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Help Soon to be new to Tokyo Cycling scene

Team Rhino

Warming-Up
Jul 4, 2011
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Hi everyone!

My name is Tom and I will be soon moving to Tokyo...I am from Tucson, Arizona and am on a team here (Team Rhino no less) and race quite a bit.

I just want to connect with the Tokyo cycling community, learn the rides, the happenings, hang out with you brave riders..

Oh yeah mountain and road too...

Please somebody help me with where to go to get all the info on the weekly rides :)

Thanks,

Tom
 
Welcome Tom! IMHO, this is the best place to find advanced rides with plenty of climbing. Just check in here daily!

When do you arrive in Japan? Where will you be living? I look forward to meeting and riding with you soon!
 
Hey Pete

Hey Pete,

I will be in Tokyo on August 1 and I am bringing my Litespeed road bike. I will be staying in the Shibuya area and will want to get on my bike right away!

Are there any routes from Tokyo to the Fuji area?
Thanks!
 
excellent - another Ti guy in Tokyo...this one built by American Bicycle Co in Tennessee- even better...

Tom - welcome to Tokyo. In terms of rides, recommend doing searches on mapping sites like bikely, ridewithgps, garmin connect, mapmyride. There's a TON out there to chose from. If you have a Garmin 705 or 800, you can buy local maps here in Japan, load up the routes and you're good to go...

Riding in Japan is great - very clean/well maintained roads, convenience stores (combini's) everywhere, option to bag your bike and hop on train (using a rinko bag), beautiful woods/scenery outside of the city, option to hop in an onsen, and the list goes on.. I find the traffic better here than I do in So Cal- since your going about as fast as most cars and liabilty is on the side of the larger vehicle (so they know to avoid you).

Be ready for long rides. Best riding starts about 40-55km from City Center - so its pretty common to go 100-200km plus on rides...
 
Wow - a couple more and we'll be able to start up the TCC Ti subchapter! Hope to see you on the road, soon!
 
If you have a Garmin 705 or 800, you can buy local maps here in Japan, load up the routes and you're good to go...

Would you be able to point me in the right direction? I've been trying to find a map of Japan for my Garmin 705 and I'm struggling. I have the European Navigator SD Card, but have been told (by Garmin) that no such card exists for Japan. I've read a few posts about downloading maps from another site, but it all seems quite complicated. Can someone help me? I'm techno challenged, so need something easy. I realy just want to be able to use the maps on the Garmin unit itself, to work out roughly wehere I am and how far key landmarks/towns are. I'm less interested in planning the routes on the PC and downloading them to the unit, although this might be useful in due course.

Thanks in advance and apologies if I'm over-complicating something really simple.
 
Would you be able to point me in the right direction?
Ha ha. I see what you did there!
I've been trying to find a map of Japan for my Garmin 705 and I'm struggling. I have the European Navigator SD Card, but have been told (by Garmin) that no such card exists for Japan [...] it all seems quite complicated
It's really not that complicated, but if you wish I can set you up with a Micro-SD card, all ready to slot into your GPS. Send me a PM and we can sort it out.

The map is the UpUpDown map of Japan v3. It's not as detailed or as up-to-date as the Japanese-language maps, but those are of no use if either you don't read Japanese or your GPS isn't Japanese-enabled, or both.
 
Do a search for GPS maps on this forum. There are quite a few threads on this.

In short:
Garmin official Japanese maps only work with Japanese Garmin units - Euro/US units cannot display Kanji and are "region locked"

The map most of us use is the UpUpDown map which can be ordered on a DVD or a card

http://www.uud.info/shop/catalog/index.php?cPath=25&osCsid=f5m5blm79rpdi178dnsvt6elu4

the card is simple but I highly recommend the DVD since you will be able to see the map on your computer and download it to your Garmin. The card will only let you see the maps on your Garmin - makes it a lot harder to do any route planning. You'll also need the Mapsource software to tranfer maps, waypoints, etc to your Garmin from your computer
 
Download version also lets you see the maps on your PC
 
I actually find mapsource to cumbersome for route planning and use mapmyride instead. It doesn't allow you to create way points and therefore get your Garmin to give you turning instructions, but they tend to annoy more than help (and are often wrong anyhow unless you set very many way points which in itself is a pain). Nonetheless, I recommend the download or DVD version because it allows you to upload only that part of the map to the device which you really need. The map is extremely detailed so the less you upload, the more space you save in the memory or on the card, and the faster the access/processing (or so I want to believe).
 
Map myride has to be the biggest pile of....... two much adverts floating on the screen and if you hit the wrong mouse key or do something odd it seems to wipe the tracks from the map.

Yamabushi introduced me to www.ridewithgps.com no advertisments, very simple to use and can import or create cue sheets very easily the whole GUI is very well thought out and just makesplanning rides a lot faster, hassle free and can be transfered super easy. Also the fact you can just log in with a Facebook or other social media account makes things 10 times easier.

www.ridewithgps.com write it down.

The map is extremely detailed so the less you upload, the more space you save in the memory or on the card, and the faster the access/processing (or so I want to believe).

This is correct Ludwig, as the garmin seems to check the whole map of Japan when doing its routing or ifyou type in a location. Just having the localised maps means it only searches those when planning the routes.
 
Mapmyride has [...] too much adverts floating on the screen and if you hit the wrong mouse key or do something odd it seems to wipe the tracks from the map.
Those adverts can be made to go away with AdBlock or similar. Not sure about the mouse key thing, but I still like and use MapMyRide a lot. RideWithGPS is great, too. But that company is not getting the revenue it needs and I would be sad but unsurprised to see it disappear before very long unless either more people start paying or advertisements are introduced or both.

the garmin seems to check the whole map of Japan when doing its routing or ifyou type in a location. Just having the localised maps means it only searches those when planning the routes.
I will soon have temporary access to a second Edge 800, so I will do an empirical test on this routing speed business.
 
The ads can be just shifted off the screen, so they don't bother me that much. The company needs to make some money somehow.

I will try ridewithgps though to see how it fares in comparison.
 
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