Through Atera Valley to Kaikado Kustom

 May 11, 2023

At the hotel I wonder about the audio of running water, when one sits down on the toilet seat. There must be an explanation for this - somebody please enlighten me.* Also wonder if the breakfast was 3D printed, so I'm glad I'm not one of those unfortunate sods who spend half the year on the road and in hotels. A few weeks is ok, though.

* A commenter wrote that the sounds are to hide whatever sounds one might make when using the toilet. Fair enough if you're shy about that, but personally I'd prefer if instead the toilet seat would play the opening part of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

First the usual 13 miles/20 km stretch of car dealerships etc., the the road opens up and we enter Atera Valley, which in three or four hours will take us to Nagoya, where in 2006 I met custom bike builder Masao and his wife Hana. I got no answers when emailing some weeks ago, but the company still exists, so we'll see what happens. (Turns out he has a different email address than that I could not find  on The Internets).

The valley is beautiful, with lush green hills on either side, and a flat road that the Nimbus can deal with in top gear most of the time. Still it's a dual carriageway, with lots of truck traffic. In Japan highway tolls are high, especially for trucks, so even if you'll get there in half the time, the old road like this one seems like a good option. A motorcycle cop sees me riding helmetless - three times; passing me, parked at a side road, waiting at a light - but apparently thinks he has worked enough today. So I have yet to check if they still accept my Danish permit for riding this way.

Arriving at Kaikado Kustom I find Masao in the workshop, and get a bear hug when he recognizes me. Hana enters, everybody is 17 years older, but in some ways unchanged too. So is the workshop, with the obvious exception of the motorcycles. Hana still has the Mazda Carol kei car she posed with back then, and Masao's hotrods in various stages of disassembly litter the premises. On the bench is a very 1970s CB750 chopper once owned by Sly Stone (of  'Sly and The Family Stone' band fame) - the rest will be described in the next entry. 

They find us a hotel and later treat us to an unusually good meal at a seafood restaurant, where Axel raves on about our green Nimbus chopper projects, his time in 'Stan and Ebola-land, and tells another guest she'll have beautiful children. That's a good one, may use it myself one day.

Full chrome fronts are popular with truckies too. Japan is the only country where I've seen trucks with four front wheels. I'm guessing it was some regulatory quirk that made this configuration desirable.

There are still gas station attendants around, fortunately. Lots of them, actually, but self service stations are creeping in. Axels gets two liters every time I get eight, so maybe the Honda Grom rental place's claim of it doing 170 mpg/66 km/l wasn't so far off. Going slow must definitely help in this respect - we stick to the 30 mph/50 kph speed limit most of the time.

Points cover on Sly Stone's old Honda chopper.