Odds And Yens: With the Wind

It's Friday morning now as I begin writing this and I'm sitting in the Board of Education offices drinking a Georgia-brand canned coffee against my better judgment. The concept of canned coffee in a cornucopia of flavors, hot and cold, from a machine was somehow so awesome to me I think a fuse would blow as a thread of blood extrudes from my nose if I tried to recall and express how I felt when I plunked my first 100-yen coin into a machine almost seven years ago and got...I don't remember, but who cares. However, like so many other things in Japan, the flavor has turned acrid in my mouth. The coffee is shit. It's filled with sugar and, in fact, I'm not sure how much actual coffee is in it at all. Maybe none? The can is made of steel instead of aluminum, maybe to withstand the heating process in the vending machine, maybe to prevent corrosion by coffee, and I can't help but wonder what greater good it could—no, should—be doing in the world. The guilt of gulping it down is more than I can stand. Oh, and don't bother thinking I should switch to sugarless canned coffees either. Remember in Alien(s) the blood of the flick's namesake? The Japanese have canned it for you to buy at a buck a pop.

And, of course, there's still the strangling Steel Can Guilt.

But in the end I still love The Land. The cherry blossoms are in bloom outside right now and it's only going to get warmer. Gloriously warmer. So it's with joy that I set out on my bike around town, around the natural world surrounding town, pushing back the boundaries every outing of where my bike and I have been. And it's with joy that I took part in another JET 3-day charity cycling tour around Oita, this time of my own design (though that part wasn't as joyous).

The route was as simple, elegant, gorgeous and challenging as I could conceivably get away with. Day one took the riders southwest of Oita City into the Taketa countryside before climbing into the town of Kuju. The second day climbed a bit more from Kuju before descending into Oguni on the Kumamoto Prefecture side of the border, north through Hita and over a pass into Yamakuni. The final day was a dead sprint home to Oita—after you got over the double passes in the way that is. Total distance: about 250 kilometers. Total climbing: I don't know, but a few thousand feet, at least.

Not only do these odd little sculptures stand proud and weird for themselves, they're also nearby where parts of Detroit Metal City was filmed. KRAUSERRRRRRR!!!

If the participants from the greater Oita JET community reads this I think they'll be just a tad angry, but I had three primary motivations for planning the route how I did. The first was as a reflection of the plight of the people we're raising money for. Pardon me for sounding sanctimonious, but I doubt many things in the participants' lives are as rough as what the kids in Laos that our charity is building a school for have gone through, so fuck you if you nearly take a swing at me for placing a (weak) mountain pass between you and the goal (an event that actually happened on the second day). Second, I wanted to show my colleagues that there is life outside The City and, whether they believe it or not, they're living in one of the most beautiful places in this country. Sure, beauty is subjective to an extent, but I think the people who say that have never been to the Kuju Highlands or Yabakei. So I'll just shove it down their throats and they'll enjoy the beauty, damn it, even while gazing upon it though sweat-stung eyes.

Ah, Kuju in the dawn at the border to our campground. Magnificent.

The final reason, and the one most likely to boil the blood, is that I did it for me, to challenge and assess myself. How far had I come from last year when both my legs and ass told me to stop—for Christsake, stop!—at the start of the third day? How far when that tour's aftermath consisted of two weeks of functional paralysis, of being just this side of ambulatory and taking a good two minutes per flight of stairs?

Nothing refreshes a weary rider like an iced coffee from a truck at the goal. More about the proprietor of this van later.

It's five days on now and the verdict is in: Everything's changed. No, I'm not talking about pro-level performance, but I'm firmly in a place of fitness that my chubby, bike-pushing, 13-year-old self could never possibly imagine. Each day's course was between 75-85 kilometers plus included at least one serious uphill segment of between 8 and 17 kilometers in length and I finished each in 4-5 hours—and that's factoring in long lunch breaks too. My legs and knees are fine too. I was late to meet Maia in Oita after the ride and ended up running from my car a couple blocks to the Starbucks where she was reading outside. Running! I couldn't ride my bike further than the Sonoda Supermarket across the bridge here in town for almost a month last year due to a sharp stabbing pain in my ankles. This year I'm back on it immediately, no delay. After those three days of protests and cries for help and attention from riders it's fantastic not to have one's own body doing the same.

I'll include more pics, trip details and why the tour will end up costing me hundreds of dollars more than I originally intended, but for now I'll end here and slag off from the town hall for a few hours. I've nothing really to do here and nobody cares where I am, as long as I'm in my desk chair at the start and end of business hours. Ah, these weird days of spring vacation sinecurist life...