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Deanna and BB bike to Saitama [photopost]
Today was Feb 14th, and the weather was AMAZING. Like, at 1pm it was sunny and around 70 degrees Fahrenheit out there.
So, despite bike riding 6 miles yesterday, I decided what the hell, I'd go for another long bike ride today!
This time my goal was seeing how long it'd take to get to Lotte Urawa Stadium, near the Musashi-Urawa train stop. From my old place it took around 35 minutes. It's a bit over 5 miles away from where I live now in Tokyo, so I wasn't sure what to expect.
To sum up, I left home at 1:49pm, rode to Lotte Urawa, arrived there at 3pm, decided to ride from there to Yakult Toda stadium in Bijogi park, arrived there at 4pm (with a stop at Lotteria for lunch), rode around the park for a while, then rode home at 4:30, arriving back at my house around 6:30pm (with the only stop being at Bookoff for about 15 minutes).
(scale is 2km or 2miles, unlike yesterday's map which is scale 500m or 2000 feet)
I took a TON of photos today so here's a huuuuuge photopost of what I saw along the way. I mostly actually took photos as timestamps believe it or not -- I forgot to bring any paper to write on when I packed my bag for the trip. I just brought a winter coat, a longsleeve shirt, some water, some sembei rice crackers, and my camera. Oh, and BB (my little keychain plushie of the Nippon Ham Fighters mascot bear). He was on my bag and I decided he would be a good focal point when taking random shots.
Anyway, I left my house and went back to Road 17 just like yesterday, except this time instead of turning south, I turned north...
The first thing I hit was a small river before the main river, a bit north of my house. This was at 2:07pm.
Next, I hit the REAL river, the Arakawa. I took the Toda Bridge over it... here is the cornerstone. It was 2:14pm at that point. The Toda Bridge is 519 meters long. No joke. That's half a kilometer right there.
Apparently, Road 17 goes all the way to Nihonbashi. It might be fun to try to ride the entire thing someday.
Looking over the side of the bridge, we saw a baseball game! BB was very excited.
And there were some... tents? Shacks? I'm not really sure. I don't think anyone uses them right now, I'm kind of curious if there's a homeless park near there or something like in Ueno.
We are about to CROSS INTO SAITAMA!!!!
On Road 17 in Saitama. Making decent time -- 2:42 when this picture was taken of an abandoned Goodyear.
This is Kappa kaitensushi. I've been here a few times because it's 100 yen per plate, like dollar sushi. Only thing is, I hit this place at 2:44 and wasn't sure it was a good idea to eat lunch BEFORE reaching my destination, so I skipped it.
We're about to go under the big highway! I remember how this used to be like the "halfway" point when going to the stadium... now I'm like "okay, only one mile left or so!" when I reached it.
Here's a waterway that's right by the stadium actually. Timestamp: 2:59pm.
We have ARRIVED at Lotte Urawa Stadium. UNFORTUNATELY it appears that nowadays they bother locking it up, unlike last year when I snuck in and shot photos of myself in the dugout. Seriously, I looked all around the place for a way onto the field and every gate was quite closed and locked. Doh. I bet Larry Rocca warned them about me.
The Marines training facility across the street.
Posing by the entrance to the parking lot, which was also closed. Seems they built some building in there too -- I'm not quite sure why.
In a few weeks there WILL be minor-league games there. However, since it takes me a little over an hour to ride my bike there now, and about 35-40 minutes with walking and train from Musashi-Urawa, I think I might just take the train there when I go. Good to find out, though.
After this point I decided to ride to the Yakult minor-league stadium just to see if I could get there without getting too lost...
A rarity -- a McDonald's with all of the signs in Japanese.
Entering Toda City! We're on the big highway at this point.
I had passed up the McDonald's, and yet I stopped at Lotteria instead... well, if I'm going to get fast food at a burger joint, might as well be at one we DON'T have in America. Plus I figured that it was appropriate having come from Lotte's stadium.
BB guards my order number stand thingy. I got the "special" bacon cheeseburger. It was actually really tasty. Unfortunately, this Lotteria's idea of "nonsmoking" just means "this side of the room is where people aren't smoking, but since there's no ventilation and you're 5 feet from people who ARE smoking, you're kinda screwed. Oops." So I only stayed there for a little while. At least the bathrooms were nonsmoking. Yeah.
4pm, arrived at Bijogi Park! These are big concrete triangles which, if I guess correctly, are there to keep cars from going on the bike/walking paths.
BB looks down on Yakult Toda Stadium. Since it has so little seating, people actually generally DO watch games from just sitting on the hill outside, from what I understand.
What is up with the fact that these stadiums won't let me sneak in this year? (I snuck into Yakult Toda Stadium last year too.) All I could do was get to the front gate with the "watch out for baseballs that might fly out of the stadium" sign. Grrrrrrr.
The weather was still nice despite being past 4pm, so I rode around the park a bit for the heck of it.
In a playground there were many animal statues. BB wanted to make a point of defeating the Tigers.
And we went down to the water! Isn't it pretty? The sunset was really quite nice, although I wanted to get on my way well before the real sunset...
Me posing with my bike.
The highway bridge going over the Arakawa towards Wako-shi. Also pretty. I guess I left the park around 4:30pm according to these timestamps.
Headed towards Toda Center City, I came across another river, the Sasamegawa.
At least that's how I'm pretty sure you read this name.
And a bit further, I found the Toda Book-off, totally by accident! Score. It's one of these ones that is so big and so far out in the suburbs that it actually has its own parking lot. I was in there until around 5:15pm...
Again on the road towards Toda City Hall, I saw this restaurant. I have NO clue what Asian Kung Fu Dining means.
Finally found Road 17 and went back towards the city. Here we are on the Toda Bridge over the Arakawa again, just going towards the city... by then it was sundown, this is timestamped at 5:44pm, passing the border from Saitama into Tokyo again.
And remember that bridge that I showed in the very first picture in this post? Well, here it is by night. Quite lovely.
I had thought about going shopping after the bike ride tonight, but instead I bought a menchi-katsu bento from a place by Motohasunuma on my way home, and DEVOURED IT when I arrived, and then just sat here for the evening instead, playing Puzzle Pirates and watching Japanese DVDs of baseball movies. I watched Mister Rookie just to make sure it works -- I HAVE to invite over some people to watch it some other time because it is so much awesome -- and then I watched Touch, which I actually never had bothered watching before. I have to watch it again too, now that I actually understand who the hell all of the characters are. (I had the twins confused for like the first 30 minutes.)
Man, 14 miles. 20 miles over two days. Yeesh.
Tomorrow, my goal is to not ride my bike.
I might actually be going swing dancing. That would be pretty bizarre if it actually happens. Hopefully it'll use different muscles in my legs.
Is it worth me doing these silly huge photoposts of my bike rides or other similar wanderings? I just figured that since I kept getting out my camera to take timestamp photos (and also I took photos of some landmarks so I could figure out my route on a map later, heh), I might as well post 'em. Or something.
So, despite bike riding 6 miles yesterday, I decided what the hell, I'd go for another long bike ride today!
This time my goal was seeing how long it'd take to get to Lotte Urawa Stadium, near the Musashi-Urawa train stop. From my old place it took around 35 minutes. It's a bit over 5 miles away from where I live now in Tokyo, so I wasn't sure what to expect.
To sum up, I left home at 1:49pm, rode to Lotte Urawa, arrived there at 3pm, decided to ride from there to Yakult Toda stadium in Bijogi park, arrived there at 4pm (with a stop at Lotteria for lunch), rode around the park for a while, then rode home at 4:30, arriving back at my house around 6:30pm (with the only stop being at Bookoff for about 15 minutes).
(scale is 2km or 2miles, unlike yesterday's map which is scale 500m or 2000 feet)
I took a TON of photos today so here's a huuuuuge photopost of what I saw along the way. I mostly actually took photos as timestamps believe it or not -- I forgot to bring any paper to write on when I packed my bag for the trip. I just brought a winter coat, a longsleeve shirt, some water, some sembei rice crackers, and my camera. Oh, and BB (my little keychain plushie of the Nippon Ham Fighters mascot bear). He was on my bag and I decided he would be a good focal point when taking random shots.
Anyway, I left my house and went back to Road 17 just like yesterday, except this time instead of turning south, I turned north...
The first thing I hit was a small river before the main river, a bit north of my house. This was at 2:07pm.
Next, I hit the REAL river, the Arakawa. I took the Toda Bridge over it... here is the cornerstone. It was 2:14pm at that point. The Toda Bridge is 519 meters long. No joke. That's half a kilometer right there.
Apparently, Road 17 goes all the way to Nihonbashi. It might be fun to try to ride the entire thing someday.
Looking over the side of the bridge, we saw a baseball game! BB was very excited.
And there were some... tents? Shacks? I'm not really sure. I don't think anyone uses them right now, I'm kind of curious if there's a homeless park near there or something like in Ueno.
We are about to CROSS INTO SAITAMA!!!!
On Road 17 in Saitama. Making decent time -- 2:42 when this picture was taken of an abandoned Goodyear.
This is Kappa kaitensushi. I've been here a few times because it's 100 yen per plate, like dollar sushi. Only thing is, I hit this place at 2:44 and wasn't sure it was a good idea to eat lunch BEFORE reaching my destination, so I skipped it.
We're about to go under the big highway! I remember how this used to be like the "halfway" point when going to the stadium... now I'm like "okay, only one mile left or so!" when I reached it.
Here's a waterway that's right by the stadium actually. Timestamp: 2:59pm.
We have ARRIVED at Lotte Urawa Stadium. UNFORTUNATELY it appears that nowadays they bother locking it up, unlike last year when I snuck in and shot photos of myself in the dugout. Seriously, I looked all around the place for a way onto the field and every gate was quite closed and locked. Doh. I bet Larry Rocca warned them about me.
The Marines training facility across the street.
Posing by the entrance to the parking lot, which was also closed. Seems they built some building in there too -- I'm not quite sure why.
In a few weeks there WILL be minor-league games there. However, since it takes me a little over an hour to ride my bike there now, and about 35-40 minutes with walking and train from Musashi-Urawa, I think I might just take the train there when I go. Good to find out, though.
After this point I decided to ride to the Yakult minor-league stadium just to see if I could get there without getting too lost...
A rarity -- a McDonald's with all of the signs in Japanese.
Entering Toda City! We're on the big highway at this point.
I had passed up the McDonald's, and yet I stopped at Lotteria instead... well, if I'm going to get fast food at a burger joint, might as well be at one we DON'T have in America. Plus I figured that it was appropriate having come from Lotte's stadium.
BB guards my order number stand thingy. I got the "special" bacon cheeseburger. It was actually really tasty. Unfortunately, this Lotteria's idea of "nonsmoking" just means "this side of the room is where people aren't smoking, but since there's no ventilation and you're 5 feet from people who ARE smoking, you're kinda screwed. Oops." So I only stayed there for a little while. At least the bathrooms were nonsmoking. Yeah.
4pm, arrived at Bijogi Park! These are big concrete triangles which, if I guess correctly, are there to keep cars from going on the bike/walking paths.
BB looks down on Yakult Toda Stadium. Since it has so little seating, people actually generally DO watch games from just sitting on the hill outside, from what I understand.
What is up with the fact that these stadiums won't let me sneak in this year? (I snuck into Yakult Toda Stadium last year too.) All I could do was get to the front gate with the "watch out for baseballs that might fly out of the stadium" sign. Grrrrrrr.
The weather was still nice despite being past 4pm, so I rode around the park a bit for the heck of it.
In a playground there were many animal statues. BB wanted to make a point of defeating the Tigers.
And we went down to the water! Isn't it pretty? The sunset was really quite nice, although I wanted to get on my way well before the real sunset...
Me posing with my bike.
The highway bridge going over the Arakawa towards Wako-shi. Also pretty. I guess I left the park around 4:30pm according to these timestamps.
Headed towards Toda Center City, I came across another river, the Sasamegawa.
At least that's how I'm pretty sure you read this name.
And a bit further, I found the Toda Book-off, totally by accident! Score. It's one of these ones that is so big and so far out in the suburbs that it actually has its own parking lot. I was in there until around 5:15pm...
Again on the road towards Toda City Hall, I saw this restaurant. I have NO clue what Asian Kung Fu Dining means.
Finally found Road 17 and went back towards the city. Here we are on the Toda Bridge over the Arakawa again, just going towards the city... by then it was sundown, this is timestamped at 5:44pm, passing the border from Saitama into Tokyo again.
And remember that bridge that I showed in the very first picture in this post? Well, here it is by night. Quite lovely.
I had thought about going shopping after the bike ride tonight, but instead I bought a menchi-katsu bento from a place by Motohasunuma on my way home, and DEVOURED IT when I arrived, and then just sat here for the evening instead, playing Puzzle Pirates and watching Japanese DVDs of baseball movies. I watched Mister Rookie just to make sure it works -- I HAVE to invite over some people to watch it some other time because it is so much awesome -- and then I watched Touch, which I actually never had bothered watching before. I have to watch it again too, now that I actually understand who the hell all of the characters are. (I had the twins confused for like the first 30 minutes.)
Man, 14 miles. 20 miles over two days. Yeesh.
Tomorrow, my goal is to not ride my bike.
I might actually be going swing dancing. That would be pretty bizarre if it actually happens. Hopefully it'll use different muscles in my legs.
Is it worth me doing these silly huge photoposts of my bike rides or other similar wanderings? I just figured that since I kept getting out my camera to take timestamp photos (and also I took photos of some landmarks so I could figure out my route on a map later, heh), I might as well post 'em. Or something.
asian kung-fu dining
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It made me happy, so yes, you should!
Although tell BB that when taking a picture of you and the sky, he (it? she?) should fiddle around with the exposure settings. Then again, it's pretty impressive for a two-inch-tall figuring to be able to handle a camera.
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Also, the ballparks may be closed and locked because it's the off-season and they aren't manned? Didn't you go last year during the season?
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"These are big concrete triangles which, if I guess correctly, are there to keep cars from going on the bike/walking paths."
We called them d4s for obvious reasons, but there were hundreds of them at the north tip of Taiwan used to create an artificial sandbar.
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Nice pictures of you, by the way - i think you lookgreat and like seeing some of japan.
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Re: asian kung-fu dining
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Anyway, having set up some self-portraits, I know how hard it is, particularly without a tripod. But the story of you and BB switching off who's in the photo just fit so well :)
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2) This particular caltrop defense is on the northern tip of Taiwan... and happens to be pointing roughly towards Japan.
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