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Ride Where and what is The Spaceship?

Half-Fast Mike

Lanterne Rouge-et-vert
May 22, 2007
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Now you can just link to this post.

"The Spaceship" is an iconic sluice gate on the right bank of the Arakawa in Saitama Prefecture, approx. 33 km from the sea. Its real name is Asaka Suimon (朝霞水門).

It looks like this.

asakasuimon1.jpg

The bike path passes right across it.

The fluorescentlybesocked @Musashi13 can be spotted in the shade of the central pillar, having arrived too early.

20150502-074519-gw15-mike.JPG

Cockless Coxless peletons may be seen in the waters nearby.

20150502-074431-gw15-mike.JPG

Here's a bit of map to help you.

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Coordinates are 35.811523N, 139.619005E

This is not to be confused with the Womble Gate. Only @bloaker and his Yokosuka minions know what the fcuk that is.
 
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Haha, cheers. I was just walking back from the shops thiniking, "I need to make a new tab in bright yellow on the menu bar called THE SPACESHIP".
 
Updated pic from today. Doesn't look like its left the atmosphere yet. Although the grass is much greener in the original and the circular side columns look like they are gone. By the way, after getting about 4 km after this the road path becomes pretty rocky. Any suggestions where to go from there?

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Cross the bridge to continue upstream.

I think you are thinking of the gravel quite a bit north of the spaceship, which starts on the top banking near "Northern Country club". About 4km upstream of the Spaceship they are doing construction work on the river banking and you have to either go up the banking (just after going under the red bridge which is route 40/79) then follow a poorly signed diversion to get back on the Arakawa. (See my first photo) If you don't go up the banking, you have to go right, around the construction work which means riding over a rocky road for about 100m (circles in red) . It turns to tarmac after a short while.

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@leicaman, that's exactly what I ran into. I've always gone past the spaceship. 3 ish km past that is a hill you have to go up then down into the residential area for about 0.25 km to get back following the path which is between baseball fields/rice fields and the river. But after you cross the light intersection, another 1.5-2 km the asphalt turns into gravel.
 
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