Car Collection and Mountain Roads

 May 8 & 9

Bike gets packed up with my gear and Axel's gear, and the lid almost can't be closed. Never thought I'd see the day. The little Grom is not freway legal, so we ride through endless New Jersey-esque suburbia at an average of 14 mph/20 kph, after which an awful highway takes us to the resort town of Ikaho, a psycho headwind throwing the Nimbus outfit about and limiting to speed to 40 mph/60 kph.

When we finally make it Axel is done for, and checks in at the first hotel we stop at, which I think is way to pricey for me. I book another one online, and find it an hour later in an area of distinctly seedy area for 'hotels' that go by hourly rates. Should have know the low price was too good to be true, so soon I'm back at the posh hotel, which at least has some old-world class to it. Very traditional rooms too: Tamami mats and a thin futon, which I make softer by adding another six futons on top of it.

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Getting breakfast today make us enter a new and higher dimension in linguistic disaster, when the sweet ladies at some sort of eatery spend 45 minutes of what I can only assume is chasing down and shooting the noodles they eventually serve us. Buying breakfast at hotels may be convenient, but not half as fun.

The reason we're here at all, is the Ikaho Toy, Doll and Car Collection in Ikaho, that houses a ginormous amount of miscellaneous stuff, ranging from (obviously) toys and dolls, but also juke boxes, movie posters, a section devoted to Steve McQueen (he's been dead since 1980, but he's still way more cool than you) to a weapons collection in the men's room and the front end of a full size WW2 Tiger tank replica - built in concrete.

What I came here for, however, was the collection of classic Japanese cars from the 1960s and 1970s; everything from early Kei cars to a modern front engine Le Mans racer, with things like a Mazda Cosmo standing out. Place lives up to all expectations and more, and will get a separate entry.

Done with the touristy stuff we head for Lake Haruna, a crater lake some thirty clicks west, on curvy mountain roads with crappy asphalt, and going mainly at the 25 mph/40 kph speed limit in 2nd gear. Still much more exciting than yesterday, and same 2nd gear story going downhill towards the Asama collection of old race bikes a bit further west. Tried brake fade up in Norway half a lifetime ago, and still see no reason to relive it. Axel follows at a safe distance, entertained by the Nimbus' backfire flames when I'm engine braking.

Beware of bear, I guess....

Old style, but high class Japanese hotel.

Messerschmitt Tiger replica with 50 cc engine, made by Japanese company Mitsuoka,

which specializes in kits for modifying regular cars to look like something older.

Board track look-a-like with small Honda engine. Turn signals at bottom

frame rails suggest it is road legal.

Japanese boy band from the 1960s, judging by the clothes style.

After Asama - where the collection of old bikes was closed - we decide to make it to Matsumoko, two hours away. There's a black castle there worth exploring, I've heard. Things go well until it's time to use lights, and the Nimbus has decided to go dark. Bugger, and we're both too worn to want to deal with this now, so I strap a small lamp onto the speedometer and follow the Honda's tail light through the mountains and - an hour later - into town. In theory I should be too old and wise to do dumb stuff like that, but then it's just a theory.