Letter from Vince Scerri in Japan – 1 Just a few words as its midnight. Our first day was hard – it’s a long way to Japan! Then when we got there we had yet another two-hour internal flight, early in the morning. What an amazing place! The Japanese are fantastic – very friendly and helpful. And the place is spotless. The logistics are going to be very tricky though! Communications are so and so. Sometimes the mobile will not connect at all and the GPS either works slowly or erratically, or jams completely. We did not expect the first day to be difficult but it was hell: loads and loads of traffic and it seemed very risky on all major roads. You do find frequent cycle lanes...but the information from websites was not always correct and we needed to make constant updates to the routes. As we feared, the police are very strict and do not want any signs to be fixed, whether temporarily or not. If you try to fix any, I think you might find yourself eating Japanese food for longer than you expect! This is going to put a considerable burden on the back-up team as we will have to work together – especially in cities or large towns and where there is heavy traffic – if we want to ensure that the cyclists are on the right road and safe. Alan and Kayo have been very busy lining up important contacts. They met the JKA Foundation, the regulating body for auto race competitions in Japan, who will hopefully be assisting in this years event, as well as Professor Rei Shiratori, president of the Institute for Political Studies in Japan, who is also giving us help.
Posted on: Sat, 21 Jun 2014 07:41:01 +0000
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