Dear Bill:
I promised to answer your question about biking here:
 BP> Hey Steve, please tell me more about your Origin line. Are you biking
 BP> in Japan?
Let's see.  I teach English to company workers here so let's use some 
adjectives.  Biking in Japan is:
1.  Expensive.  This is true for everything else here as well so it is to 
be expected.  Parts and supplies can cost up to twice as much as they 
would in North America.  The actual bikes aren't that much more expensive 
but still more than the North American list.
2.  Confusing.  Most of Japan is mountainous so the straight roads are 
mostly highways and not suitable for riding.  Most other roads do not have 
names, tend to quite winding and are not laid out on nice grid patterns.  
Navigating is done (in my case) by:
- good map reading.  I find a 1:50,000 map shows enough detail and makes a 
nice easy-to-use 1 cm = 500 m scale.  I can't read Japanese all that well 
but I'm mostly okay with maps.
- dead reckoning.  As in, "Let's see...I cross the bridge on the Tenryu 
river and follow Route 150 for about...um...3 km and then look for where 
it splits and follow the left fork."  A good cycling computer comes in 
handy.  
3.  Crowded. In addition to being winding, the roads are quite narrow.  A 
helmet is essential and I use a mirror clipped onto my glasses.
4.  Hilly.  Again, it's the mountains.  I would like to get a road bike 
with a double chainring that has a 53T large ring and really zoom but I 
need a triple chainring with its low gearing to get up some of the hills 
around here. 
5.  Hot.  Japan is in Asia and summers tend to hot and humid.  I usually 
stop riding in July and August because it is just too draining even early 
in the morning.  I've had the experience of going riding for 30-40 
minutes, work up a total body sweat without going very fast, come home and 
shower and *still* be sweating when I come out.  Yecch.  
As for me, I live in a town called Shimada on the Pacific coast, about 210 
km southeast of Tokyo.  If you can't find that on your map, look for a 
town called Shizuoka about 180 km from Tokyo and I'm 30 km past that on a 
river.   
The area is hilly but not bad for riding.  Going up the river is quite 
beautiful with enough up-and-down to make it interesting and not too much 
traffic early in the morning.   There is a large park across the street 
that has a paved road of about 2.8 km around the perimeter so I can also 
go there for some round-and-round.  There is a large hill just west of me 
that needs the middle chainring to get up one side and the small ring to 
get up the other but after that it's flat all the way to a town called 
Hamamatsu, about 70 km farther down the coast from Shizuoka.  It makes for 
an nice metric century (100 km) ride if the weather is nice.  I follow the 
train tracks to help navigation and can stop and use the stations'  
washrooms to refill my water bottles.  
Right now, it's too dark in the morning for me since most of the small 
roads do not have lights.  It's too cold as well so I've given up until 
spring.  
Well, that should tell you more than you really wanted to know about 
riding here.  If you have any more questions, please let me know.
Seeya,
Steve
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