Never ending story - Part 1

Timing would have been everything

Monday a national holiday, a 3 days weekend. Recently the waves are not that great and I have my new toy, the motorbike, so I decide to take a ride.
With my sleeping bag and air mattress I plan to stay where ever I roam. My target: the highmoor at Nikko. A vast and beautiful plano alto with hot spring, waterfalls bringing water from the nearby mountain and, most important, nice curved roads.
Google Map tells me that the overall distance is 380km, something that could be easily made in Germany within one day, so I guess 3 days is no problem even if the Tokyo traffic is involved at the beginning and end of the trip.

All the preparation go well, I'm ready to go. But then: RAIN. I wait until it gets better and go anyhow, assuming that it won't be that bad.

It is that bad. It is worse. I wait in the traffic jam in Tokyo being rained on, I drive behind trucks being sprayed on, I try to advance as quickly as possible sneaking to the pole position at red traffic lights, overtake everywhere where's more space between cars than the width of my handle. The roads in central Tokyo are great, 3 lanes in every direction, but as soon as I leave the center, the roads become smaller with the same amount of traffic on it.
Road No. 4 leads from Tokyo to Utsunomiya which is close to Nikko, so I imagine everything will be better once I reach that road. It isn't. Road No. 4 packed, has huge cart tracks (even the newly built parts!). And the rain is increasing ever since I left Ikebukuro.

Always raining I wasn't too motivated to stop to take pictures. The only picture I took was at the only place where it didn't rain.

I continue driving until Utsunomiya, crossing 4 prefectures: Tokyo, Saitama, Ibaraki and Tochigi. I am soaking wet. My clever plan of staying somewhere where I could find a roof - not an option any more. I look for a hotel but 50 Euro is the minimum and they don't even offer parking for bikes.
So I decide to go back to Ikebukuro to stay the night in my own apartment... but not another 4 hours drive with the bike in the rain, I take the option to go 1,5 hours with the train. A train round trip is cheaper than a hotel anyhow. So I park my bike somewhere where I hope it will be ok and go home.

Not only did my skin feel like leather, it also took over the color from the leather bike wear that was completely wet.


The weather forecast for Sat said it would rain and I thought I wouldn't be that bad and went anyhow.
The weather forecast for Sun said it would rain and I thought I maybe should believe it this time - but it turned out to be not bad at all. No rain, even sunny from time to time. But when I realized that, it was already too late to go to Utsunomiya to continue the ride. Instead I enjoyed the Yosakoi Festival in Ikebukuro (the original plan was to go surfing, but than I wasted too much time taking pictures of the festival for you... coming soon so stay tuned! :P )