Each season in Japan brings a dramatic change in the landscape. This begins with the famous cherry blossoms in April, then trees everywhere sprout vivid green new leaves in May. The fields turn emerald green over summer as the rice grows and in Autumn entire mountains turn orange. However catching […]

I’m going to pick up where I left off my Ishigaki to Wakkanai motorcycle tour that was washed out in May. It’s been a wet year. And Japan is a country that has no dry season to begin with. A semi reasonable looking forecast appears so I book an overnight […]

Japan is famous for it’s huge snowfalls but it might surprise you it also has a brief yet brutally hot summer. My home town summers hit 40 degrees, I’m accustomed to heat, but here the humidity is stifling. You perspire profusely as your body struggles not to overheat and there […]

Between Spring and Summer is Japan’s rainy season so it seemed a joke when the tv news announced it will be fine next week. However after checking the modelling on Windy this seemed true. Quickly assembling some routes sitting on the shelf from a previous washed out tour I packed […]

With most of us being constrained to riding within our own borders I decided to look at how big a ride I could do inside Japan. Japan stretches a long distance. Wakkanai is 26km from Russia and gets 6.6 metres of snow a year. Ishikgaki is next to Taiwan with […]

Pole to Pole tour part 1. With global travel still some way off I decided to see how far I could travel within the borders of Japan. Quite some distance it turns out. Cape Sata in Kagoshima prefecture is often referred to as a southerly point of Japan but Okinawa […]

Japan is famous for its cherry blossoms, less known is it has a spectacular Autumn display of coloured leaves. Even more than the cherry blossoms timing is difficult as things can happen quickly. Most years I try to do a ride south with mixed success. I saw magnificent displays of […]

Suzuki is the only one of the big four motorcycle manufacturers I have not visited. Not because I had not wanted to, when I first checked I did not see any access to public however that is not the case now but you need to obtain a reservation. With that […]

Summer in Japan is brief but intense. The temperature might only be mid 30’s but the humidity is 60%. August is the time of many festivals and usually a good chance of some fine days so regardless of the heat I will try ride. There is normally no need to […]

I was set to ride southern Japan in May however this year there had been travel restrictions in place. By late May things were being lifted so I decided to ride north since the June monsoon arrives from the south. I got a really easy ride out of the metropolis […]

Japan has had low number of Corona virus cases and life is relatively normal but sensing a change is coming I decided to do a small ride to see some snow capped mountains and blossoms. I normally don’t ride in Japan this time of year because the landscape is grey […]

Autumn in Japan is beautiful but in recent years unseasonal typhoons have affected. This year I decided to try ride at the end of season hopeful of better weather. The bike fired up despite sitting four months. It feels so big and heavy after riding a 150cc in Vietnam. I […]