How about a bike around Tokyo… all of it. I go on a 120km trip from the Eastern banks of the Edogawa river to the Western banks of the Tamagawa river.
I did a similar journey by train four years ago.
Here’s the route I took in case you were interested in where exactly I went, and here’s a link to the map as well.
Here are links to bike rental and safety:
- Bike riding rules in Japan https://www.jitco.or.jp/webtomo/pdf_news/150701_en.pdf
- Bike riding rules from the Tokyo Metropolitan government https://www.keishicho.metro.tokyo.jp/multilingual/english/traffic_safety/traffic_rules/Bicycle_Navigation_E.html
- A nice blog about cycling in Tokyo http://www.tokyobybike.com/
- Docomo bike rental https://docomo-cycle.jp/?lang=en. They have about 1,000 locations around Tokyo, so very convenient.
- Share ride site (in Japanese) https://cycle.ryde-go.com/
- Bike tours info https://www.gotokyo.org/en/plan/getting-around/bicycles/index.html
And here are some useful links regarding how I planned the trip:
- Google My Maps https://www.google.com/mymaps. The program is finicky, but once you learn it, you can plot out an entire trip and then load it up into Google Maps. Here’s an article that explains how to do it https://www.lifewire.com/make-custom-route-on-google-maps-4126536
- Google Maps https://maps.google.com/. You can load up your maps created in Google My Maps into Google Maps (confusing names, I know), and then use it to make sure you don’t get too off path. Note: you can’t do turn by turn directions using your saved map in Google Maps.
- Runkeeper https://runkeeper.com/. It’s a free to use app to track your GPS data (called GPX) and download to use later. For some reason, the app tended to cut out on me when cycling, perhaps because I was using Google Maps at the same time, I don’t know. But I was able to combine my routes in the GPX Editor Map to create a single one again.
- GPX Editor UK https://www.gpxeditor.co.uk/map. This I used to combine my GPX data downloaded from Runkeeper in order to make a single route. The interface is kind of not the most intuitive, like the Google My Maps app, but it’s hand for doing very basic stuff (which the free version allows). You can do more complex things if you pay, but I got away without having to spend anything by using these various apps listed above.
- GEOlayer 3 https://aescripts.com/geolayers/. I used this in combination with Adobe After Effects to create my animated route that you saw in the video. Again, like the other map apps, it was a bit finicky to use at first, but once I spent a couple hours figuring it out, I can now create animated maps quite quickly and easily.
What’s bike riding like where you’re from?