Marampa Motor

I have not been able to do much motorcycle riding in Japan this year. The weather has been cold with rain for months. Last year was apparently an odd one with low rainfall but this one seems wet so far. Seems in Japan there normally is no dry season. I made a small graph representing a year of averages (click to enlarge). Basically winter season is too cold to ride due to snow and ice. Then as

A window of fine weather appeared in early November before winter. It was already very cold to ride North however the southern temperatures remained mild so I decided to seize the chance to try a more ambitious tour here before winter ends the riding for this year. One of the challenges touring here is securing hotels. They seem to book out a few days in advance and weekends often a couple weeks

I have read often that October is the best month for riding Japan. So I made sure I was here, even shelving other travel only for there to be a two typhoons! I was beginning to wish I had made other arrangements but eventually the rain eased so I decided to try a shortened Autumn leaf viewing ride. Heading north I wanted to skirt around Tokyo as I don�t trust the Garmin to navigate me through the

Last ride from Nagoya but certainly not my last ride in this part of Japan which I like very much and will return to in the future. Just a quick post of a few photos I wanted to add to my set of the area on the bog. I chose to revisit the roads nearby which I first road the afternoon I picked up the FJR. I perhaps only had the chance to ride 1/4 of the good roads in this part of Japan so rich is

Trust me to be the last to find Mie, the district that is. I often find myself drawn to something afar and overlook what is right in front of me and so I have been off riding the roads in Fukui and Nagano and left my first visit to Mie until the last week I have living in Nagoya. I started this ride by revisiting the Suzuka skyline which was closed the last time I tried to ride it. This is an

Or perhaps I can call this post adventures in GPS navigation in Japan. To the East of Nagoya lies Toyota City and the prefecture of Aichi. I was not expecting too much in the way of good riding roads however yet again it was excellent. Once you leave Nagoya there is mountain after mountain with roads crossing most if not all in some form or another. I am getting used to being able to whisk my

I�ve been doing a few rides north from Nagoya towards Nagano. The high alps in Nagano are a bit too far for one day but there is still plenty of great roads to enjoy along the way. Getting out of Nagoya is still a challenge but I now know the expressway system well enough on a couple of the routes I use to be able to ignore the hopelessly inaccurate navigation provided by my Garmin. I have been