Day three was pure intensity.  Callum’s friend had gotten into a nasty wreck when they were riding motorcycles together the weekend before, and the hospital had just opened his room up to visitors.  Callum decided to visit him for the day and meet me that evening in Hamamatsu, 120KM from Fuji. We began the day strong but late after McDonalds coffee and delicious pastries from a cafe. Additionally, we had pill time.  Callum introduced fiber supplements into my life, as well as Japanese hangover relief pills that may or may not have any material effect on the bodies processes.  We also took some sort of magnesium supplement. So then, I started off on my own, mounting Callum’s GPS to my handlebars after a short tutorial.  Today I was to go from Fuji to Hamamatsu, about 120km.

With my iPod shuffle bumping some powerful electronic European music, I set out on a the ride.  Wheeling in Japan is very much like wheeling in California in some ways.  The physical geography, coastal landscapes, and enjoyable climate would at times take me back to the parallel universe on the other side of the pacific that I have temporarily left behind.  I remember looking out over the ocean when bicycling the California coast thinking that the next landmass far off into the distance was Japan, and I would soon be there.  Now, I looked across the ocean knowing that California was the next sizable empire.  And that I would eventually return. In the photo above, you can see some of the man made three dimensional crosses, stacked row upon row.  Whether these are to fend of insurgents who may try to storm the beaches or to eliminate erosion, I will never know.  What was different about Japan, was that save for Hakone and a few other areas, Route 1 is like one big city street.  I felt like I was just segueing from town to town, suburb to suburb, prefecture to prefecture. 

Mostly, it looked the same.  It was filled with old people.   Everywhere I went, I felt the country was a kingdom of elderly people.  It felt strikingly different than a place like India, which essentially has demographics with the opposite concentration, or even California, which imports its younger workers from China, India, and Mexico.  

Those aged 60-90 in Japan built the country from scratch after the apocalypse of WWII, and have a special place in society.  Their children were part of a baby boom, but as a developed country, the fertility rate decreased significantly.  This aging population is illustrated below, animated over a time series, with population age on the Y axis and volume on the X.  For numerous political and socio-economic reasons, Japan chooses not to allow large flows of immigration into the country to combat this ever-impending demographic crisis.  I continued to wheel, passing a port and eating a SoyJoy, the only readily available energy bar in convenience stores.  I took a photo of the containers and container chassis for Gab, who values and sells the things (as part of discounted cash flows from operations) sitting in an office in Manhattan.  Thanks to the iPhone, I sent it right over to him.  And then, the unthinkable happened.  I was riding along at about 30km/h on the road, when a casual cyclist swerved onto the street from a parallel sidewalk.  To avoid rear-ending him, I too swerved and put pressure on the breaks, causing me to loose balance and skid on the ground with powerful force.  Dazed, I got up and felt nothing was broken, though I was bleeding from both elbows, one knee, and I had terrible road rash on my calf and thigh.  My bicycle shorts had torn even torn through, and my iPod shuffle was now scuffed to hell with asphalt.  I’ll spare you the pictures. 

An elderly woman on her bicycle paused to make sure I could walk, and then took off like a shot.  Here I was in the middle of Japan bleeding in the street wondering what to do.  I wandered into a convenience store and pointed at my wounds, slightly hysterical but mostly calm.  I pointed at my bleeding extremities to the woman behind the counter, who seemed eerily distant from the moment.  She slowly guided me to a section containing small band aides, handing me the box with nonchalance.    I motioned that I needed bigger bandages, and a crowd had gathered around to jabber at me in Japanese, even after explaining I didn’t speak it and that my wounds were becoming critical.  I was going to die here in a convenience store in Shizuoka prefecture. Worse things have happened to men. 

A fellow with a Keio university t-shirt, god bless him, directed me around the corner to a pharmacy.  In the pharmacy, the clerk pointed toward some much more prodigious looking bandages, gauze, disinfectants, and surgical tapes.  I picked up a handful of supplies and grabbed a 2 liter bottle of water.  I snuck behind the building and sat down on the ground, pouring water on my wounds, ripping gauze with my teeth, and dressing my wounds.  Thank god for my Boy Scout training, which had taught me exactly what to do in this situation from both a technical and emotional standpoint.   

The adrenaline in my veins, which staves off pain, began to subside by the time I had finished administering first aid.  Some wounds were worse than others, but I had no choice but to keep wheeling across this country.  I kept riding for 30 more kilometers and a hunger inside of me for Don Katsu began to develop into a fiery lust.  In exactly the point I had intended to eat, I came across a Don Katsu restaurant.    Inside, I was giggled at repeatedly, and I did my best to strategically conceal my bandages with my helmet so I wouldn’t be thrown out of the restaurant and shown to the hospital.  You’ll never know what these provincial people may do in backwater Don Katsu joints somewhere in the highlands of Shimada.  My fears were unfounded as the waitress continuously brought me additional cabbage and miso soup.  I paid the woman and got back on my bicycle.

My medical emergency had taken a bit of time and slowed me down some, so it was now 3:30 pm and I had 40km left to ride, giving me little room for error or pause.  I zoomed up and down country roads towards Hamamatsu, fatigued from my wounds and pondering life’s big questions, as one does in a state of prolonged physical exertion.  After filling up my water bottles 20km from Hamamatsu, ready for the final push, I was once again set back.A ledge in the sidewalk had shaken my water bottle out of its holder, causing it to fall to the ground and shatter under my tire, breaking the valve off my inner-tube, rendering it useless.  My only choice was to change my tire with the old, slow leaking tube I took out of my bike the previous morning.  Doing this lasted for about a kilometer, as air slowly leaked out of it and I felt inconsistencies in the road more and more.  Finally, as the sun began to set, and I was lost in an array of off-ramps, on-ramps, and country roads, my inner-tube lost all of its resilience.  

After picking strange and incredibly sticky seed pods off my body I had somehow acquired, I wandered into a Daily Yamazaki, hoping that they could call a taxi. Without a grasp of Japanese, I used an old receipt to draw a picture of a phone and an automobile with a light on top of it, signifying taxi.  The sweet clerks at the convenience store called the taxi while I waited outside, shameful of my less-than-pristine bandages.  

The taxi came and told me the bike was too big for his car, and that he would go switch to another.  His vibrations were not ideal.  After 45 minutes, a minivan taxi returned, and the driver was an older man with whom I jived.  We loaded my bike in the back after removing the tires, and I sat in the front seat, trying to conceal the fact that I was bleeding all over the upholstery, and occasionally, the left arm of his white shirt.   I called some hotels and found one with a decent rate that spoke english, to which I had the taxi deliver me.

 I checked into the hotel looking like an insane person, wearing cycling spandex with dried blood and haggard bandages all over my arms and legs.   A woman checking in next to me shot me a nervous smile, probably out of fear and pity.  The clerk, Satoshi, kept asking me in Japanese if I was ok.  ”Daijoubu desu ka?”  ”Daijoubu desu”, I would reply.  He showed me on a map where I could get some food and a drink, and sold me some laundry detergent for ¥50 so I could do a wash.  

Great price, I said.  He added that I had been upgraded, free of charge, from a single to a double room.   I thanked him and headed upstairs.  Removing my bandages, I settled into a warm bath tub, cleaning my wounds with water and washing the day’s journey off my body.  Luckily, I had only brought a long sleeve shirt and pants, which covered my wounds which I dressed again after the bath.  

I wasn’t terribly hungry, so I headed to a bar owned by a Kurdish Turk and his Japanese wife, who served me shish-kebab. I sat at a table, but they directed me to the bar where I could have company, namely a 41 year old Alcoholic English teacher  who had lived in Japan for 18 years and seemingly new everyone in the town.  We wandered around, looking for live Brazilian music, which sadly only began past midnight. 

There’s a significant Brazilian population in Hamamatsu, and many of the public signage is in both Japanese and Brazilian.  They are mostly bi-racial Japanese Brazilians who migrated back from South America, and work in the Suzuki factories based around Hamamatsu.  Below, you can see Softbank, a mobile operator trumpeting its bilingual capabilities.  

I caroused a bit and made it home to my hotel, where I slept like a baby.