How much I eat to cycle across Japan! 🇯🇵🚴🏻‍♂️

How much I eat to cycle across Japan! 🇯🇵🚴🏻‍♂️

This is everything I eat in a day to cycle across Japan. On the agenda for today, we’re looking at about 63 miles through the mountains from Chino to Oski. As I got moving, I was feeling a little bit under the weather. But today would end up shaping into one of my favorite days of riding yet. Fortunately for me, after just a quick 7 mi of climbing out of Chino, this would be the start of our long series of descents that are going to carry us all the way out of the Japanese Alps and into Tokyo. But first, it’s time for breakfast. And this is what I would call a literal hidden gem. It’s basically the small house in the middle of a farming valley that serves breakfast sets with cheesy potatoes, a kiche, freshly baked bread, sausages, soup, and unlimited self-s served salad and coffee bars. Every single piece of food I had was absolutely banging, and the view was even better. So, I soaked it all in as I cranked through about five cups of coffee. As I pushed onward, the morning was filled with cruising through some vineyards and farms as I eventually passed into a city called Kofu for some lunch at this old school tishoku spot. Just by looking at this place, I knew it was going to be insanely good. Interestingly, when I went in, almost every single one of the 20 or so customers were male, which is something that I’ve seen all around Japan, particularly in some of the more hole-in-the-wall type ramen shops. Anyway, I went with this simmering beef skillet set and also added a side of kimchi. For me, there’s something that’s ridiculously satisfying about sitting down to a couple of piles of rice and hot simmering meat and just going to town. Dip it in a little bit of sauce, eat it with some pickles. I think it’s the meaning of life. As I kept moving forward, traffic slowly started to pick up and I eventually reached the 5 km Sasiggo tunnel, which is home of the 2012 Sasigago Tunnel incident, where almost 150 concrete panels weighing 1.2 two tons each simultaneously collapsed, crushing three vehicles, killing nine people and injuring two, making it the deadliest roadway incident in Japanese history. Anyway, I eventually descended into this tiny town called Oski that just so happened to have a giant hotel, which was nice, but a little bit pricey for what it was. Then for dinner, I ventured into town and found this little shop down a small alleyway. The vibes in this place were absolutely incredible and it felt super homey and in all likelihood probably actually did double as the owner’s home. The star item on their menu here was supposed to be this bowl of mixed ramen that was topped with a mountain of bean sprouts and fried slices of meat and potatoes on top. The broth was on the lighter side and the bean sprouts were really refreshing too, so it paired really well with the oily and decadent fried meat and potato morsels. I also ordered this plump little set of handsome guoza as well. It’s restaurant experiences like this one that are as memorable as they come.

This is everything I eat in a day to cycle across Japan. Today’s route was from Chino to Otsuki!

#foodie #shorts #japanesefood #bikepacking #japan