First 2-up trip on the FJR (in Japan)

Phorest · Oct 12, 2009

This is the report I wrote for my blog, copied over:

Full Photo Gallery here: https://thephorest.smugmug.com/Nagoya-Life-...p/9937833_my82H

Another long weekend, another motorcycle camping trip! This was my and Toshiko's first big trip on the brand new (to us) Yamaha FJR1300.

This weekend my friend Eric had been planning a camp-out at one of his favorite spots along with a group of riders from Kyoto and Osaka. These aren't the guys I normally ride with, so I was looking forward to meeting all of them. We packed up our stuff and loaded the bike on Friday night, then set out pretty early on Saturday morning. We took almost exactly the same route that I'd taken a year before on my very first Gaijin Riders tour, only this time the weather was perfect. 75 degrees and sunny with a nice breeze all day. The traffic was pretty nasty coming out of Nagoya, but being on a bike we were able to just zip by on the shoulder and avoid most of it.

We finally got off the expressway and onto some pretty roads by around 11:00. Those roads were practically deserted, so it made for a fun blast along the coast with plenty of photo stops:

Had a nice ramen and katsudon lunch outdoors here:

We wound our way around the Kii Hanto coastline until evening, when we decided to seek out a grocery store (very easy with my "new" Garmin GPS) and pick up some BBQ and beer supplies for later. That done, we wound our way up into the mountains of Nara and found the campsite. Road leading to the camp:

Trey had arrived just 5 minutes before us, and was getting things set up with the front office.

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Gotta do a quick aside here. The couple who own the campground were pretty interesting. They were quite old, and spoke with a really strong country accent. Between Trey, Toshiko and myself we all had a hard time understanding what they were saying to us. They were really friendly, but maybe a bit too much. They wanted us to come up and eat by the office where they had a lighted table/sinks under a gazebo type thing. We of course preferred grilling by ourselves next to the river, in more of a camp type setting. So, we turned them down. But the guy would just not leave us alone about it. "It's dark and cold down there! Come up here where we have lights and a nice table!" Every time we came by to use the restroom or get stuff from our bikes he would ask us. Eventually we had to be kinda direct with him. Later on he got the nickname of "Gomer" and that's how we (laughingly) referred to him for the rest of the weekend. The guy literally didn't stop talking the entire time we were there I think. Anyhow...

We got 2 sites next to the river, and Toshiko and I rented a tent. Later on Harald and Eric showed up, and we pretty much BBQed and drank down by the river until we were all too tired to stay awake. It was a fun little group. 1 grill, lots of meat, lots of beer and some good stories made for a fun evening. Harald is a Norwegian professional trumpet player in the Kyoto Symphony Orchestra, so he had lots of stuff to tell us about.

Also, being out in the middle of nowhere next to a river made for some excellent star-gazing. I'd almost forgotten what it looks like living in the city!

On Sunday both Trey and Harald had to head back home (they didn't have Monday off). Harald took a long time to get his tent and stuff packed, so after Trey and I had waited a while we decided to just take off. We took some pretty roads down south, and had another wonderful day of 70 degree weather and sunshine. We stopped at this Mapple-recommended noodle place for lunch:

Trey hopped on the highway to head home, and Toshiko and I made our way back around to the campsite, of course stopping for more photos:

It was nice that we could just leave all our luggage and stuff there and not have to worry about hauling it on the bike. Once again we hit a tiny little grocery store (that we were lucky to find) and made our way back for another night of BBQ and brews. More people were available for Sunday night, so we had 10 in all. A good time was had, as you can see:

This was taken before the group of 10 or so Japanese kids showed up and wanted to hang out and drink sake. That's about when Toshiko decided it was time for bed.

This (Monday) morning we got up, packed up, said goodbye to everybody and motored on home. It was an easy trip with very little traffic. We made it home around 1:00, just in time to do some laundry and grocery shopping before work starts (tomorrow!!).

All around a great weekend ride. Toshiko had no problems riding on the back of the FJR, and neither of us got tired from riding the bike, which was a first for me. I could still have fun in the twisties and not have my back and shoulders complaining at the end. In other words, I'm loving this bike. The only snafu of the trip was that the FJR's rear brake went out while we were on some tricky mountain roads. It gave me a good scare, but luckily the front was fine and we made it. A couple of the guys took a look at it, but in the end it couldn't be fixed. So, that's on my agenda to get looked at this week.

Anyhow, there's one more long weekend next month, so hopefully there will be a good plan in place for the last really rideable weekend of the touring season.