Three days before I arrived back in Sydney from Japan was my father’s sixtieth birthday… I was pretty bummed that I was not going to be at home for it, but he’s not a huge birthday-celebrating kind of guy anyways…

One of the things I really wanted to do while in Japan though was find him a pretty awesome present… What I had in mind was a knife, made in the Japanese tradition that was passed down from those that honed their techniques through the manufacture of swords… Before I and my sister showed up and spoiled the fun my Dad was doing a bunch of stuff he loved – camping, bow hunting, kayaking – and they have some pretty great stuff in their house that he either carved or built out of wood… It was my hope that, now that he was getting ready to retire, he’d be looking to get back amongst some of that kind of stuff and what man doesn’t need a good knife..?

I did however, have absolutely no idea how to go about finding such a thing…

Tokyo’s Tsukiji Fish Market was suggested by some friends in Tokyo before we departed, but I assumed that the knives there were going to be very cooking oriented… And so we hit the road, and I planned to keep an eye out and maybe ask some people along the way…

It was not until we reached the small town of Yusuhara in western Shikoku that I came across anything…

Yusuhara, like most Japanese towns, has a small visitors centre where local produce, art and various other items are displayed and sold to travellers and locals alike… They had some pretty interesting looking knives for sale… Some wooden handled, some with handles made from deer antlers, but all with the obvious markings of a blade forged by hand…

‘Do you have any more of these,’ I asked the staff in busted Japanese…

After a little bit of mucking around working out what I wanted and how much things were and asking if I could use their computer to check my bank balance (I had been on the road for seven weeks, I had no idea how much money I had) we were taken a few blocks away to the house of Ken Kageura…

Kageura-san is not an easy man to find information about on the internet (maybe one of you that reads Japanese can dig up something cool for us?) but here’s a small biography of him…

Unfortunately, I don’t have any decent photos from inside… My brain was working at 110% trying to communicate with Kageura-san’s wife about what exactly I was after and didn’t touch my camera… Rosie took some great pics I’m sure, but incase you hadn’t assumed from her absence in this place since Japan, all is not well there and I do not have access to those pictures… If I ever do, there will be a The Knife Part 2…

Kageura-san is a 25th generation blacksmith specialising in blades and (as far as I was able to establish from his wife who speaks zero English) his ancestors were creators of swords used during tribal times in Shikoku…

We arranged for a custom sheath to be made and for the knife to be sent to Toumai and Amahina in Takao, the restaurant and store managed by my good friend Hikari where we were staying at the end of the trip…

In the three weeks getting back to Takao, I totally forgot how awesome this thing is…

I gave it the old thumbnail sharpness test – rest the blade on your thumbnail and using just the weight on the knife itself, drag it along your thumbnail away from you. See how much comes off… The sharpest knife in my kitchen (and it is sharp) barely leaves a visible scratch… This thing almost took my entire nail off!

I want one..!

I was surprised to find that I had no issues getting it back into Australia, and I presented to my dad the day after I arrived home…

He was pretty stoked to receive it, and even if it doesn’t see much use, I hope he always has it around as a reminder that it doesn’t ever matter how old you are, if you have the time you can definitely take the things that you love doing and make them a big part of your life… Again…

Can’t wait to go back to Yusuhara…

Around ten years ago, it seems like a lifetime, I received a call from someone in the bike trials world. Who it was I don’t exactly remember, but they had called to tell me that one of Japan’s better trials riders, Riki Murata, was coming to Sydney and was hoping it would be alright to stay at my house for a couple of weeks…

That two weeks basically ended up involving hanging out and riding for hours, drinking way too much beer, and then doing it all again tomorrow… We were both having a pretty good time, and Riki ended up extending his crash on my loungeroom floor to about three months…

There were trials comps, road trips to awesome places to ride and, yeah, a tonne of beers… If you go looking you can find a bunch of videos from this era, this is the best one… That’s me picking his bike up at the end and laughing in disbelief…

Fun times…

When creating the route for the japan trip, one thing I really wanted to do was pass through Riki’s home town of Kochi on the southern island of Shikoku… I had contacted Riki before we left and he sounded pretty stoked to have us come stay for a few days…

Getting to Kochi through western Shikoku was incredible…

Quiet roads with great surfaces, no traffic and beautiful mountain air… Shikoku is fantastic…

There’s also Japan’s last freely flowing river, the Shimanto… The road was about five metres above the river, and I have no idea how deep the water was, but you could easily see the bottom and a tonne of fish. Huge fish… Such a beautiful place. The fact that very few Japanese ever make it here is both sad and great at the same time…

It’s not all rivers, mountains and moles though (yeah! I totally saw a mole… weird!) The southern Shikoku coastline is among the most scenic in the country…

This is the last ‘getting to Riki’s house’ picture, but I had to share it… I saw this kind of thing a LOT in Japan when riding near the ocean… It’s not an illusion, I don’t think, the road is literally WAY below sea level… There were many places in Japan where I thought that the balance between living in harmony with, and controlling, nature was pretty fragile and this pic sums up my thoughts exactly…

After some pretty congested roads on the outskirts of Kochi, we arrived at Riki’s place and were welcomed with open arms by his wife Mie, son Tamio and contender for mother-in-law-of-the-year Kimiko… This isn’t a great shot, but it sure was a great few days of hospitality…

When I first met Riki, he was in the employ of his father who owns and runs a timber mill to the west of Kochi… Arriving at Riki’s place and staying with his family I actually had no real idea of what he was doing with himself…

‘I work at Kochi Daijingu…’ was the answer he gave when questioned…

‘Tomorrow, come to Dai-Jingu at three o’clock…’

We spent the morning exploring Kochi Castle, one of the very few original castles remaining in Japan, well there was a small fire in 1727 but they fixed in up properly… Many of the other castles in Japan are concrete replicas built after the real ones were destroyed in World War II… It was also build in a time of relative peace in Shikoku, and as such the boss’ quarters are on the ground floor, openning onto the gardens rather that way up high where it’s hard for warriors with swords to get to…

Really loved this place…

The castle fully explored, we headed a few blocks to the daijingu… The daijingu is a sub-shrine of Ise Jingu (which we would later visit) the shrine in which Amaterasu, the Shinto Sun Goddess of Japan is enshrined… I was still super curious about what Riki was actually doing…

When we turned up, he was rocking a tshirt and building a cupboard from some fine looking timber…

‘Makes sense,’ I thought, with his background in timber and all…

‘Wait a moment please, I’ll go and get changed…’

Uummmm, okay man..?

So anyway… It turns out that Riki is now a Kannushi. Or Shinto Priest… Wow, was NOT expecting that…

The main responsibilities of the Kannushi are ceremonial. Wedding and the usual things you’d expect for sure, but it is also tradition in Japan to have your new house or car blessed and Riki spends a bunch of time driving around Kochi and it’s surrounds to perform such blessings…

The next part blew me away, and is up there among the greatest experiences of my life…

I don’t know how many white people have ever been inside Kochi Daijingu, I am thinking not many, but Riki invited us inside a performed a shinto ritual to bless our trip… I assume its totally not cool to take pics during said rituals, so I didnt, but Riki let me snap this one afterwards and you can see how blown away Rosie is… Truly amazing…

The nice thing about Shinto is there are no real restrictions on what their ‘clergy’ can do… Riki has a wife, likes to use the word ‘fuck’ sometimes and he proved that, while we are both getting older, he can still put away a tonne of excellent beer and make everyone laugh…

Thanks again Riki, for making the trip special in ways I could not have hoped it would be… Looking forward to seeing you and the family again soon, maybe for a long walk in Shikoku to visit the 88…? I hope so…

A few of you have been waiting for this for a while, so here it finally is…

Salsa Colossal Titanium… This is gonna be pretty bike nerdy so I’ll understand if some people skip the hell out of this…

Let’s start with a quick spec list…

56 centimetre Salsa Colossal Titanium frame with Enve disc road fork… Full SRAM Force WiFli groupset with Avid BB7sl brakes… Stans Alpha 340 disc wheelset with Hutchinson Intensive 25c tyres set up tubeless… King headset, Eriksen Ti seatpost… Speedplay Zero stainless steel pedals… Arundel carbon cages…

Had no idea what kind of weight this thing was going to come in at, but pretty happy with the end result of 8.4kg…

Having owned another titanium Salsa, a Fargo, for the last two years I had pretty high expectations when ordering the Colossal… I am happy to say that once again those expectations have been exceeded…

First proper ride was sunday on one of Sydney’s most popular training routes, Three Gorges… From my front door it’s just on a hundred kilometres of pretty shit roads, some longish climbing by Australian standards (they call them undulations in Japan) and some very fast descending littered with cracks and potholes…

The Colossal is a little more aggressive than my previous road bike, a Cannondale Synapse HiMod and I was expecting it to maybe ride a little harsher and be a little less stable at speed… In fact the opposite is true…

The Colossal is insanely comfortable and stable at speed, and is the first bike I have had that I have felt really felt comfortable descending hard in the drops… This is aided for sure by the tubeless tyre system which, run at 90psi, is still fast as hell but SOOOOO smooth…

The balance titanium achieves between comfort and efficiency is something that needs to be experienced by every serious cyclist and not an easy thing to explain properly… Trying to hold my mate Damien’s wheel up the climbs, every little extra bit of effort turns straight into forward momentum… This was something I didn’t like about the Synapse, it always felt like it was deciding what to do when you gave it a solid kicking…

The thing I think I like the most about titanium over carbon is how real it feels… Super quiet, plenty of road feel without harshness and a bunch more traditional looking…

We got caught in the rain for a while on sunday too, and having brakes that feel exactly the same as the conditions deteriorate is a beautiful thing… Now all we need is for Enve or someone to make a full carbon, tubeless ready, disc only road rim… Come on guys…

I’ll be heading back to Three Peaks in a few weeks (yeah I have no idea why either…) and am looking forward to spending a full day on the Colossal… It really is a pleasure to ride…

Should you get one..? If you race road bikes, then no… If you’re not a weight weenie and want a great handing, comfortable, fast bike that is quiet, stops when you tell it and makes other riders go ‘Daaaayyyuuummmm….’ then yeah you should totally get it…

The steel version, I’m not so sure… With the standard build kit it’s got to be close to ten kilos, and the Vaya is not much more than that and a whole lot more versatile… I’ll be interested to hear what owners think…

Don’t know if I’m ever gonna be able to get excited about a carbon bike again…

… so little time in Japan.

Facebook friends of mine will have seen some of these already, but I thought I’d stick them all together and add whatever music Youtube threw up if I typed in Japan… Actually turned out okay…

Keep an eye on the backgrounds too, there is some pretty cool stuff going on…

Enjoy…

Supposed to be 43 degrees (celcius) in the city of Sydney tomorrow… What?

Still, makes for pretty nice ‘go ride your bike at the beach and swim in the ocean and look at girls’ weather…

Here’s a short video of last weekends very casual fat bike roll… Plenty of mucking around… Big thanks to my mate Garry for coming riding and swimming and getting this footage…

Stay tuned for some more of this kind of silliness…

Let’s see how this sits with everyone… From Chuang Tzu… The old guys really knew the score…

The butterfly flitted it’s way, unmindful of the gentle breeze that ruffled it’s wings… It flew here and there, content in it’s own way to wander without a goal, without any needs except to be a part of the breeze that blew past it’s wings as it flew along… Unhurried, unfurled, and even…

This butterfly’s life had been brief. From caterpillar to chrysalis inside it’s heavy cocoon, it stayed for what seemed eons of time – quiet, patient waiting for the moment when it could break out of it’s prison, unfurl it’s wings, and fly straight up into the air…

Now it did just so, flitting around in circles, occasionally meeting up with another butterfly, always mindful of predators or a sudden gust of wind that could tear at it’s thin, translucent wings and send it hurtling down to earth…

Now and again the butterfly seemed to have glimpses of another life, another form… It seemed to be a much heavier and more ponderous life, this other one… But usually the butterfly ignored these unsettling inner sightings and just did what butterflies do, without thought, without motive, without any other goal than just to be what it was – a butterfly, flying free…

And as it did the day lengthened into night, and the butterfly headed back to the tree where it slept through the long period of darkness. It flew gently towards it and then suddenly stopped.

The man lay in his bed, bewildered, bemused, lost in thought… It had seemed so real to him, this gentle butterfly life… He lay in the early morning light, listening to the sounds of the village as it slowly came to wake all about him… He heard the creaking of doors as people made their way to the outhouses… He heard the sudden squall of an infant, the bark of a dog, the clomp of an ox as it trudged out to the fields, led by it’s sleepy master… He heard the sounds of fires being built, the tea kettles and the rice pots being readied for breakfast…

He lay there a long time, without rising, without movig, other than the slow and deep rising and falling of his belly as he breathed his way into the day… His dream, if that is what it was, had been so vivid… So real… He had actually experienced himself as that butterlfly – had felt the breeze on his wings, felt himself carried through the air as light as a seed… Had thought only butterfly thoughts…

Yet now, here he was, back in his human body… Back in the world of cause and effect…

But which was truly real and which was the dream – himself as the butterfly or himself as the man, waiting here for his students to come and drag him out into the light of day with their incessant questions and demands..?

How did he know that what he was experiencing now was not th dream..? That he really was the butterfly, living it’s simple butterfly life, unattached and a part of the great natural world… He smiled in the darkness then…

Truly it did not matter if he had dreamed he was the man who had dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly who was now dreaming he was a man… He knew what he knew, and he knew what he did not know… That was what sustained him throught the long days and nights of his human life… What he knew or experienced in his butterfly life was also there, just outside the periphery of his vision…

He almost laughed out loud… ‘Imagine if I shared this with my students,’ he thought… He could just see their faces as he explained to them that he was not truly sure if what he experienced in his human life was any more real than what he experienced in his butterfly life…

He slowly rose from his bed and, outstretching his arms above him like the slow unfolding of butterfly wings, went forth into the day…

I have quite a few friends in Japan, some old and some new… And between them and the numerous anonymous acquiantances we made I am yet to meet another person that has been to Sado Island…

The sixth largest island in the Japanese archipelago, Sado is an unforgettable place… Literally two volcanic mountain ranges that rose from the ocean joined by a deep valley Sado is a place of amazing contrast where rice paddies meet the sea, beaches finish and mountains begin and people (despite obviously having a lot to do) seem to live at a relaxed pace unmatched by even the remotest parts of the main islands…

Getting there requires a few hours on the ferry from either the port city of Joetsu  (as we did) or from the larger and closer capital of Niigata…

Arriving in the fading afternoon, we made for the camp of Obama Beach on the south-west coast, making it just before sunset, and though the campsite was officially closed there was running water and a great view and it made for one of the nicest camps of the trip…

This was really my first chance to check out Japanese beaches up close… Obama looked beautiful from the campsite, and I took a morning wander down to look around and take some pictures… To be honest, disappointed does not do it justice…

Japanese beaches are filthy. Littered with garbage and other washed up shit, a walk on Obama beach (and all other beaches later in the trip) was a depressing experience… It was interesting how much of this crap had Korean text on it, I guess washing across the Sea of Japan and ending up on these shores but a lot of it was obviously home grown…

Day Two of Sado saw us heading for the northern town of Nyuzaki and what the map told us would be a campsite by the lighthouse at the cape… The plan for the day was that Rosie would ride the coast road, while I detoured up Sado Skyline to Sado’s highest point and came down to Nyuzaki via a B-Road… All went to plan early as the road climbed, on what were obviously some very old roads,  from sea level up to almost a thousand metres…

The problem with Japanese maps though, is that they fail to take in the numerous variables that exist within the Japanese transport network… Sometimes, Mother Nature (or perhaps Amaterasu) will take back the earth upon which the road was built… Arriving at the Skyline summit, I was displeased to say the least to find that my planned road down was closed for just such a reason, and that instead on a twenty kilotres run into Nyuzaki, I’d be backtracking and taking the coast road, a 45 kilometre detour…

Fortunately, you are never far from good food and a cold beer in most parts of Japan… This cost the equivalent of about eight dollars…

Tempura soba in the belly, I BOMBED down Sado Skyline, overtaking tour busses and relying heavily on the convex mirrors on every corner to avoid collision with oncoming traffic… That is one nice thing about Japanese roads, convex mirrors are on every dodgy corner, making use of the entire road very safe once you learn to read them…

Once on the coast road it was a race against the setting sun to reach Nyuzaki… I knew Rosie would be worrying about how long I was taking, but I was having a great time… This was the hardest I rode on the trip, the only time where I got to the point where I wasn’t sure I could keep pushing as hard as I was. But I did, and I could… I love riding my bike in this way…

The afternoon light made for some epic scenery too…

I didn’t get to see much of Nyuzaki in the evening. I arrived, it got dark and we made some food and went to sleep… The morning, though it dawned overcast and drizzly, allowed us some time to wander around and explore…

The amount of stuf in Japan that is older that the ‘civilised society’ of Australia is mind blowing… Everywhere we went there were shrines and monuments the age of which was incomprehensible… How long does it take for the face to wear off a granite statue anyway???

The road along the northern coast proved just as amazing… Farmland on the ocean littered with ancient tombs… The other thing I loved about Sado was the number of Tombi that are flying aournd… It seemed like any time I relaxed and looked up one of these beautiful, powerful predators was cruising around above… Managed to catch this guy sitting still in one of the most spritual places of the whole trip…

Rolling through farmland with the wind on our back we passed the natural wonder of Futatsugame and headed for Sado’s capital, the port city of Ryotsu…

From Ryotsu, it was a very early morning ferry to Niigata, and then onto the 22 hour ferry to the city of Otaru on Hokkaido…

I will always remember Sado as a place where the people won’t ever have the things we have, but it doesnt matter. They have something most of us will never experience…

They also have this Onsen, condender for Best Of Trip…