Beverages on Nanikore

Bike Tour: Lakes, Tea and Senbei

Wed, 16 Dec 2015 06:46:17 +0000

It’d been quite a few weeks since I’d been out on the motorbike for a day trip, so when my old friend CS offered up the middle day of a 3 day weekend for a trip out in November, I was up for it, and so spent some time staring at my Touring Mapple book and Google Maps to see where we could put in a few hundred kilometres.

The Classy Meet Up

As I’m all about style and culture, I had decided we should meet up on the infamous 246 road before moving up into the mountains of central and western Kanagawa Prefecture. The meeting place: The Eastern Gods Truck Station. Well technically it’s the Toushin Truck Station, but the literal translation of the kanji sounds a lot better in my opinion. Yes, it’s a truck stop - a fair sized one too - with a restaurant, showers, some rooms, and of course ample parking for large trucks, and a smaller area for vans. We parked up in the latter car and van park, CS’s Triumph Tiger 1200 dwarfing some of the vans, whilst everything dwarfed my CB400.

A cup of tea and a catch-up later we were on the 246 for a little while before heading north on the 412 and then moving onto the 413 and pushing west. The 413 is a decent road - well surfaced, the odd narrow portion, with plenty of twisties to play on. For the most part you’re going along valleys, but at elevation, so expect some dampness and mist, especially on an overcast day like we were on. It was at this point I discovered the mist loved settling on my visor and stubbornly refused to roll off, so I need to sort that out.

Doushi Road

About half way along, we came across a rest area near the town of Doshi, and sailing past all those people in cars who like to queue for parking spaces, we parked up in the bike area which was packed with bikes and bikers - men, women and children of all ages, with all manner of bikes, trikes and quads. It was a good place to take a break, with people queuing for various hot snacks or grilled chicken, pork, vegetables , some tasty looking grilled fish, as well as a shop selling powdered radish roots, fresh veg and other things there was no way I could fit on my bike. In the end I had a bottle of hot lemon juice from the the vending machine. A missed opportunity in retrospect - I should have queued for the grilled fish.

Back on the road, more twisties, but then a slower section in traffic around lake Yamanaka. I always like the lakes around Mt. Fuji, especially for the novelty ferries. I didn’t take a picture, but Yamanaka had the giant swan ferry on the water as we rode past.

Another missed food opportunity here: we went past several nice local places and pulled away from the commercialized lake area,and only when we were stopping for some fuel did we decide we were hungry, by which point our only real option was the nearby Royal Host. It’s perfectly acceptable as a place to eat, but as a franchise, we’d usually avoid it.

As CS has a GPS system, he oddly likes to make use of it, and due to this, it likes to run him a merry jaunt on occasion. This time, instead of taking us to a small tea house on a mountain road I had spied on Google Maps, it decided we really wanted to sit in more traffic around the outskirts of the larger Kawaguchi lake in a market stalls area where it continued to confidently claim the tea shop was always 3 minutes away,.

After fifteen minutes, we called it out, told it we weren’t happy, did U-turns and followed my direction following my paper map. That was better. Or at least it was better for a while, since on the 137, we were to look for road 708, a svelte mountain road where this legendary tea shop would be waiting for us. Unfortunately CS was a couple of cars in front of me, and he missed the turn. This left me bombing up the road thinking I was way behind, arriving at the beautiful tea-shop and realising it was just me. Long story short, CS did finally locate the place, and it was worth it.

Tea Time

It’s called Tenkachaya (天下茶屋), as in, ‘whole world under heaven’ tea shop. They also make and sell senbei rice crackers. There’s no parking as such, and the collection of cars and bikes basically hug the sides of the road. Inside it’s all wood, modestly lit, and very relaxing. The staff were really friendly, and explained what was available in the shop and on the menu. That’s when we noticed we’d misunderstood something. They do sell tea - indeed they give you a complimentary cup when you sit down - but their speciality is a blend coffee. I had to have one, and yes, it was very good. Also, the senbei were sweet, sort of lemon flavoured, and the staff advised us to break them in their plastic wrappers before eating because they could probably stop a bullet. They do taste rather good though, so we bought some as omiyage to take away too. It’s by itself really on that 708 road, which the tunnel making it far quicker to get to and from the lake, but it is worth the ride/drive up for a rest stop and to take in the view.

After that good rest we started winding our way towards the Chuo expressway, joining at it’s southern starting point, and following it east. There was plenty of traffic - perhaps people returning Sunday night to avoid the read traffic insanity of the Monday return, so we ended up filtering for a couple of kilometres before stopping before the Hachioji junction where we parted ways. My route would take me onto the newer Ken-O extension south. I like the road as it’s not so busy, there’s plenty of distance between junctions, and even though there aren’t yet service areas, it’s a relaxing ride though I should note, there’s no street lights along some sections, so with just me on my bike, even with the headlight on, it felt oddly isolated.

The only notable thing on that final stretch was that all the auto-payment arches (ETC) were broken on my exit ramp, so I had to stop and get off my bike, get my bike seat off to give the chap on the gate my ETC card so he could manually check it through, then put it all back together. I’ve never had to do that before. Odd really.

All in all a good day out.

(An aside here: the lake is called Kawaguchiko. That ‘ko’ denotes lake [湖], and though most signs in English say Lake Kawaguchiko, it’s technically Lake Kawaguchi I think).

Tax, Alcohol and Radiation?

Fri, 24 Jan 2014 14:13:10 +0000

It’s a new year, so in a fit of preparation, I decided to go and make sure my tax links were all correct before next month when I sit down, watch Black Books Series 1, Episode 1, then figure out how much money I owe the Japanese government.

My first stop for this is always The National Tax Agency website. The English page may look a little 1998-esque, but importantly:

There is an English page;
It provides a link to the English language summary guide for filling in your tax forms ( 2013 .pdf here, if you’re interested).

I might write this up next month when I do the taxes, but I have to say that doing your own taxes isn’t so bad. It’s easier than some other things here for sure, and the people involved are actually usually very helpful.

Back to my original point. I was looking around the page and much of it is quite dry, with very dull sounding links like, " Commissioner’s Directive on the Mutual Agreement Procedures (Administrative Guidelines)", and " Australia, Canada, Japan and the United States issue internal guidance to improve the Mutual Agreement Procedure and Bilateral Advance Pricing Arrangement processes". Thrilling stuff.

Then, you find links like, “The results of Sake Awards”. I have no idea where that fits on any governments tax pages, but there is a very decent page outlining the winners out of various sake (rice wine) breweries in their pursuit of excellence.

However, the winner of the “Links I Don’t Expect to Find on a Government Tax Page” award goes to:

The results of radiation examination of alcoholic beverages (Last updated on January. 9)

For the purpose of providing consumers with safe and good quality alcoholic beverages, the NTA conducts radioactive examination for alcoholic beverages including those for exports.

So basically, the tax men and women of Japan have managed to get a gig where they have to spend lots of time with alcohol in order to … er … test for radiation safety. And to ensure good quality! The health and foods ministries must be upset they missed out on that job, especially since they seem to have issued the testing guidelines.

Yes, this post is very tongue in cheek.

Three Local Beers

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 15:36:33 +0000

Just a short post. Over the last few years, perhaps due to family and tastes, I just seem to have gotten out of drinking beer very often, or at least the lager derived beer which constitutes such a large percentage of the market here. I should say though that whilst wine now represents the small amount of alcohol beverages I do drink, I have been trying some local micro-brewery beers to see what the local brewers are offering.

The three I tried this month were from two breweries - “Shonan Bitter” from the Kumazawa Brewery and “Kamakura Prime” and " Enoshima Beer" from the Kamakura Beer Company.

Overall they were all palatable ales. I’m not sure I’d want to drink too many of any of them on a given night, but if you’re having a bit of a house party they’d go down pretty well. They’re a little bit pricey - even in supermarkets - going for 400-500yen a bottle, compared to the 200-300yen for a can of lager. That said, you’ll enjoy one of these more than two cans of Asahi Super Dry.

Despite the names, by European standards, they’re perhaps not deep, rich tasting beers but again, very decent, and fit the region they come from - Shonan is famed for it’s beaches and layed back attitude - to being almost horizontal at times, and drinking these I don’t think of oak beamed pubs but of open fronted cafes selling yakitori with surf boards propped up.

Looking around, the area seems well served with local brews apparently grown from local hops too, so as I try a few more I’ll perhaps post on them, and actually make some more notes on the taste comparison front. I wouldn’t mind getting on the bike and visiting a hop farm too.

Coffee at Kua Aina

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 05:19:49 +0000

I’m really thinking that 2009 may well be the year of truly relentlessly pointless posts. This one is in honour of the Polarize app on the iPhone which adds a kind of Polaroid effect to snaps so you add a small text tag at the bottom. I give you: Coffee at Kua Aina.

Honestly Bad Coffee

Mon, 29 Aug 2005 05:18:27 +0000

Every now and then it’s good to try something you don’t often try. To be honest to yourself. However, a bad time for this is before a meeting at work, and a bad thing to try is a different variety of something you aren’t keen on anyway.

For me, this was a different type of canned cold coffee from the works fridge. Generally, I don’t drink these, but when one is called " Honesty" you have to at least give it a try right?

Wrong.

This was awful, vile, disgusting. If this coffee was a relative, you’d send it really nasty socks at Xmas. If you see this in the konbini, give it a miss. Honestly.

Films, Fish and Yokohama

Sun, 16 Mar 2003 17:33:23 +0000

Well, another busy week, but just a few things to go up.

Managed to go to a few places I haven’t been for a long time - the first was Tsukiji Sushiko close to the fish market, and the second was down in Yokohama - actually Sakuragicho, where the Landmark Tower is, and Ishikawacho, where there used to be a great bar called Dakota, which seems to have disappeared. However, just across the road, there’s an equally good bar called Stagecoach.

I also went to see the new Bond film “Die Another Day”. I quite liked it, a bit more tense than usual, but with a great selection of gadgets and explosions. Very Bond. I do kind of agree with those who say that Madonna’s theme song isn’t suitable - new doesn’t always mean better. I have no problem with a dance track for the title, but a good one would’ve been nice.

I also went for a cup of coffee in a small coffee shop just off Alta Plaza in Shinjuku; it’s a small specialist shop in the basement (B1), which will stick in my mind for 4 reasons - it has an original Mac being used as the register, the coffee can cost 1000 yen (GBP6) a cup (!), the cake slices are huge, and it’s a damn good cup of coffee. Of course, for 1000yen, I’d want a damn good coffee. It is. Very. Too many people think that Starbuck’s hot milk effort is coffee (wrong), this is the real thing, albeit expensive.

This week actually promises to be a bit quieter as I have a lot or non-social things to do - such as my mountain of Japanese homework…

Another thing is that the 10Km run I was due to do was unfortunately full (which surprised the person organising it at the company), so that’s not going to happen, however, I think I better just keep training if I *ever* want to do this damn marathon.