Tokyo
Kamakura
Aomori
Motsuji
Sendai
Yamagata
Kanazawa
Matsumoto
here we go!
Japan has always held an aura of fascination from me, from watching their anime cartoons as a child, to marvelling at their robots and inventions as a teenager, and seeing Hollywood grapple with a culture far removed from the one I exist in.
I became close friends with Megumi Nakashima after we met in Tasmania when I was completing my 1200km unicycle ride around that state. She really sparked my interest in eastern culture, and I looked forward to meeting her again in her native country. So when I saw that the next international unicycling convention (Unicon 12) was to be held in Tokyo, I had plenty of excuses to head over a have a look around.
I visited from 22nd July to 20th August 2004.
My intinery was set around my goals of:
Unicon is held every 2nd year, with the 12th convention being held in 2004 in Tokyo. There were over 1000 competitiors, with a couple of hundred international competitors. The Japanese take their unicycling seriously- and with a couple of million riders over there, they had some outstaning riders. I competed in hockey and the marathon, however found the high temperatures and high humidity a bit overwhelming.
I flew into Tokyo on 22nd July and stayed in a traditional Ryoken. It was winter in Australia, and about 10degC when I left Sydney. When I arrived at Tokyo at 7pm, it was about 34degC. The Ryoken was very hot, very traditional, and very confronting as an abrubt way of learning just how intricate the Japanese culture is, all on my first night!
After checking into the Youth Olympic Centre, near Yoyogi park, I had a look around, tried to adjust to the heat, and met some fellow competitors.
That evening we had a traditional Japanese welcome party with Taiko drumming and dancing. It was an exciting time to be meeting people from all over the world, and witnessing just how great Japanese hospitality is. I am in the back row just to the left of centre.
The next day we had our opening ceremony in a nearby gymnasium. All of the countries were assembled together on the floor, with welcome greetings being delivered by Jack Halpern in several different languages. This is when the competetive spirit started to emerge, with the countries barracking for their members during the days artistic displays. The Australian team is in the foreground in the blue polo shirts.
The first 3 days of competition were the individual, pairs and group artistic. The group routines on day one were amazing. The Japanese routines were well choreographed, with many memers of the troupes having a high skill level (one-footed-stand-up-glide was not that impressive after a couple of dozen young asian girls had executed them flawlessly, and when I noted that we probably wont see someone do the same skill only backwards turning in a tight circle, I had witnessed that very manouvre by day 3!)
Many unicyclists were eager to meet other unicyclists from around the world, so in between events there was a lot of mingling, story sharing, and comparisons of differrent unicycling technolgy that is being implemented around the world. This was one of the youngest comptitiors, being from Hong Kong and riding a 10" unicycle. Ken is pictured here with his 36" coker. It has 4" cranks and as such is quite difficult to freemount, or turn, or ride for that matter!
When some young Chinese competitors were construcing this 70" monocycle in the hallway just outside my dorm room, they immediately had my attention! I couldn't wait to try it out the next day. The 12yo Chinese boy with me here could ride it quite well, though after 30min of trying I had achieved only 20metres of unassisted riding, and was wet with perspiration. It was an amazing piece of equipment, but a bit too heavy for commuting!
The 10km marathon was held on the same day as Toyko was hit with one of the biggest typhoons of the season. We were getting drenched and cold one minuite, and the next were getting baked in the sun, with the high humidity making it difficult to maintain any regular activity.
I suffered on this ride, with a 95% average heart rate for the first lap, then backed off and tried to enjoy the ride on the 2nd 5km, being overtaken by children as I did. They were amazingly fast! In the non-standard wheel category I soon realised that even my short 5" cranks were too long- I think the winner had 2" cranks and the only part of his leg that bent when riding was his ankle...
The Australian/New Zealand team were thrashed in the hockey. It was a very hot and sticky day, not that we would have stood a chance against the teams we were up against. The first game we went down 15-1 to a UK team, then the Germans thrashed us 23-1. I managed to score a goal against the German team by riding fast up the right hand side, then leaping at the ball which went behind their goalie. I think that element of surprise was the best weapon we could use, but it only worked once!
The capital of Japan is quite a sight to behold. The coexistance of the old and the new appears to work out OK. I spent a few days looking around the various suburbs of Tokyo, with each having its own take on assimilating with the 21st century. The contrasts were ever apparent- from noisy bustling streets you could walk for 10min into a quiet park and watch Shinto Priests going about their rituals.
Roppongi Hills is an expensive and lavish end of town. The views from Roppongi Tower were something straight out of a science fiction movie. The number of lights and building was quite surreal, and the full moon having risen not long before gave the bay of Tokyo an eerie look.
Toward the end of my first week in Japan, I made the 4am start to the day and got over to the fishmarkets. It was amazing to see the volume of fish being moved around in this suburb under a couple of hectares of corrugated iron. I was nearly wiped out a couple of times by the motorised trolleys, and was impressed with these yellow-fin tuna which were snap frozen and sold for a couple of thousand dollars a piece.
Shinjuku hosts the busiest train station in the world- with up to 2 millions commuters passing through each day. Ken and I decided to go and ride our unicycles around the station just for the novelty. Luckily it was off peak, as I struggled to breath when passing back through a couple of weeks later- I dont think the unicycle would have survived.
This suburb housed the Sony Building, where I went and met AIBO- the robotic dog. He would smile and be friendly when patted, and get angry and withdrawn when pushed around. The best was when you showed him a card with instruction to dance- he is quite a groover! I think this was the 10th version of aibo, with earlier versions being sold for about $1500.
This computerised drumkit is connected to a playstation2 and makes for a lot of fun. The rubber contacts sound exactly like brass cymbols or skinned drums. It didn't take long to realise that I dont have much in the way of timing.
The formalities of this culture were something of a shock, and I found myself committing numerous faux pars on a daily basis. As much as I tried to not eat while standing, be quiet on trains and act reservedly, my western upbringing just kept rearing it's ugly head.
The meals took some getting used to, with rice being served for all meals. Being a vegetarian, my choices were more limited, but I found the meals to be tasty, but not overly filling. I kept thinking about how much of the stuff sumo wrestlers would need to consume to become obese. It also explained why the average Japanese has a slim build.
Here I am sitting across from Roz Betse who is teaching me some basic mandarin so that I can actually converse, even rudimentally, with the young Chinese team (it didn't work!)
I stayed with my friend Megumis' family in Kanazawa, which is pretty much due west of Tokyo, on the west coast. They were very hospitable, but by this stage of my tour, after a week or so with not many english conversations, I was in need of some R n R.
Mr Nakashima showed me many local temples and Shrines. The culture was quite different on the west coast, and I was amazed when touring to the north that my friend could pick people from her home town on the west coast simply by their accent.
I was also in attendance at many shrines and temples during a period when family travel to their home town and pay their respects to their deceased relatives. There was often the smell of incence in the air, and a look of introspection on peoples faces.
Whilst in Kanazawa I enjoyed the culture. Meg took me to see a newly released anime film "Steamboy". Although it was all in japanese I understood the general storyline, and was really blownaway with the quality of the animation. I daresay I will not see this movie promoted in the west for a number of years.
The Japan Alps are beautiful. The mountains were quite distinctive. The closest I had seen to them were in northern New Zealand. I completed Dewa Sanzen whilst staying near Yamagata, involving teh ascent of 3 sacred peaks- Gas-san, Haguro-san and Udono-san. These represent birth, death and rebirth to followers the Yamabushi religion.
In this picture I am at the top of Haku-san- a highly regarded sacred Shinto peak. I was the only foreigner out of the several hundered people on the mountain that day. Due to time restraints I had to complete the 1500m ascent and descent in one day.
After leaving Kanazawa I stopped in at Matsumoto for a couple of days and had a look at more of the Japan Alps, then met up with Aya Tanibayashi in Tokyo. As a former employee of Tokyo Disney, it was like having my own guide. We got an evening pass, and even on a Wednesday it was busy with many Chinese and Koreans who were visiting in their school holidays.
I went on 2 rides- "Its a Small World After All" which was immense in size, and the "Roger Rabbit" ride. It was fun to walk around and look at the different amusements and statues.
I bought a small video camera before going to Japan, and captured about 7hrs of footage during the tour (most of it of the amazing artistic unicycling). From this I managed to edit all of the best parts into a 1hr DVD which I have distributed to my family and friends. I am happy to burn off a copy for anyone who would like a copy, with any charges simply to cover costs.
Having this video has been great for me as I can relive the experience at any time now that I am home in Australia, and it is much more vivid than photographs.
Now that I have a new computer, I am happy to run off a CD of extra artistic footage as a Quicktime movie if anyone is interested. I did include the full routine for Simon Wells and the winning Toyoda group artisitc in my DVD.
The contents of my DVD include: