Recorded April 2023
Music by ZARG – Curiosity – https://thmatc.co/?l=85BF67CC
You all right there son I’m actually on day three of my cross country Japan bike tour at the minute but while I’ve got a bit of time this morning because I don’t think I’m going to get a chance to do this for probably another week or so and
If I don’t do it now I’ll probably forget but while I’ve got a little bit of time I thought I might as well quickly show you around my bike show you the setup that I’m taking with me to go almost the entire way of the country
South to North but anyway here’s a look of my bike fully loaded up and I think I’ve introduced the bike before I think it might be in the first ever video that I did but I’ll say it again it’s a rebel CGR gravel bike and it’s set up with Shimano
105 I don’t really know why I’m coming closer to be honest because I went through some dirty Mountain paths yesterday and I’ve only had alcohol wipes to wipe it down so it might be a bit filthy down here but the bike had a service recently which has made it feel
Great it’s felt amazing so far but since I had a 50 to 32 cassette on before the service and I wasn’t going to be able to get that again because it needed replacing I wasn’t going to to be able to get that again until June the person
At the bike shop had a 50 to 34 tooth cassette on a couple of days of riding through the mountains and I’ve really noticed that extra gear coming in handy so good now I’ll skim through my bags back to front for my P I’ve got Aral dry
Lights which I’ve used for all of my trips so far in Japan because they’re the only bags that I brought with me from the UK and they’re not as big as traditional all Le touring PES are but when I originally bought them for a trip around mayorca and AA I wanted ones that
Were as light as possible and I’m not even that much of a white weenie to be honest but I kind of knew at the same time that I would be able to fit that everything I need at least in these size paas and having a model of paa that’s a
Lightweight as well is just a bonus and if I remember rightly while they’re not as expensive as two Ole paa bags they’re not the cheapest pias in the world so I didn’t really want to spend like hundreds more pounds buying more bags and I already had two perfectly good
Ones here and in both of these I pretty much got all of my clothes this bag very simple setup it’s just a dry bag strapped onto the top of the rack and inside this dry bag I’ve got my sleeping bag and I’ve got my campin chair when I
First brought the bike over here apart from these P I pretty much left like all the rest of the accessories at home just to save weight on the package when I bring it over so I left my vo straps at home so these straps are from a company
Called trancer and I would have just bought W straps again but over here in Japan I’ve never seen an XL one cuz I had the XL one to strap a dry bag to the r previously but I haven’t seen the bigger ones in any shops and even when
You see them in the shops they seem to be more expensive than they are back home so I’ve went for these straps from a company called trancer and so far they’re actually really good for the price I think these were like 1 1 12,000 yen maybe for four I’ve got no
Complaints about them very nice straps now I filmed a bit about my sleep setup earlier which I’m going to repeat myself now again but the kind of theme well like whole theme of my entire setup is about budget cuz leading up to this I’ve not had the deepest Pockets to buy new
Bags but I kind of wanted a mix of like stuff that was you know decently cheap and well reviewed and stuff so I’ve tried my best to find things that kind of fit that mold and this Frame bag is the Blackburn Outpost which you know it’s not the cheapest frame bag you can
Buy and this came in at just under 10,000 Yen and while it’s not a full frame bag it is like a normal frame bag that comes up to here that you can unzip if you need more space which I definitely do because in here I’m keeping my tent poles and my electronics
Post which is quite girthy but it also has a few other things which I can access quite quickly and since it’s not a full frame bag I can still get a bottle of water underneath here and I’m just realizing now that my second water bottle’s gone missing so I’m guessing
That might have happened when I was on the rough Mountain Roads yesterday but I had no idea so that’s fun now we’ll come up to the cockpit area area where we’ll start with my favorite sort of bike bag like I literally always have one of these sorts of bags on my bike pretty
Much at all times and that’s a top tube bag because it’s so easy just to Chuck things in here like your phone your wallet a mask Keys anything like that just so easy so easy access zip open you’re in here we’ve just got a cheap stem bag that I bought from AliExpress
Which is literally only being used to put my GoPro in right now just so I can have really quick access to it and here we got my front light and here we’ve got my GPS cyclum computer which is my Hammerhead kuu 2 and I always use this
For rides anyway so I was never going to be in a debate of whether to use my phone or this for navigation and I do prefer this over my phone for navigation because you never really interfere at any point in the day that your phone’s going to run out of battery and of
Course up here I’ve got my trusty speakers which I’m actually not using as my primary audio Source at the minute and that’s because as I introduced my speaker back into my setup as I was making these videos I realized as I was pulling my GoPro out to take b-roll the
Bloody music would be playing over the top and then if I put some music over the top of that and post then it would super class with each other so every time I pull the GoPro out for b-roll I had to pause the music and then unpause
It again and apparently I just found that one step too annoying so at the minute I’m wearing these weird like earcuff type headphones which for the lack of a better term are basically open back headphones and these specific ones are like a Chinese copy off Amazon of a
Brand called Ambi here in Japan and it’s basically a small speaker that sits on your ear but it continues to let in all the sound that’s around you still and obviously I could have went for bone conduction as well but I went for these because the price was good and they had
Loads of good reviews so I thought eh why not and they are actually pretty good I’m quite enjoying them so far and we’ll round everything off with my bags at the front starting with my handlebar roll which is a bman but I can’t remember the exact model name because I
Only bought it cuz I seen it on cycle based Asahi I think on their website and it was stupidly cheap it was like 3,800 Yen I want to say when I think this retails for like 8,000 plus so I was like right yeah I’ll get that so even
Though it’s not my first choice it’s holding up pretty good so far even though well I guess it’s a problem with all handlebar rolls but it’s just super annoying to have to put the bag on every day but what can you do and in this bag
I have my tent the pegs sleeping M and ground M and these fourk bags are the newest edition of my setup in the fact that before I started the trip hadn’t ridden with them on at all so I kind of didn’t really know whether they would
Work I kind of took a bit of a gamble cuz I bought them so close to me setting off but I have a picture here of me when I was testing the bike before and I had a bit of a Mad stack at the back so I
Figured why not get some of the weight off and put it on my Forks a little bit cuz the area is quite bare down here and here I’ve got two 5 L bags strapped the top Versa cages cuz I’ve got no mounts on my Fork to put any other type of cage
Mount on really so these topy cages will just let a strap with uh some plastic straps straight to your fork and then up here in these bags I got my tools my shoes and then kind of other miscellanous things that aren’t really fitting in any other the bags I’ll just
Chuck them in here cuz it seems like I’ve just about fit everything in my setup that I’ve got now which is good and everything rides really well but I’m kind of in a bit of position with this coat because I haven’t had to take it off yet because it’s been raining the
Past two days but I don’t really know which bag I’m going to put this coat in when I probably have to take off today but I mean we’ll find that out as the day goes on I’m sure it’ll fit somewhere and I’ll insert this little section about my sleeping setup just before I
Pack everything away but it is 7:00 a.m. right now so pretty tired so I’m probably just going to skim over everything quite quickly to be honest but to be honest with you I don’t really have that much to say about the camping equipment cuz I’m not knowledgeable
About camping at all cuz I’ve barely done it so I just grabbed a couple of recommendations that I’ve seen online and just work from there really and the main theme of this setup is definitely budget because you know I didn’t have massively Deep Pockets when I was
Setting this all up so I’ve just kind of went with the most budget friendly options will say that I could and the tent itself is a nature High Cloud up to which came very recommended online for something that’s good quality and pretty cheap cuz I think I paid about 15,000
Yen for it which at the time at least was just under 100 quid which will do me nicely and the M that I’m sleeping on is an Ecotech hibernate which is probably the most contentious thing in my setup so far I’ve had two nights of camping so far on
This journey and I don’t really know whether it’s like the position I’m trying to sleep in or the mat itself because I’m neither a camping expert by any means or just a good sleeper in general so I need to get myself a bit more time to figure out what the real
Problem is cuz I’m not getting the best sleep that I can be but it’s not like it’s uncomfortable like when I’m just lying down on it it feels fine like it’s not uncomfortable by any stretch of the imagination and I’ve got my sleeping bag and my pillow here which aren’t too
Exciting cuz I just random cheap ones that I found on Amazon this one’s even an Amazon own brand this uh Eno one but you know they’re fine I’ve got no complaints about them I can’t tell if anything’s wrong with them or not cuz as I say I know nothing about comping at
All it’s been warm enough if I’ve got layers on so seems fine by me so I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief rundown on my bike before I start publishing the videos but for now I’m quite eager to get myself going in some of this Springtime Sun so so until my Journey Begins well
You know the Journey’s already begun for me cuz I’m on day three but until the first video is published I’ll see you later