Tokyo by Bike

hello world I thought today would be a nice day for a bike ride around Tokyo and by that I mean let's ride from one side to the other from Edogawa River in the East to the tamagawa River in the West I'll call it there and back again alright it's about seven o'clock but my trusty ride I'm going to head on out [Music] so this is the Edogawa river and on weekdays the river banks are quiet like this a far cry from the hustle and bustle in the business districts of the city so this is the place along the river that they usually have horses although I think it's too early in the morning and they haven't arrived yet I don't know what these are cold or these locks but you can ride your bike across and that's where I'm going to go there are no big signs and mounting it but I just crossed over into the prefecture of Chiba as much as I like these paths the gates designed to stop motorcycles and slow you down and now let's find the hidden treasure do you see that you see that behind there that's what I called the boat graveyard where you get a good view I've no clue why they're left like this because it seemed like this for many years although these boats seem to be in decent order so this is a kind of party boat which looks to be leaving a ship repair facility in this part of Tokyo you're more likely to see these kinds of industrial facilities you can find incinerators located all throughout the 23 Ward's of Tokyo what caught my attention is that they're located right next to residential areas and a little hint if you see a smokestack like this there's probably a nice park next to it as they almost always make the adjacent space a green one over this way it says Chiba and if we pan across the bridge you're in Tokyo that is the direction I'm going over that way I like how you can be on an objectively ugly Street like this but you pull out on to another one and then suddenly it's a River Greenway for a good portion of my trip I tried to plan it so that I was along greenways the traffic is never fast and there are always bathrooms water and rest points along the way see bathroom and a water fountain just don't forget to bring your own soap and towel [Music] as you will notice in so many of these shots the houses are quite close to everything and sometimes so much so that you could walk out of your balcony onto other structures like this river path now why did I film this again probably to show some old buildings or something as you can see this path did have nice landscaping but then it gets a lot more utilitarian quick that's okay though because they have a pointy land across the street for some reason that I'm not going to Google you can in fact find many Pony lands around the city thinking about it there are two within a half hour bike ride with my house while I'm not visiting Disneyland today it's right across the water this is cos i t'ink i : that's one of only two spots in tokyo to have beaches it has lots of great nature stuff like bird observatories [Music] the park also has an affordable aquarium and it's hard to miss the giant Ferris wheel hanging out in the back there's also a ferry service that goes to a diver which I'm going to today but not by ferry by bike and here's the beach no bikes allowed so I'm walking yet not really a swimming beach and apparently you need a permit to do it but you can wade in the water I feel that most people in the Tokyo area would go to Anna Shima which is in the neighboring Prefecture of Kanagawa if they really want to Beach to hang out and swim at I was going to go to the wind turbine in Tokyo Gate Bridge over there on the horizon but due to the distance I scrapped the idea however please enjoy these snapshots from previous trips of mine this is the Arakawa River and it's not the widest and deepest river in Tokyo I'd be shot this is not the prettiest of bridges but it does the trick for crossing the Arakawa [Applause] conveniently they have a pullout point so you can see the scale of the river another incineration plant the another park as I mentioned that Kassadin guy Cohen there are tourists ferries you can ride on well one of them happens to pass by this bridge and I had always wanted to go on it mission accomplished oh yeah you'll see these signs all over about where pedestrians should walk and cyclists ride pris where most no one actually follows these rules you're supposed to walk down these staircases but I tried for the first flight but I honestly felt it more dangerous so I rebelled a bit and rode down instead luckily this is not some video sponsored by the city or anything so this footage of my badass race days [Music] look who it is well you did get a new bike I guess you'd call a new bike a city bike it's got the smaller wheel it's not for speed it's more for mobility I think your marathon used to end right here it's a lot of good memory violet is a lot of factories sort of what toy ocean wise back in the 1980s how come you don't use any of these dry texture it's John I don't know it's a fair question we're not quite in July yet it's supposed to be hit 30 today like see this is Tokyo but there's like no one here that's why I like going during the weekdays yeah and especially yes there's no tourists anymore so who's here we're here Greg we're here representing this whole island and this whole side of the island has made for leisure it's for a place where people come on dates a place where people connect kind of relax because the city of Tokyo in the center is so packed in and crowded this is a release you see it I see there it is the John is so excited he's going way ahead of me now this is crazy I've never been really good nobody we have this whole place to ourselves it's a little bit of the of the pandemic as well as just being a weekday so we did stop by the mall food court which was that about 5% capacity when we got there I had this [ __ ] udon for a quick lunch I love this view it's like all of Tokyo is in front of you on the other side of that bridge we're gonna cross that bridge when it comes all the Olympic rings I've never seen them in person I gotta go check it out Olympic rings and here's my bike setup i roughly plotted my whole route on google maps and on the Left it's my water bottle which is very important I was going to have my picnic at diver Park which is that green diamond in the background it used to be a cannon battery installation for warding off invading chips but we had no time since we have to cross the bridge you're not allowed to bike right across but you are allowed to push your bike across so what they do to prevent you from riding your bike is give you a free dolly that you attach to one of the wheels I believe this is mostly because of safety as the railings aren't super high and it can get windy up on the bridge so we really wouldn't want to fall off I'm filming you filming me you can actually cross on both sides by foot but for bikes we have to cross on the north side at this time which provided a great view of the city come on John I saw awesome as you can see by walking across the bridge to get a lot better view than the Train passengers do at the Sheila you decide you need to ride down an elevator to get to ground level there you go we did the entire Rainbow Bridge and that's where I say goodbye Greg good luck on your trip all around Tokyo Gator with John out of the way I continued on my path towards the tamagawa River using this walkway you don't get to ride this loop though which trains get to do so I'd recommend hopping on one as well as going by ferry anyway is a good way there are so many little bridges like this throughout Tokyo and I always enjoy their unique views and now I'm on my way to explain the hidden part it's located right on top of a water reclamation Center or in other words a sewage treatment plant and as always since it's a park is a convenient place to use the washroom and I've pointed this out in past videos but they have data at demo toilets that anyone is free to use from people with disabilities to those who are transgender the water in Tokyo is very clean so I filled up my three water bottles as well the park is located next to huge office towers so a lot of business people are here during lunch the miss spray was sadly not as satisfying as it looked coincidentally I ended up riding right past the automated underground bike parking the same one I had a film from my Tokyo by train video so the plan was to get to the Megara River so that I could ride on more cyclists friendly streets but truth be told these routes were quite cyclists friendly as both the sidewalks and the roads had lost his face to safely ride on I don't know if this is working or not but behind me is the start of Megiddo or the end of Megiddo River and I am going the opposite way here we go I'm going all down that way to Shibuya so now I'm riding along the negative river which sometimes has cyclists friendly paths and sometimes doesn't but at least always had calm speeds to ride along sometimes you'd want to cross one of the many bridges as the other side had a better path or better view like of this shrine the one annoying thing was that on some of these paths they had gates to prevent motorbikes from entering which sometimes made riding on the road easier so that's what I did here and as you can see it's still very safe for bicycles with the Mac suite of cars set at 40 kilometers an hour which is 25 miles an hour I'll point this out many times we can often see cyclists reading on and off of roads and sidewalks like this lady on the left I'm assuming with the park truck she felt safer riding on the sidewalk as she gets back on the road I'm getting ready to leave it to go on the sidewalk path along the river [Music] with all the bridges you have to cross and the switches between roads and sidewalks you could potentially find a route that is faster along I mean roadway however the ride wouldn't be nearly as visually pleasant and quiet plus again there's lots of parks along these greenways so there's tons of rest stops whenever you need one I simply enjoy the beautiful scenery these greenways provide [Music] [Music] oops took the wrong side by the way if you ever wanted to know how shallow the megiddo river is there's bulldozers bulldozing the river so they're bulldozing the stones on the bottom I've never seen this before I'm going back to my bike now one of the great things about traveling around Tokyo around Japan is I can literally leave my bike with all the stuff in there and nothing happens it makes filming a lot easier I totally should have tried this rum 99% sure you can walk down those stairs and jump across the rocks next time next time okay so I could continue down the Megiddo river but I want to go over this way and that's going through Daikanyama and then - she'd be out crossing one of the busiest places in Japan for pedestrians yeah so let's go it's just me or do people become fuller over here who knew their place with the AMA and its name would be kind of hilly I do enjoy traveling through these little paths between houses and here's what a typical home building construction site looks like and actually just the head you'll see a larger scale site complete with these blue safety barriers does anyone know if these are to protect the construction workers from following the people below from objects are both if you know let me know [Music] [Music] we're winding her way down to she'd be off crossing [Music] I wanted to point out that the wide-angle lens I'm using it makes it look like I'm closer to the poles than I really am however sometimes those poles in the middle of walkways do really make it a tight squeeze the path to Shibuya crossing was probably the worst part of the cycle as there was lots of construction narrowing roads and even some pass where he had to walk your bike and here it is the famous Shibuya crossing it's the world's busiest pedestrian crossing with up to two and a half thousand people crossing at a time however due to the pandemic it's a lot less busy than it normally is I rolled back around gives you a different angle to look at I thought it was interesting to look at the bikes with some stopping at the crossing like a car while others are going every which way like pedestrians [Music] but anyways I wanted to get out of the crowded roads and back onto the green rays [Music] and here's some bike parking and now the Greenway I was looking for kurosu llamado [Music] I thought it was quite obvious in this scene that while there are dedicated walking and cycling paths you'll see both pedestrians and cyclists on the road as well cars can only go 30 km/h here are 19 miles per hour on these small streets what often happens along these greenways is that the paths get merged so now there's no separation between cyclists and pedestrians so depending on the speed at which one wants to travel feeling of safety surface or any number of factors cyclists will be switching back and forth between the roads and sidewalks I should point out that on sidewalks with no dedicated cycling path that for bikes the speed is supposed to be less than 10 km/h or 6 miles per hour I like this sign which is not only telling dog owners to take their poo home with them but also their fur brushings while Tokyo does have many 10 plus card trains there are some cute small single-car ones like this as well [Music] [Music] if you're a cat lover this is the temple to visit its go tokaji and it's dedicated to the maneki-neko the beckoning cat and one of its origin stories places go Tokaji as the place of where was found after riding through a bitter City I ended up at the edge of the metropolis of Tokyo the tamagawa River [Music] that's really kinky deskah I met up with my Japanese teacher and her husband and they were kind enough to bring me lunch even though it was 4 p.m. [Music] then we set out to find Kanagawa the neighboring Prefecture okay we're in Kanagawa interested us right here great Chiba to kind of go [Music] prefectures in Tokyo with the exception of Hokkaido aren't big at least in comparison to states in the US or provinces in Canada so to completely cross Tokyo starting from Chiba and ending in Kanagawa isn't actually that far [Music] the Yamamoto spur impressed with my Gimbels ability to reverse itself stinky nah you can shop botany whoa and we ended up at another park where he found the youth worked as socially distant as the signs were recommending not much mask usage as well then we were off to another park across the street to try out their cycling paths your hair okay yeah okay [Music] [Music] and then it was time to part ways and head back towards the east again but since I wanted to explore some more greenways i rode north for a few kilometers this was a major road I was worried about riding along it for some parts they had separated sidewalks so that was a relief there are several places where the sidewalks had many pedestrians like near the train stations so I rode along the road for those portions it was probably the scariest part of the bike ride since those cars were going 50 or 60 km/h or 30 1 to 30 70 miles per hour so that's why I was very happy with these lush sidewalks even though they did eventually become a regular sidewalk soon enough and again I discover I have an obsession with pointing out incineration plants then I reach my goal of zenpuku G River green space [Music] despite having dual psychopaths on both sides of the small River I don't recall there ever being a dedicated cycling path so I tried to hop him back and forth between all the paths on both sides of the river looking for the least congested route at one point it seemed faster to go through a residential area so I did that [Music] and before I knew it I was back on another river this time it was the Conda and again people walking and biking on both the roads and the sidewalks this pathway was a lot less green and more hemmed in with buildings the best greenways have under passes so that you don't have to cross major roads like this but for the Condor River it's not a true Greenway so I had to go to the nearest intersection to cross so the Conda is actually a river system with neural pathways along the side but tons of streets intersecting it so would have been faster to find a major street to cut my way through to Shinjuku but I really enjoyed the gardens along these little paths plus the sudden view of the Tokyo Metropolitan government building how do you see that over there that's a Tokyo Metropolitan Government Towers okay we're in Shinjuku now and this is a lot better of a road than I thought there's a dedicated bike lane there's like hardly any went around here so we're not in the haroche in Juhu so that's probably why but still it's not bad actually you see the kidneys never imagined there were such normal houses right bothers government hours just like a regular neighborhood little small one and then I reached the Tokyo Metropolitan government building oh that's a long name which and here's a tip you can enter for free and get a view from either of the twin observatories 202 meters up but for me it was time for dinner in the adjacent Park big Tower okay so this is dinner this is half a cut so Sandow cucumbers that are pickled and apples normally I wouldn't bike across this partition tjuku but I did want to give you an idea of what the busier parts of Shinjuku look like as you can see there are not many cyclists in this part of town this is where you can get your fix of neon if you so desire [Music] this is the self entrance to Shinjuku Station which is the busiest train station in the world [Music] if this shot rings a bell it's probably because this is such a stereotypical image of Tokyo that's really the reason I wrote here to kind of place it among all the other landscapes I've shown you today what I'll do right now is ride right through it and on the Left will be Kabukicho which is a popular night light district [Music] and just a few blocks down the street its Shinjuku Gyoen with the DoCoMo tower in the background so quiet in comparison after that who was an unexpectedly Pleasant ride along a major yet quiet road all the way to the Imperial Palace the five kilometer loop around the palace is popular with joggers it's another oasis in the metropolis of Tokyo [Music] yes you're seeing correctly these are wedding photo shoots in front of Tokyo Station which was recently renovated just in time for the 2020 Olympics that has been delayed until 2021 the station by the way opened up in 1914 I noticed that it wasn't only the youths not practicing social distancing while they do get bonus points for eating outdoors many seem to be rather close to one another [Music] Tokyo Station is big so I wanted to show you the front as well which has a much more modern look to it antenna was time to go through the business districts and near the heart of Tokyo and even Bashi small tip since there are not many parks in these kinds of areas these fancy department stores have nice bathrooms [Music] and here is kilometer zero of Tokyo and Nihonbashi Bridge which maps indicate as a starting point in Tokyo unfortunately this historical bridge has a highway right over top of it but the good news is that they are set to come down in the near future and one more famous bridge the a tie between Japan's first iron bridge after that was running along more regular roads but I want to find one last River Park there is a bike path [Music] it didn't look so nice at the start but it did improve as I cycled along [Music] so it'll be like this for another I don't know 15 minutes or so yeah I was like these paths uh really calm and peaceful well bathroom that's what I like about these paths - okay [Music] see see lemon still cold nice yes that's Skytree the tallest structure in Japan and now I'm riding in darkness along the Arakawa River which is a popular cycling path that follows the river for 80 kilometers [Music] [Music] goodnight in the end I wrote about 120 kilometers or 75 miles I was on the road just over 15 hours from 7:30 a.m. to 10:45 p.m. that's a very leisurely pace of about 8 kilometers an hour turns out that taking out the camera filming putting it away and repeating every 10 minutes or so builds in a lot of mini breaks I hope you all enjoyed my little bike adventure after this I'm not so afraid to tackle longer distances I think it all came down to pacing and in this case slow and steady did indeed win the race thanks for watching see you next time bye what's bike riding like where you're from [Music]

Channel: Life Where I'm From

Views: 470,228

Rating: 4.9709921 out of 5

Keywords: cycling tokyo, tokyo cycling tour, tokyo cycling 4k, tokyo night cycling, tokyo by bike, tokyo bike, biking in japan, cycling in japan, tokyo cycling, bike tokyo, life where im from, life from where i'm from, life where i'm from japan, japanese cycling

Id: u0x8EAf4GSg

Length: 35min 3sec (2103 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 19 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/GM_Pax]

In before the "WHY NO HELMET" crowd shows up.

[u/ZeroNullAnon]

I really didn't intend to watch the whole thing. It was super chill and exactly what I needed today. Thank you.