The Narrow Road to the Deep North
« Every day is a journey, and the journey itself home ».
The sixth edition of the Japanese Odyssey took inspiration in the words of famous poet Matsuo Basho.
From the steep climbs of central Kyushu to the coastal city of Hachinohe, riders made their way through mountainous and secluded roads, spiced up with mandatory, punishing climbs and the odd gravel mandatory segments.
Année blanche
As we readied to publish our event manual and open the registration, the Covid-19 pandemic hit. We waited, hoping for things to calm. But as time passed, we knew there was less and less chance to be able to pull off a great event in these times of incertainty. With heavy heart, we decided to do the wise thing, and to postpone the sixth edition of the Japanese Odyssey to 2021. At the time, we didn’t know that the Japanese Odyssey would had to be put on hold for two more years.
Kyūshū edition
2019 marked the return to Kagoshima city.
With a starting line at the foot of active volcano Sakurajima, this edition made quite the impression within its first hours.
From there, the riders got humbled by Kyushu climbs, amazed by the wild beauty of Shikoku, before encountering the aftermath of typhoon Hagibis as they reach Tokyo.
The hidden Rindō
The fourth Japanese Odyssey marked a turn in the history of the event. We took the best elements of previous editions, and packaged it in a more refined version.
For the first time, the Odyssey would be a loop, starting and ending in Tokyo, under the Nihonbashi, kilometer zero of Japanese maps.
Twelve checkpoints, all in small, forest roads (Japanese call them rindō), located in beautiful areas, where the riders could enjoy the stupendous autumnal colours only Japan can offer, while still enduring some seriously challenging climbs.
All in a shorter period of time, upping the challenge a notch.
Where is the road?
During the previous years, we realised that the roads we enjoyed the most were the small, remote, secondary roads ; usually the one we encountered when we got lost.
So we decided to take the riders on those.
We set up segments instead of checkpoints, forcing the riders to take the roads we selected.
This edition promised to be the wildest and more exotic so far.
But unseasonal heavy rains hit Japan a few weeks before the event, and damaged severely some backroads ; to the point that some of our selected segments proved themselves unrideable.
Our motto « be prepared » took another turn as the riders and the organisers had to improvise on the fly to pursue their ride toward Kitakyushu.
Year of the typhoon
For 2016, we got inspired by the Nihon Hyaku-meizan – a book listing 100 remarquable mountains.
So we selected 13 checkpoints, all high-altitude passes and mountainous areas.
With a little less distance but a lot more vertical ascent, that would be an Odyssey for the climbers.
But typhoons got in the way, and riding in the non-stop torrential rain proved to be the real difficulty.
Four pioneers
The first Japanese Odyssey was launched with minimal communication.
We selected four checkpoints, and the route was going to take the riders from Sapporo to Kagoshima, crossing all Japan, North to South.
We hadn’t any partners at the time and counted on word of mouth to get our event noticed.
Four pioneers answered our call, an so went our first foray into ultradistance riding.