Dannycycles to Kita Fuji Renshu Jo in Fujiyoshida.
i’ve been gravel riding and mountain biking for the past 2 or 3 years in Japan Up to that point I was just doing road rides on a hybrid bike but now I’m always in search of new off-road places And over the course of two or three years I found that this place the Kita Shujo in Fujiosha is probably the best place to go off-roading It’s not a proper mountain bike park but it has so many different roads I think you could probably string together a 100 km route on these grounds This is all run by the Self-Defense Forces of Japan In order to enter there you have to go to a local office and get a 500 yen pass which will give you access for two months on Sundays and national holidays which includes Golden Week and the Obong season in August There’s just nothing like it You can see all kinds of animals in there I’ve seen a fox run through the through the roads I’ve seen tons of deer There’s civic casties with what’s called hakubisheen They’re all in there It’s great for cycling motorcyclists people on picnics and even older people go out there to forage for mountain vegetables So I mean there’s there’s just plentiful nature out here You can get into some wooded areas The gravel the scents I mean they go on for ever it seems compared to other places There’s only one other place in Japan that I’ve been with a longer route which would be in Tokushima near the town of Kami Katsu Uh it’s called the Tsuri Sanupalindo And that goes that stretches for 87.7 km That’s the longest forest road in Japan And I I highly recommend going there When I went there last year part of it was washed out due to a typhoon So you can only cover about 62 km of it but still finding that kind of distance in Japan is really a treat Other places usually get maybe 5 6 7 km Maybe up in Hokkaido there’s longer routes that you can get that are pretty cool but other than that I mean it’s really hard to find long distance off like you might get in America New Zealand Australia Heat Heat Yeah Wow Finally I can hear out my ear Run it out baby Yeah Woohoo heat Heat Heat Heat So many cars out today man Usually there’s not this many cars There are many vantage points from which you can see Lake Yamanaka down below And I was pretty close to a viewpoint of this Lots of mist uh during the day So I I always love those kinds of shots Today I was on my hard tail and I found that to be so much more fun than my gravel bike Although I’ve been on my gravel bike on these routes uh many times as well but since I got my hard tail last year I just find it so much more comfortable to get those rudded sections and I can just speed over so many more things and get into ditches without feeling like my my tires are going to get all deflected I might twist up my bike or something like that It’s just so much more enjoyable I know there’s sometimes there’s this argument over which one is the better one to take I’ll tell you what anytime I hit some off-road I’ll take my hard tail nine times out of 10 over my gravel bike Although it is kind of fun to do gravel bike riding Uh but there it goes again Can hear out my left ear now You know if you have a wacky man hard tail and you’re going off road and you don’t know what’s going to come at you I would take the hard tail so many more times over the gravel bike So many little side roads I’d really like to go in there maybe next month Heat Heat All right To start All right And Fuji Fuji Fuji [Applause] Fuji This is a RAW photo file using a Nikon D5300 and a Tamron 90mm macro lens Didn’t do any touch-ups It’s asis ISO 400 shutter speed 1/100 of a second f-stop 13 Okay final descent Let’s Let’s go [Applause] Heat Heat All right Heat Heat Heat Heat Something else I realized on my hard tail since I can shut out the suspension I sometimes I forget to turn it back on when I’m going downhill and I don’t even realize it until I actually make visual contact with the top of my suspension fork and turn it on So what I’ve realized is that like 2.6 in wide tires is more than enough to deal with most of what I come across on downhills rudded out roads ditches and things like that So I’m wondering if I only need 2.6 26 wide in tires as opposed to having that 140 mm of travel on that fork I mean it’s great to have It’s like a a safety feeling of safety but I don’t know if it’s necessary Let’s try the dirt Huh no road This looks like where you do rumbles and you get the gangs together You fight right here Must be a great place to do a rumble Yeah Yeah That’s that’s that’s what we were doing All right Now to get back up [Applause] this I really don’t know where else you can get iconic views like this while off-roading on a mountain bike here [Applause] This would be a pretty good place for a rumble but you know I think the other place is better more out of the [Applause] way See even Self-defense forces need signs to tell them where to [Applause] park Here we go Here we go Here we go Mark 10 Oh let’s see if I my coast going to get all the way up Nice Another car Let’s uh let’s bring it down here Final descent Nice fish [Applause] I just kind of want to see what this looks like Just a little bit more Freaking rocking my shoe That looks pretty Yeah
Dannycycles points his hardtail down rough gravel roads in the Self Defense Forces practice field in Fujiyoshida. While there, he enjoys himself.