It situated in the northwestern part of Tokyo, and it takes about three hours by car or by Shinkansen (bullet train) from Tokyo, Tsubame Onsen (Hot Spring) in Myoko highland of Niigata prefecture is now at the height of the fall foliage. There are eight small Onsen Ryokans (Japanese inns with hot spring) scattered on the either side of several tens of meters steep hill on the mountainsides of 1,100 meters high.

    Tsubame  Onsen is a famous place as a colony of martin, and “Tsubame” is a martin (a kind of swallow) in Japanese. When I were there, I saw nests of  martins lined along the eaves. As martins has already grown and left the nests, all of the nests were empty at that time.

    The hot spring was sulfur bath with milky white colour. At the edge of the town (in the middle of above photo) there is free of charge outdoor hot spring along the mountain stream.  It was full of visitors who came here to enjoy the colourful autumn leaves.

      Yes, now is the best time for the autumn leaves. The outdoor hot spring will be closed during winter.

    MASA

The last tour in 2009       December 27 (Sunday)

The first tour in 2010      January 9  (Saturday)

No tour is scheduled on January 12 (Tuesday) and 14 (Thursday)

Thank you for your understanding!

Thanks to our many guests who have commented and given a wonderful reviews on various  travel sites, we have recently seen a big jump in the number of guests than ever before. At the same time we have been receiving  more requests for weekday tours forquite some time.

And now ladies and gentlmen, we are happy to announce the start of our weekday tours from October! We will run the tours twice a week, Route A (Tokyo Bay Ride) on Tuesdays and Route B (Sumo Wrestler’s Ride) on Thursdays.  Those of you who are only staying in Tokyo during the week, these tours are for you! We hope to see you then!

We are sometime asked by our guests if we don’t have any original items for sale. Finally, we have one item  -our very own  TGCT T-Shirt.

A fast-dry sport shirt from Jack Wolfskin , with our logo on the back and our route map on the right hand shoulder.

We have three sizes, M, L and XL, at 3,500yen.

We operated the route B  (Sumo Wrestler’s Ride) tour today, with our always nice and cheerful guests. We made a extra stop at Atago Shrine (usually only on route A-Tokyo Bay Ride) as today was the day of the biennial festival.

The “Shusse no Kaidan Matsuri (Steps to Success Festival)” is based on a famous legend going back some four hundred years. (If you are interestetd in this legend, please join our bike tour!! )

High-spirited men carrying a portable shrine down the steps calling out ” Wa-Shoi” in a very loud voice. It’s quite exciting to watch. We were really lucky that we caught the event just in time today !

I Recently visited  Houshi Onsen in Gunma Prefecture, two hours away from  central Tokyo by car. This was the view I enjoyed from my room, pictureque main building of this Onsen Ryokan and beyond the river is the roof of the new annex ward. Shortly after breakfast in my room, it seemed that I had happily fallen back to sleep.

I have known the father and the son who are the owners of this Onsen Ryokan for long time, and we had a pleasant time over quite a bit of nice Sake the  night before. That’s why I remembered only half of what we had talked about, even though we had  a lot of  “fruitful” discussions. Too bad I can’t  share this with you here…

Cheers, that’s all for now.

Masa

Hello, again.  After I left the Netherlands, I visited Norway. It’s another lovely place to cycle. I had heard about Rallarvegen – the former construction road for Bergen Railway from our tour guest, so cycling here  is what I had been looking forward the most this time.

Rallarvegen was absolutely superb! It’ was like a fairyland. This is a must do ride!! 

Hi, I’m Carlos. I recently took my summer vacation and the first stop was in the Netherlands to see my old friends.

As you know, Netherland is a great bicycle country, so how could I not  join a  bike tour?!  Of course I will! I participated in  Mike’s Bike Tours Amsterdam, as they organize English guided bike tour of the city. No need to book in advance, just drop by their bike storage place before the departure time, very easy. Maybe we should look into such operation in the future for our tours…  5-speed-citybikes were arranged for the tour. “We’ll need the gear to cycle over the  <Dutch Alps> “ the guide said

The day I joined the tour was a special day for the people in Amsterdam. It was the  “Gay Pride” Festival.

All of Amsterdam was completely packed! According to our tour guide, Sean, more than a half million people visit to see and participate in this special event. Tourists including myself enjoyed watching the decorated boats in the canal full of people dancing, singing and drinking their heats out!

The bike tour was wonderful, and so was the ”Gay Pride Festival”. There are definitely so many ways to enjoy this bike country.

I’m not, but many male population my age are or were fans of Gundam, a transformer which first went on air as a TV animation in April 1979. The year 2009 is the 30th anniversary and the reason for this  big project  – ” Green Tokyo Gundam Project“.  This is now being held in Tokyo. (July 11- Aug 31). A ”real size” Gundam was created and stands tall in Odaiba.  How “real” is it? According to the comic artist, Gandam is 18 m tall, so the one in Odaiba is definitely big and real enough to attract many people, especially th 30-40 yr old one-time “BOYS”, now all grown up but still young  at heart!

We’ll be passing by this huge transformer during our bike tour  every Saturday.

Our new “Welcome signboard” arrived at our office today. A beautiful stained-glass panel using my favorite colour — GREEN.

Nozomi is the artist who created this artwork and  she usually makes interior accessories like  candle holders, mirrors or vase etc.  She herself has recently found the joy of cycling, and so she accepted our special request.

It definitely brightened up the office, we are very happy with it. Thanks, Nozomi!