HI,
It looks I’ll have a couple of spare days in Japan, so thinking I might get to ride. I’ll be staying in Tokyo, but happy to hire a car and drive a couple of hours or get the Bullet train/stay over a night or 2. I think Hokkaido is probably a flight, so maybe too far for a quick trip. Hakuba looks pretty good to me.

I’ll be on my tod, so I could do with paying for a guide. I can take my kit, but not my bike, so I’ll be looking to hire a full suss trail bike. Done a bit of googling, but I’ve only found one place to email MTB Japan, but it’s always good to hear experience.

ta

Hi,

Went to Hakone last year for an organized mtb day and rented a bike
Bike was just an old hardtail.
It was in a small group, so nothing exciting.

Took the Shinkansen from Yokohama to Odawara and from there a local train to Hakone.
This last train went zig-zag up the mountain through a beautifull landscape. That trip alone was totally worth going for!
Afterwards I went to a hotspring (that was part of the package).

W.

Did 4 days at the Fujimi Panarama Bike Park in 2013, its about 3-4 hours drive from Tokyo. Should still be open as a bike park before switching to skiing for the winter.
Not bad, has 4 runs and is serviced by cablecar and the on-site bike shop has rental bikes in good condition to use, plus the on-site restauatrant is good and you will not need a guide.
Its more DH orientated but from my experience, on a 150mm travel bike, its more high speed than big drops.
Fujimi Panarama Bike park

Some of the riding:[video]https://vimeo.com/69213386[/video]

Did a lot of riding whilst I was out there for a couple of months (took my Anthem with me) but only actually did a couple of days of proper riding with another guy from the UK.

Got hold of a walking map and followed some of those trails, no issues with walkers other than I think they thought we were nuts, even got cheered on a few times!

Japanese walking maps show the time to complete a trail, so if its short and has a high number avoid! It did get interesting at one point when we went flying over a crest to find a set of stairs the other side!

I was staying in a place called Aiko-Ishida and went into the mountains nearby in Isehara.
If you only have a couple of days and need a bike then an organised trip is probably a better idea. They can be funny about taking bikes on trains, you generally need to have it in a bag or similar, it’s quite rare that you can just wheel it on like in the UK.

You should be able to get out to Hinode pretty easily – due west up the itsukaichi line. There are maps on the tokyocycling yahoo group (which seems defunct, I think it was basically run by some people on the US military bases). That’s the obvious day ride from Tokyo. For an overnight, I’d personally find a mountain hut and go for a 2-day walk – even kumotoriyama is very accessible from Tokyo, but you can go somewhere further and more ambitious if you want. I don’t know of any good long off-road cycling routes.

A lot of the walking trails really are too tough for cycling, you’d just be carrying most of the way up and down. Note that I believe its technically not allowed to ride on footpaths but no-one cares, except in my neighbourhood where someone put up “no bikes” signs which we routinely ignored with no consequences.

Just to inspire you. (Nathan Hughes must be the best MTB photographer out there.)

http://www.pinkbike.com/news/bernardo-cruz-steffi-marth-land-of-the-riding-fun-japan-2016.html

Some very poor language skills got me and the Mrs riding shopper bikes through some mountain tunnels when we were over there. Unbelievable scenery either side of the tunnel and along a waterfall trail but perhaps not what we though we were in for.