Mystery Tour: Bikepacking Through Japan (Video)

Photos by Kyle Aldridge

“Why Japan?” is a question I’ve been asked many times before and after spending 21 days roaming the country on my bicycle. The answer is simple: when Anthony Bourdain sat in a dimly lit bar during season two of Parts Unknown and delivered his two-minute monologue about what it’s like to experience Japan, I felt an overwhelming compulsion to visit. He compared a visit to Japan to what it might have been like for Eric Clapton to see Jimi Hendrix for the first time. 

• 
• 

He then finished off his rambling with three questions:

“What does this mean?”  
“What do I have left to say?”  
“What do I do now?”  

These are the questions I headed into the country with and the same ones I left with. Even though they are the same questions, they have completely different answers.

• 
• 

Our goal in Japan was to load our bikes with cameras and audio equipment and ride out on a mission to document the experience. We didn’t want this film to be like most other bike films we had seen. We are not athletes; our pace was not quick, and our effort was nothing unprecedented. The film we set out to make was about the people we’d meet and their way of life. Our goal going into Japan was simple: we wanted to immerse ourselves as deeply into the culture as possible. We wanted to meet people, eat food we’d never heard of, and try our best to understand. We felt the best way to do this was via bicycle. Traveling by bike would give us the freedom to access small towns and random back roads that we wouldn’t have seen any other way. With this in mind, we booked our tickets, boxed up our bikes, and left on an adventure with very little plan of where we’d ride.

• 
• 
• 

The Team

Kyle Aldridge: Kyle has been an avid cyclist for years and was no beginner to the art of route design. He’s the guy you’ll find behind the screen prior to any bike trip. In 2023, Kyle helped co-create the Cattle Calls and Canyon Walls route, which we shared here on BIKEPACKING.com. On top of being a top-tier adventure cyclist, Kyle is also a filmmaker.

• 
• 

Fischer Olpin: Fischer is the owner and operator of Fish-Ski Designs, the well-known custom bike bag company out of Salt Lake City, Utah. Fischer was the mastermind behind our innovative bags for the trip. He was a strong team member not only because of the bags he brought to the table but also because of his A-grade personality. The man is a master in loitering and finding his way into wild situations; it’s like a good time is drawn to him.

• 
• 

Jackson Dalley: Jackson had never spent a night on a bike before this adventure. With most people, you’d be worried about traveling halfway across the world with them if they’d never bikepacked, but we weren’t worried at all when it came to Jackson. He’s a full-time brewer, and his knowledge and skill set on the matter proved very useful on the trip. His bright and down-for-anything attitude was exactly what we sought when building the team.

Jake Bleggi: I’ve spent my fair share of time roaming around via bicycle—building routes, traveling the world, and finding myself in what people would consider precarious situations. These are some of my favorite things in life, so this trip was right up my alley. I would consider myself a storyteller, and I couldn’t wait to tell this one.

A Rocky Start

With some advice from our friend and local bag maker, River Murdock, who had done a similar trip the year prior, we learned that camping was safe, easy, and readily available. So, we put two points on a map: Kagoshima (our starting point) and Tokyo (our endpoint). What happened in between would be shaped by the people we met along the way.

• 
• 
• 

We landed in Tokyo as planned and were set to take off on the bullet train to Kagoshima the next day to start our journey riding back north. But soon, our biggest fear when traveling with bikes became a reality: our bikes were lost, and nobody could tell us where they were or when they’d arrive. This inconvenience seemed like the end of the world at that moment, but it ended up shaping and defining the vibe for the rest of our trip. The four days we spent in Tokyo waiting for the bikes turned out to be some of the best of the journey. We made lifelong friends who would help mold the trip into what it was meant to be.

• 
• 

Nothing had gone according to plan, but we were right where we were supposed to be. Our friends from Wood Village lent us bikes to explore the city while waiting. We spent the following nights exploring the underbelly of Tokyo by bicycle until the early hours of the morning. Eventually, our bikes showed up. We took off on what could be considered the greatest “mystery tour” of our lives.

And We’re Off

The day we set off to catch the train to Kagoshima, it rained harder than almost any day I’d ever seen. With an escort from our new Tokyo friends to the Shinkansen, we rode our bikes 10 miles through the pouring rain, eventually making it to the train station and heading off toward our starting point. We waved goodbye to our Tokyo friends; this would not be the last time we’d see them along the route.

The 14 days from Kagoshima to Tokyo far exceeded our expectations. The people and places that shaped our route went far and above what we were expecting. The final result of the film is something we are beyond excited to share with the world. Our hope in bringing this film to fruition was to get people excited to travel the world in a different way. Of course, it’s fun to travel with just a bag, hotel reservations, and a mapped-out tour.  With that, you will see what you expect to see with few surprises.

• 
• 
• 

But if you travel with your bike and just a starting and ending point with very little plan in between, I can now tell you from experience that you will have life-changing moments. You will see things very few people see. You will experience destinations unknown. And you will come home with stories that will shape your life and help prepare you for your next adventure. And for me, some of the most inspiring adventures are those that are mostly unplanned.

Further Reading

Make sure to dig into these related articles for more info...