On April 4 I headed out a little after 07:00 in the morning with a vague plan to ride some of the Greenline, a mountain road northwest of Tokyo. I had heard parts of it were closed due to damage from the typhoon last year, but was willing to find out how far I could go (182 km with 1732 m of elevation gain,
on Strava)
I stopped at Haijimadaishi, a Buddhist temple with a tall pagoda. Beautiful cherry blossoms everywhere and not a soul in sight.
By the time I got to Ome I had decided on the old Ome temple loop, which joins the Greenline at the super steep Takayama temple climb. On the way there I met a Japanese cyclist on a recumbent bike whom I had met before on a ride to Tsuru toge with a friend.
We talked from a hopefully safe distance.
About 2 km after I joined the Greenline towards Kabasaka pass the road was block with a barrier, with ropes tied between the trees both sides as if to say "that goes for you cyclists too!" There were two damaged sections, one mostly repaired but yet to be resurfaced, the other as grim as ever.
At Kabasaka pass the descent towards Rt299 was also closed, so I headed towards Shiraishi pass and down to Tokigawa, where I came across some magnificent cherry trees in full bloom.
I returned via Ogose and Kawagoe, clearing some VelowViewer tiles near the Tobu-Tojo Line before I got home late at night. My Max Tile is at 20x20.
With this my April century is done. I'm now at 92 consecutive months. I hope to be able to continue through the Covid-19 epidemic, riding on my own and minimizing contact with other people while out there. I didn't eat at any restaurants and I minimised convenience store stops.
Three days later, the government declared a state of emergency in 7 of Japan's 47 prefecture, covering about half of the population of the country. They did not close all restaurants or all non-essential businesses. Hairdressers are open, as are izakaya (traditional pubs) until 20:00. The guy in charge is no health official but the Minister for Economic Revitalization, which probably explains a lot of the above.
I think awareness of the danger is still lagging in Japan. I suspect in many parts of Japan they think it's problem only in Tokyo while in Tokyo many people have not been paying attention to how quickly things went how bad in Italy, the US and elsewhere. People generally don't have any symptoms for the first five days after they get infected, while they are already infectious. A significant portion of cases has no significant symptoms for the 2-3 weeks that they are infectious. Tokyo alone now has more confirmed cases than the entire US had when
#45 declared the Covid Emergency. Confirmed cases are still doubling every week here.
They say the Japanese emergency law does not give the government the power to prohibit people from going out. If we don't want to give the government a reason to change the law, we should do our best to stay safe and avoid new infections.