
• Remove the front carrier with the screws at the brake and at the top of the carrier.
  (I removed it from the base, so it took a while)
• Remove the rear derailleur, leaving the hangers in place.
  (Removing the entire hanger because I'll be viewing it with the carrier and quick, it will take longer to both attach and remove it).

When I weighed my luggage at the airport counter at check-in, my checked-in bicycle and camping gear weighed 21.6 kg and my carry-on luggage weighed 7.6 kg, so I couldn't reach my target weight of 20 kg/7 kg. If I could reach this weight, I could fly fairly cheaply, but what should I do? I can reduce my luggage based on local procurement, but I'll need to compare that time and cost with the round-trip luggage price at 5 kg more. Considering that I'll be carrying a few souvenirs on the way home, I guess 25 kg/7 kg is still a reasonable amount of checked baggage for the plane.

As I sensed on the route to Narita, there was a strong wind today. I got on the plane and headed for the runway, but it was a long time from there. A number of planes couldn't take off and land due to the strong wind, and I ended up having to wait for nearly two hours for the plane to take off.

I arrived at Naha around 6:30 PM, and I received my luggage by hand from the staff. This is a common sight on Japanese carrier airlines, but it was the first time for me to experience this on an LCC. Oh well, not bad. It was a bit of a bummer to get from the LCC terminal to the main terminal in Naha airport. I couldn't get there on foot, so I had to take a shuttle bus. It took me 30 minutes to get on the shuttle bus because of a lot of passengers. When I was planning to travel easily with only carry-on luggage, I thought this was ruined.

Finally, I could go out of the airport and started to assemble the bike. It took longer than I expected because of the trouble I had to go through when I was folding the bike in Narita. I loaded my luggage and set the inn on the navigation system, and started to ride, but it was completely dark outside. By the way, I use the voice navigation system. I can't see well with my phone screen on the handlebar because I'm an old man, and I'm wearing waterproof bluetooth speaker, so it's just fine.

I arrived at the inn at 8:30 PM. Here is a cheap dormitory, so I received a lecture on how to use the inn, and took a shower. It's called "Little Asia" near the International Street, and it's about 1000 yen per night on Expedia. Because of the high cost of living in Japan, it is not the same as in Southeast Asia, but it was not bad.

I walked out to the International Street and while I was looking at the menu in front of the Okinawan restaurant, the lady at the restaurant explained things to me. I told her I'm vegan and can't eat meat, fish, eggs and milk, and she said there were some dishes that could be prepared without them, so I decided to go in. This is my first time in Okinawa, so naturally it was my first time to try the local Okinawan food. There were a lot of vegetable and seaweed dishes on the menu able to eat for vegans.

When I was having a meal, a foreigner came to the table next to me by himself. His greeting Japanese was quite good, I thought he might be a person from the US military stationed in Okinawa, but I thought he was a tourist because locals would not come to the tourists area. He asked for shabu-shabu, but he didn't seem to know how to eat it, so I helped him a little. It had been a long time since I spoke English, but it seemed to be able to handle it. He came to Japan last week from Argentina, and went from Tokyo to Okinawa to Nara. He likes anime and martial arts (Karate, Ninjutsu) and is a big fan of Naruto. It's really strange feeling to hear a foreigner talk about how great Japanese culture is.

Then it was almost 10 PM, but I strolled around the street a bit and bought a pair of sandals that I was going to buy locally. The surface of the sandals was straw and quite light and good. I returned to the inn at 11 PM and went to bed soon.

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From home to Narita airport 105 km

From Naha airport to Naha city 5 km