Tokyo Bike Trip- Noon-7pm, Sunday afternoon

Woke up this morning and went for my 6 mile jog to Kasukabe station and back.  The sun was intense today, almost at the solstice.  Needless to say, I was running slow towards the end from heat exhaustion rather than muscle pain, felt good regardless.  

About 2 hours later I departed for Tokyo.  Only this time, with my bike.  Although not knowing the exact distance, I would take a guess of around 20 miles to the outer subway stations. Took about 4 hours going down, with stops for pictures, shopping for hats and incense. Did pick up some Chandan, one of my more favorite scents for 150 yen.  I remember Reiko had some of this when I was in New York last fall. 

Saw a lot of things.  It gets a little drier, development wise, after my city before the real outskirts of Tokyo, but only a train stop or two.  Gotta say, the area around Takesato is a real shit-hole.  Japan's version of Parkersburg, West Virginia. This picture is from the area, but I'll try to really knock it next time. 

The map; I start a little south of Kasukabe, the split right at the top, and made it to about Arakawa at the bottom. Around 20 miles.  Although there's continuous development the whole way, it doesn't really become 'city' until about Soka.

Here's a picture looking south from Soka.  In the distance you can see more high-rises of Kita-Senju, Tokyo, the first Tokyo district on the opposite side of the big river.  You can tell I'm closer to Tokyo because of the amount of train tracks and the relative difficultly of crossing them if need be. 

Below is a picture of Kita-senju/ Arakawa. It's taken from the northern bank of the large river, looking southwest.  Tokyo is spread around miles and miles of land.  This is just one section of many downtowns or areas. 

Some guy had a tortoise right near the location of the previous picture's location.  And appropriately, he and the tortoise were still there about 2 hours later when I was heading home. 

Once I crossed the river and began making my way south, I stumbled upon some small, local festival. But more importantly, if you haven't seen it before, a guy in the lower part of the picture has his bike with a kid in the front and a kid in the back.  Pretty common really. 

And this is it. This is why I came to Tokyo.  The single abandoned, wrecked building.  To be honest I went about 5 minutes further south until I checked my watch and 4 hours had already gone by and decided to head back.  Anyway. Detroit-style rules. 

And the dot of the sun on the way home.  I stopped off at a Yoshinora on the way back and filled up on some rice with the briefly raw egg mixed in, beef-vegetable mix and some miso. Cheap and delicious.