Round-the-World Trip (Yamaha YDS III) 136,000 kilometers
—Establishing the world’s longest record for motorcycle adventure travel—
Shigeru Yoshida
Published in 1969
Contents
- Chapter One: Preparation Before Departure
- Chapter Two: North America
- Chapter Three: Central America
- Chapter Four: South America
- Chapter Five: Europe
- Chapter Six: The Countries of Eastern Europe
- Chapter Seven: Africa
- Chapter Eight: The Middle East and Asia
- Chapter Nine: Australia
- Epilogue
Chapter One: Preparation Before Departure
Three Years of Meticulous Preparation
My dream of going abroad and seeing the world began when I was in my third year of high school. Without preparing for university entrance exams, I sought overseas resettlement and would often visit the South American settlement project office.
But the procedures were so complicated, and the costs were too heavy a burden for an eighteen-year-old me to bear, so I had to give up.
As soon as I entered university, I made a long-term plan. I would see as many countries as possible while working. I thought it was worth all the effort to see the world. Why I spent 1,000 days running around on a motorcycle comes down to three factors.
First, having been born into this world, I should not miss seeing the vast natural world around us.
Second, only a limited number of people in Japan today know the outside world, and by traveling through the countryside of various countries and meeting as many young people as possible, I want as many people as possible to understand what Japanese people are like.
Third, to test whether motorcycles from Japan, the world’s leading motorcycle-producing nation, can withstand any harsh conditions in the world.
Physical Conditioning and a Mindset to See It Through
While still in university, I began preparing steadily. Over the course of three years, the preparation centered on just two things. This was a major turning point that determined whether the journey would happen or not, so spending three years on it was well worthwhile.
One was building up my physical fitness, and the other was instilling in myself a mindset to see things through to the end.
To build fitness, I set aside my studies for four years and devoted myself entirely to rugby. If I got sick in the Amazon or the Sahara Desert, a solo traveler would be at a loss.
I wrote “instilling in myself a mindset to see things through,” but this is an extremely difficult thing to do. In my case, it would be more accurate to say it welled up naturally and became burned into my heart.
If you have nothing else but this mindset, you can leap into action no matter what comes your way.
A Trial Run Around Japan on a Yamaha YD II
Using two months of summer break during my second year of university, I did a trial run going around Japan on a Yamaha YD II, covering 10,662 kilometers.
I bought a beat-up YD II and, staying at youth hostels, rode through every corner of Japan—Hokkaido, Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku.
During this time, I came to deeply appreciate that no vehicle offers the mobility of a motorcycle. After getting my permit at the minimum age allowed to ride a motorcycle and then riding around on broken-down motorcycles, tinkering with them all the while, I became completely enamored with motorcycles.
I was so enthusiastic that with a motorcycle by my side, nothing else seemed to matter.
Concrete Planning
I Left No Stone Unturned
Starting in my fourth year of university, in between work on my thesis, I began carefully preparing the route for the round-the-world trip and what to bring. To investigate the climate, road conditions, and procedures of countries around the world, I read travel accounts one after another, bought scientific dictionaries, met with people who had written travel accounts, and even met with NHK’s special reporting team. I walked the embassies of various countries and carefully gathered information about maps and procedures.
I reworked the route many times, trying my best to minimize the number of times I would have to cross the sea and keep the distance short, but large oceans like the Pacific and Atlantic remained my biggest planning concern, more than land routes.
For land routes as well, I tried to avoid rainy seasons. There are quite a few roads in Central and South America and Africa that become impassable during the rainy season.
As for the motorcycle, having just one wouldn’t be enough to complete the journey. I had to carefully select which consumables to bring and how to carry them. For parts that I knew would become unusable after a certain distance—like if the crankshaft broke, well, I would just leave that to fate—but I had no choice but to bring along parts that would stop functioning after hundreds of thousands of kilometers.
Getting Started
Charging Ahead with Enthusiasm, Successfully Borrowing from Yamaha
By the end of the fourth year, as graduation drew near, I finally started taking action. During the roughly five months before departure, I did nothing but prepare frantically on my own. It was a difficult period.
Regarding the ship, I had discussed my plans with the faculty while still in school and had already asked for their help. Professor Okamoto, the chairman of my major, found a ship to Canada for me in early March. Next was the motorcycle, the most important element of my trip. By 1965, it was no longer unusual for people to travel abroad by car or motorcycle, and manufacturers of automobiles and motorcycles had already begun refusing cooperation with people like me across the board.
I submitted a detailed plan to Genichi Kawakami, president of Yamaha Motor, along with my application. The content was not about advertising the company or promoting the superior qualities of Yamaha motorcycles. I simply made a heartfelt appeal that a motorcycle was absolutely essential to my plans.
A reply came a week later. My feelings had gotten through. As soon as I received the reply, I flew to meet President Kawakami in Hamamatsu and, after discussing my plans in greater detail, promised to lend me one motorcycle and to take care of arranging for spare parts. From that time on, I received considerable support from Yamaha Motor both before and during the trip, and I am deeply grateful to President Kawakami for opening the door to cooperation with someone as uncertain as I was.
Raising funds, wearing out my shoes from walking
With the ship and motorcycle arranged, I pressed ahead and sent plans to roughly seventy prominent company presidents in an effort to raise additional funds. My target was ten thousand dollars (3,600,000 yen). After sending out the plans, I walked around calling on presidents—on light days visiting five companies, on busy days about ten. I was usually shown out by the secretaries, but I kept asking to be put through to the presidents. Sometimes I was turned down even after ten visits, but I persisted.
The money that came in was only about one tenth of my target—roughly one thousand dollars—but I was not discouraged. I was willing to leave Japan with nothing, so having a motorcycle and a thousand dollars, and as long as I had my passport and entry visas, I was ready to take off with joy.
Essentials for a round-the-world trip
I decided to keep the motorcycle in standard condition, partly as a durability test. Traveling around the world means inevitably riding in all climates and road conditions. These would be the most suitable conditions for testing, and so I chose to use a standard motorcycle.
As for what to carry, the amount became enormous. It would be better to say I had a whole household of belongings. Once on a trip, even small necessary items become difficult to obtain. I took as much as I could fit on the motorcycle.
① Documents
(a) Passport
(b) Carnet
(c) International driver’s license
(d) Registration certificate
(e) Yellow card
(f) JAF membership card
(g) Youth hostel membership card
(h) YMCA membership card
(i) Cash
(j) Traveler’s checks
② Motorcycle gear
(a) Helmet
(b) Half-length boots
(c) Leather jacket
(d) Leather pants
(e) Rain gear, top and bottom
(f) Gloves
(g) Goggles
(h) Mask
(i) Spare parts (see table below)
③ Tent and related gear
(a) Tent and accessories, complete set
(b) Sheet
(c) Sleeping bag
④ Camping cookware
(a) Gasoline stove
(b) Frying pan
(c) Mess kit
(d) Deep plate
(e) Knife, spoon, fork
⑤ Writing supplies
(a) Writing paper
(b) Envelopes
(c) Fountain pen
(d) Pencils
(e) Eraser
(f) Knife
(g) Ruler
(h) Ink
⑥ Medicines
(a) Aspirin
(b) Antimalarial medication
(c) Snake antivenom
(d) Water disinfectant
(e) Bandage
(f) Adhesive bandage
(g) Vitamin tablets
(h) Antidiarrheal
(i) Digestive aid
(j) Antibiotics
(k) Mentholatum
(l) Kinkan
(m) Seirogan
(n) Mercurochrome
(o) Manganese dioxide
⑦ Clothing
(a) Underwear
(b) Shirts (summer and winter)
(c) Socks
(d) Jeans
(e) Pants
(f) Black suit, jacket and pants
(g) Necktie
(h) Dress shirt
(i) Cufflinks
(j) Towel
(k) Sweater
(l) Scarf
(m) Swimming trunks
(n) Sheets
(o) Sewing kit
⑧ Books
(a) Dictionaries (Japanese–English, English–Japanese, English–Spanish, English–Portuguese, English–French, Japanese–German)
(b) Conversation books (Japanese–Spanish, Japanese–Portuguese, Japanese–German)
(c) Favorite reading
(d) Motorcycle manual
(e) Motorcycle parts list
(f) Reference materials
(g) Diary
(h) Motorcycle magazines
(i) Address book
(j) Autograph book
(k) Letters of introduction
(l) Book of origami
(m) Origami paper
⑨ Equipment and supplies
(a) Camera
(b) Watch
(c) Film
(d) Lighter
(e) Mirror
(f) Comb
(g) Razor
(h) Toothbrush
(i) Fishing gear
(j) Color slides (400 rolls, Japanese-made)
(k) Coins
(l) Adhesive
I also packed spare parts and tools in a custom stainless steel box, two side bags, two backpacks, and a touring bag. The total weight was seventy kilograms.
Carried spare parts
| Part name | Quantity |
|---|---|
| Piston | 2 |
| Piston rings (top, 2nd) | 2 each |
| Piston pin | 2 |
| Small end bearing | 2 |
| Spark plugs (6H, 7H, 7HZ, 8HC) | 4 each |
| Drive sprocket (15, 16, 17T) | 1 each |
| Change pedal | 1 |
| Air cleaner element | 1 |
| Exhaust pipe gasket | 2 |
| Joint gasket | 2 |
| Pump assembly | 1 |
| Footrest arm (L, R) | 1 each |
| Footrest bolt | 2 |
| Footrest rubber | 2 |
| Rear arm bush A | 2 |
| Rear arm bush B | 2 |
| Brake shoe | For 2 motorcycles |
| Brake spring | 8 |
| Brake wire (rear) | 1 |
| Brake pedal | 1 |
| Brake wire (front) | 1 |
| Tube | 2 |
| Chain (525) | 1 |
| Handlebar lever assembly (L, R) | 1 each |
| Handlebar lever (L, R) | 1 each |
| Headlight bulb, sealed beam | 2 |
| Taillight bulb | 2 |
| Taillight lens | 2 |
| Flasher bulb | 2 |
| Flasher lens | 4 |
| Tachometer cable | 1 |
| Speedometer cable | 1 |
| Ignition coil | 1 |
| Regulator | 1 |
| Brush | 4 |
| Contact breaker | 2 |
| Stop switch | 1 |
| Clutch wire | 1 |
| Throttle wire A | 1 |
| Throttle wire B | 2 |
| Pump wire | 1 |
| Cylinder packing | 10 |
| Case cover packing | 4 |
| Head gasket | 6 |
| Pin | 30 |
| Main jet | |
| S.T.D # 120 | 2 |
| #110 | 2 |
| #100 | 2 |
Portable tools
| Tool name | Quantity |
|---|---|
| Spanner 9 × 10 | 1 |
| Spanner (monkey wrench) large | 1 |
| Spanner (monkey wrench) small | 1 |
| Nose pliers | 1 |
| Driver + large | 1 |
| Steel hammer | 1 |
| Soft hammer | 1 |
| Amateur puller bolt (Mitsubishi) | 2 |
| Crankcase disassembly tool body | 1 |
| Crankcase disassembly tool bolt (long) | 2 |
| Crankcase disassembly tool bolt | 2 |
| Crank insertion tool body | 1 |
| Crank insertion tool bolt | 1 |
| Ring nut attachment/detachment tool | 1 |
| Dial gauge | 1 |
| Gauge stand | 1 |
| Oil can | 1 |
| Sandpaper | 1 |
| Yamaha bond (small) | 1 |
| Fork attachment/detachment | 1 |
| Tire lever | 2 |
| Tire gauge | 1 |
| Puncture repair kit | 1 |
Chapter Two: North America
Travel period: July 29, 1965 to March 23, 1966
Total distance traveled: 32,445 kilometers (including 3,000 kilometers of break-in)
Wakayama to the American continent: 15,000 yen
Traveled as a crew member to save on shipping costs
On July 12, 1965, I boarded the Eastern Sakura with my Yamaha YDS-III at Wakayama Port. I had spent three months making the rounds of company connections, and the procedures had been quite complicated. But I had finally managed to get this far. Now, for two years and eight months, my solo round-the-world trip by motorcycle was about to begin. I wasn’t particularly nervous, but I felt a quiet sense of determination—a kind of responsibility to the people who had placed their hopes in me and supported me.
This ship was a 15,000-ton cargo vessel owned by a Hong Kong company, crewed by four British officers under the captain, about forty Chinese crew members under the second mate, an Indian radio officer, and one new Japanese face—myself—for a total of nearly fifty crew members. I was allowed to board as a crew member to reduce my fare. In the end, I did no actual crew work. Instead, I paid only for food, and the total cost from Japan to Canada, including my motorcycle, was just 15,000 yen. Moreover, my cabin was on the same deck as the captain’s—a modest but well-appointed space about six tatami mats in size. Looking back, this was the most luxurious boat journey of my nearly three-year trip. But a major pitfall was waiting for me. Being human, I had no way of knowing what was to come.
As a crew member! Entry denied in Canada
After about two weeks at sea, on July 24, the ship arrived at Vancouver, Canada. In the harbor, private motorboats darted about, and five seaplanes flew overhead. Large cabin-type boats—a rare sight in Japan—cut through the wind, sending up impressive sprays of white water as they moved gracefully. Several gasoline stations for watercraft lined the harbor. These stations, I was told, were for motorboats and seaplanes. I was impressed by the wealth of the country.
I thought I had prepared thoroughly for immigration procedures, but I was immediately confronted by a Canadian immigration officer. It turned out that my nominal status as a crew member to reduce my fare was the problem. Canada did not permit the entry of crew members. Even with a passport, they couldn’t land, he said. It seemed obvious to everyone that I was the only Japanese person on this ship, a young adventurer planning a round-the-world motorcycle trip, and certainly not a crew member. But rules are rules, he said. I was devastated at not being allowed to land after coming all this way. I sent a telegram to the T Shipping Company, which owned the vessel, trying to find a way to enter Canada, but there was no way to remove the “crew member” designation from my record.
However, I was very fortunate. If the Eastern Sakura had been a ship bound directly to Japan, I would have been sent straight back, returning to square one in my journey. Fortunately, after unloading steel materials in Vancouver, the Eastern Sakura was scheduled to load timber in Port Angeles, Washington, and then head to Japan. I would still have a chance to land at Port Angeles. Since I had a visa for the United States and would have no problem entering there, I would be able to land. The immigration officer added further: “If you want to enter Canada, you can land at Port Angeles in the United States and then enter Canada by land.” I thought it odd that if I could eventually enter Canada that way, they might as well let me land here, but apparently the rules didn’t allow for that.
Through this first landing problem, I got a painful foretaste of how immigration and customs procedures—unique to each place—would plague me repeatedly throughout my journey.
Beginning the world adventure trip
Smooth entry into the United States
On July 29, we arrived at Port Angeles, Washington. First, the immigration officer checked my passport and vaccinations, and immediately granted me permission to stay for six months. He said nothing about my crew member status. The customs officer simply glanced at my baggage and passed my motorcycle, tools, and parts through without much inspection—everything was okay. Only medications received a careful examination, but since I wasn’t carrying any drugs, there were no problems. To the customs officer, my seventy kilograms of baggage seemed to contain nothing of value—just useless stuff. But in reality, those seventy kilograms were carefully chosen essentials. With them, I would travel through sixty countries over the next three years, cooking my own food sometimes, sleeping under the stars at other times.
The moment the motorcycle was lowered to the Port Angeles dock by the Chinese crew members, my North American journey began. My trip couldn’t start with just me landing alone. For my journey to truly begin, my motorcycle—my partner and right-hand companion—had to land safely. That partner had caused more trouble during landing than I had as a human being. I left the ship at 4:30 p.m. The roads here are right-hand traffic, opposite from Japan, but since I hadn’t ridden my motorcycle for more than two weeks, I got used to it quickly. All I saw were foreign cars. Seeing foreign cars after arriving in a foreign country is natural enough, but at first even that seemed exotic. I headed to the camp grounds, climbing a narrow, steep road through Olympic National Park. It wasn’t exactly a good road. Glancing sideways at road signs in Roman letters, I made my way to the campground. Throughout the United States and Canada, there are campsites everywhere for automobile travelers—both public and private facilities inside national parks and elsewhere.
Generally, public campsites are better equipped and cheaper. This one was fifty cents, though some places charged nothing and the most expensive I saw was a dollar fifty. The large campground was packed with a variety of users—families in trailers, backpackers with nothing but sleeping bags, and all kinds of travelers in between.
Broken bone accident
Motorcycle riding proudly down the center of the road
The mountains behind Vancouver had jagged rocks, and even though it was summer, snow still clung to their peaks. The coastline too was nothing but sheer cliffs. The blue sea and sky, white snow, and coniferous trees all harmonized into something beautiful. Watching from a distance, I was reminded of Yakushima Island in early spring in Japan.
Vancouver is the largest city in western Canada and a typical export port for primary resources, especially timber. Nearly ten cargo ships were constantly moored in the harbor.
The roads in town have four lanes, but even so they were quite congested during rush hour. When turning right, even on a red light you can go straight from the left lane—apparently that’s something unique to Canada. Pedestrians have their own independent traffic signal separate from vehicles, and it turns red much sooner than the vehicle signal. At one intersection I saw, all four vehicle signals were red at the same time, while all the pedestrian signals were green, allowing pedestrians to cross diagonally as well as straight across. The drivers were gentlemanly, and you could see them yielding to pedestrians all over the place.
Motorcycles everywhere are dominated overwhelmingly by Japanese makes, even over European ones. Since there’s no law saying motorcycles have to hug the edge, they ride right down the middle of the road without any hesitation.
Departure from Vancouver
On August 4th, we departed Vancouver and headed for Kamloops in cold rain. The four-lane highway had a green belt in the middle about as wide as the road itself, with similar margins on both sides. The speed limit is seventy miles (110 kilometers), and with poor visibility from the rain we went at sixty miles (ninety-six kilometers). It’s about 120 kilometers to Rosedale, and from there it became one lane as we entered the mountains. On the Trans-Canada Highway, only the uphill sections became two lanes on the climbing side. Vehicles that lose speed going uphill, like large trucks, are supposed to use the right side, so traffic doesn’t get backed up. It’s a method you don’t see in Japan, and I thought it was wonderful.
The road continued climbing and descending, climbing and descending. The rain kept falling. But the speedometer still read sixty miles. Since the road is just one lane, going slower than other traffic would actually be more dangerous. We passed through the town of Hope, and the road now ran along the Fraser River. Mountains wrapped in coniferous trees were blurred hazy by the rain. A trailer truck was ahead of me. I was following it at 100 kilometers. On a straight road like this, I thought to myself that surely the vehicle ahead wouldn’t suddenly brake hard—and yet even as I thought that, I felt the danger.
The Trailer Ahead Brakes Hard! Fractured Ankle and Separated Joint
But in a spot with poor visibility, the trailer ahead suddenly braked hard. I braked immediately too, but it didn’t work at all. We skidded and had zero traction. Carrying cargo weighing nearly seventy kilograms, traveling at 100 kilometers per hour, on poor road conditions—the twenty meters of following distance I’d left open proved completely useless. The trailer loomed right in front of me. We were going to collide head-on!
In a split second I let off the brake lightly and tried to move toward the center line to get out of the way. But it was no good—an oncoming vehicle was coming from ahead. There was nothing I could do. I had no choice but to straighten the handlebars and brake. The instant I braked, I was violently thrown down onto the road along with my motorcycle. I slid along the right side of the center line, probably twenty to thirty meters. I felt intense pain in my right foot, but the motorcycle wouldn’t stop. As we slid, my motorcycle and my body spun around. I could see the landscape slowly rotating around me.
The motorcycle finally stopped. Fortunately, right in front of where it stopped, a police car was parked. I tried to get up by myself, but I was pinned down by the weight of the motorcycle. A large police officer came running from the patrol car. I waited for him to lift me up, enduring the pain, but he couldn’t lift me alone. A second officer came running from the patrol car, and it took both of them to finally pull my foot free. It was probably only a second or two before the second one arrived, but how long that time seemed.
When I looked at my ankle, it was turned ninety degrees outward from the normal direction.
“Hey, this is my foot but it’s got a terrible attitude!” I yelled to myself, and with considerable force in both hands I forcibly bent it back to the normal position. From my rugby days in university, I was used to injuries, and that experience kept me fairly calm.
I was taken to the hospital by ambulance, and X-rays revealed a fractured right foot and a separated right ankle joint. The hospital admission fee was nineteen dollars and seventy-five cents per day (about 4,800 yen)—ridiculously expensive and well beyond what I could afford to stay.
The Kindness of Dr. Asano, Never Forgotten
But it turned out to be incredibly lucky for me: at the hospital where I was taken, there was a Japanese doctor named Dr. Asano. Seeing me, with a long journey ahead, Dr. Asano took pity on me and after eight days of hospitalization, took me into his home. Along with his Canadian wife and two children, he warmly welcomed me as a family member for forty days until my cast came off. On top of that, Dr. Asano explained my situation to a Canadian doctor and got the surgical fee reduced from two hundred thirty dollars to one hundred fifty dollars. All because of a small lapse in attention on my part, I ended up with a huge expense of one hundred fifty-eight dollars in hospital fees and one hundred fifty dollars in surgical fees, totaling three hundred eight dollars (about 110,000 yen). And if Dr. Asano hadn’t been there, it surely would have cost far more. Three hundred eight dollars and fifty-three days of treatment—the injury became valuable counsel for the long journey ahead.
Not wanting to wait until the snow came, I dragged my limping leg out of the town of Hope on September 26th and set out on the transcontinental journey across the Rockies. I met with early October snow and passed through Winnipeg and Montreal, arriving in Quebec on October 21st. From there I headed down into the United States.
A difficult rainy night in the tent
Sleeping bag soaked through
By late October, all the campgrounds go into hibernation, and there’s nowhere left to stay. However, scattered along the roadsides are picnic areas where vehicle travelers stop for lunch or rest, and if there’s no sign saying “camping prohibited,” you can camp there.
Near The Forks, I found a picnic area beside a large lake. I pitched my tent right away and went to sleep, but strong rain started falling in the middle of the night. Since I’d pitched the tent in a spot with no trees at all, the rain came pouring down on it directly. The ground was right beside the lake, so drainage was poor. Water gradually seeped up from below. Even though it stopped coming from above, it soaked through the sheet and slowly invaded my sleeping bag. There was nothing to do about it anymore. I decided to stop wasting energy.
I told myself, “Just go to sleep!” and I slept right through until morning. When it got light outside I woke up, but the rain still hadn’t stopped. When you’re riding a motorcycle, it doesn’t matter much whether it snows or rains, but when you’ve pitched a tent and rain starts falling in the middle of the night and doesn’t let up by morning—that’s what really gets to you. This time, with my body soaking wet, I put on my leather pants and leather jacket on top. Inside the cramped tent, that’s a real ordeal. For one thing, if I sat down my head would touch the tent, so when putting on my pants I had to support my weight with one hand and put one leg in at a time. I did that twice. Once I had the leather jacket and leather pants on, I packed up the tent in the rain and packed up my sleeping bag. By the time I finished packing, the leather jacket and leather pants were completely soaked. They were heavier than usual because they were waterlogged. Dragging my heavy legs, I loaded everything onto my motorcycle and set out into the rain.
Detroit, the City of Cars
A Visit to a Motorcycle Club
I arrived in Detroit on October 28th, and there were an extraordinary number of automobiles. What stood out most were Mustangs. In Japan they’re relatively rare among imported foreign cars, but here they’re extremely common. Recently they’ve surpassed Pontiacs and exceeded 400,000 units annually, I hear. There were so many cars in town that I, coming from Japan, thought perhaps all the cars produced here were running on these streets. The roads had more elevated intersections than any town I’d visited before, and the pavement was cleaner too.
I toured automobile factories—Ford’s engine assembly, Mustang assembly line, General Motors’ Corvair assembly line, Chrysler’s Imperial Chrysler Plymouths, and Dodge assembly line—but they never showed us anything particularly noteworthy. It was mostly the usual assembly lines, and Ford only showed us a bit of engine assembly. They almost never showed us the parts manufacturing operations. What struck me during the factory tours was how many women and Black workers there were.
Detroit has twenty-three motorcycle clubs. I was invited to the Liberty Motorcycle Club, the largest among them. I’d visited a club in Calgary, Canada as well, and this one had a clean clubhouse just like that one. The day I visited, not only club members but people from other clubs were also invited, and about fifty people gathered. There were six women too, and they were accomplished motorcycle riders in their own right. As befitted a wealthy club, many of them rode Harleys. They didn’t seem to know much about Japanese motorcycles, and when I rode with them for a while, they were amazed at how quick my Yamaha’s acceleration was.
After talking about my travels so far and my future plans to the group, club members asked me various questions about motorcycles and also about the general living conditions in Japan. After the meeting ended, two women approached me and said, “We each have a BMW 250cc, so won’t you take us along with you?”
This was an unexpected request, so I was a bit flustered, but I explained clearly that riding a motorcycle every day, sometimes running through snow, sometimes sleeping in a sleeping bag on rocky ground, and sometimes getting soaked in cold rain, would be unbearable for women. I made an earnest effort to discourage them, adding that things would be even harder after Central America. In my heart of hearts, I wasn’t so sure that I needed to discourage them, but—. Travel isn’t all hardship, and there are many enjoyable moments, but in this case I had no choice but to say it was.
A Midnight Tour
From Key West to Tampa, Florida
By January 1966, I had already reached Florida. On January 21st, I rode 650 kilometers from Key West to Tampa, Florida, in the middle of the night. Since Florida is a place where it’s not cold even in winter, this was the perfect opportunity for me, who had long wanted to try a midnight tour.
I left Key West at midnight, crossed several bridges connecting island to island, and went to the southern tip of the Florida peninsula. During this stretch, the longest bridge was eleven kilometers long, with the Gulf of Mexico on the left and the Atlantic Ocean on the right. I went north on NO 1 to Miami, then continued on the flat roads through the Everglades. For about 100 miles (roughly the distance from Tokyo to Numazu or Shizuoka), there were no towns to speak of—just a few Native American settlements and a few motels and gas stations for travelers. I saw only four automobiles along the way. All there was in my world was the asphalt illuminated by my motorcycle’s headlight, my own eyes, and the rear-view mirrors on either side that looked black between me and the white asphalt.
I was worried about getting gas since it was nighttime, but I fortunately came across a twenty-four-hour gas station just before running out. Even if I had run out, I would have pitched my tent anyway.
The next morning at eight o’clock, after riding 645 kilometers, I arrived in Tampa. The midnight tour, partly because it was foggy that day, had poor visibility, and my nerves were considerably more tired than during the day. In the early morning I got sleepy and would doze off and then suddenly jerk awake several times. The nighttime tour taught me what it was like, and I felt it was dangerous, so I didn’t choose to do it again after that.
Traffic Conditions in America
Parking Violations: A Fifteen-Dollar Fine
As is well known, America has an admirable road network that spans the entire country without fault. While I knew this from movies and books when I was in Japan, the surprise was even greater when I actually rode on them.
New York is centered on Manhattan, where skyscrapers like the Empire State Building stand in profusion. Nearly twenty bridges and tunnels connect Manhattan with Long Island, Richmond, and the mainland, and highways also spread out from Manhattan as the center.
Once you enter Manhattan, nearly every intersection has traffic lights. Traffic tends to be congested just like in Tokyo. In contrast, the subway and buses are quite well developed. When there was a subway and bus strike in January 1966, when I was there, the fact that it caused such an uproar shows that many people use them. I was dismayed by how dirty the subway was. Parking is prohibited in the town center from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. I parked on the busiest streets—Broadway and Fifth Avenue—in broad daylight several times while riding my motorcycle, and because I had an unfamiliar international license plate, I didn’t receive a green parking violation ticket. However, once when I parked on the West Side, away from the center of town, I did receive a green ticket. The fine was fifteen dollars.
The reckless traffic morals of pedestrians
A parking violation enforcement officer on a small Vespa scurries around like a mouse, patrolling his assigned area. There are plenty of parking lots, but motorcycles are often refused admission, and even when they are accepted, the charge is the same as for automobiles. Moreover, pedestrians in New York City have no traffic morals whatsoever. They cross against red lights, cross where there are no crosswalks, and spit anywhere they please. I even saw police officers who are supposed to direct traffic crossing against red lights themselves.
Traffic conditions in major American cities
There is a small town called Orange in Texas. It was January 30th. On the way west from New Orleans on Highway NO10, while refueling, I was in the gas station office drinking coffee to ward off the bitter cold when a newspaper reporter came in—apparently he had seen me on the road. After taking some routine notes, he showed me around his town of Orange. He said that today it was the coldest it had been in fifteen years, and tomorrow it would get even colder. He told me that Orange was the first town in Texas, and that while it used to grow oranges, it had now lost that position to Florida and California, and that oil refining from petroleum produced in Texas had become the main industry. Small American towns with old European character are far from main roads, and travelers rarely visit them. I was actually shown around the town, but it felt quiet and secluded with little traffic, the refineries were located away from the town, and the overall impression was of a quiet residential area.
In New Mexico, there is another small town called Carlsbad. A newly developed town created by potash mining, it sits isolated in a semi-desert that stretches endlessly across New Mexico and Texas. Five major companies operate in the mine, and I visited one of them, IMCC.
Four roads run through the town—one to Santa Fe, one to El Paso, and others—with motels lined up along the roads. With residential areas for mine workers, motels for travelers, and such, the town showed very brisk activity. Except for long-distance buses coming from other towns, this town has no buses, subways, or streetcar service whatsoever. Consequently, the townspeople have no way to get around except by using automobiles.
What about Los Angeles? It is the city with the finest roads in America. Seven freeways radiate out like spokes from the downtown area, connecting to Hollywood, San Francisco, San Diego, and other destinations. Whether going from residential areas to work or from residential areas out to the suburbs for recreation, everyone uses these freeways. With no subway and few bus services in this city, it is no exaggeration to say that life is impossible without an automobile.
Despite such complete road infrastructure, during commute hours from 8 to 9 a.m. and 5 to 6 p.m., the freeways that normally allow travel at sixty-five miles per hour (104 kilometers per hour) become congested, with traffic stopping or crawling along. When building expressways, you cannot fully utilize them unless you build entrance and exit sizes appropriate to the road. However, in the case of Los Angeles, it is no longer that problem but a more fundamental issue of the absolute number of automobiles.
I have described the traffic conditions in these four cities above, and after traveling around America, I came to think that the traffic conditions of cities can generally be divided into four categories.
One is an old major city like New York.
One is an old small city like Orange.
One is a new major city like Los Angeles.
The last one is a new small city like Carlsbad.
In old major cities, you can live without an automobile, and it is actually more convenient to use buses, streetcars, and subways. On the other hand, in new towns and small towns, automobiles are a necessity and something you cannot do without. And despite having such excellent roads, the large cities must struggle with traffic control—a remarkable testament to the sheer number of automobiles.
The roads between cities can be broadly divided into two types: eastern and western. In the east, gentle rolling roads surrounded by greenery, with scattered houses along the way. In the arid west, there are no trees at all, only sparse patches of vegetation—grass that appears fluffy and soft but is actually hard and brittle. A single road stretches through this landscape.
Between towns there are no houses at all. It is like running through rocky mountains and then suddenly finding yourself running through a vast desert. Both types of roads present scenery unfamiliar to us Japanese, so we never tire of looking at them. Even in seemingly similar desert landscapes, the scenery changed subtly.
The reputation of Japanese cars in America
Motorcycles are for leisure and sport
I arrived in the northern part of America in late October, and because it was approaching the off-season for motorcycling, I hardly saw any motorcycles on the highways. But as I headed south, they became more common, and in Los Angeles, they reached their peak.
Recently in Japan too, the proportion of motorcycles used for leisure has increased, but Americans use them entirely for leisure and sport.
In the 50cc to 125cc class, even younger teenagers ride them, and in the 250cc and above classes, high school teenagers and up, including gentlemen in their fifties and older, ride with their girlfriends or wives on the back, taking short pleasure rides.
Japanese motorcycles are overwhelmingly popular
There were also many races, with drag races and speed races held every Sunday. It seemed that anyone who was a motorcycle fan participated in and enjoyed the races.
I went to see a speed race held at Willow Springs, about one hundred miles into the mountains from Los Angeles. It was an interesting course about two and a half miles around, cleverly using the slope of the mountain. There were almost no spectators—only those competing in the race, their friends, and their families. First, before the race itself, there was a qualifying race to determine the starting order, which took about as long as the main event.
The classes were divided into 50cc, 100cc, 125cc, 175cc, 250cc, and 500cc. Of the seventy-seven motorcycles entered, fifty-six were Japanese-made—Yamaha, Honda, Suzuki, Bridgestone, and Tohatsu. In the 350cc and below category, an astonishing fifty-six out of sixty-eight were Japanese-made. Breaking it down: Yamaha twenty-five, Honda seventeen, Suzuki six, Tohatsu four, and Bridgestone one.
The non-Japanese motorcycles included Bultaco and Ducati in the 125cc class, Ducati and Harley-Davidson in the 250cc class, Ducati in the 350cc class, and Norton, B.S.A., Triumph, and Harley-Davidson in the 500cc class.
Japanese motorcycles were used extensively in races like this, and their performance was outstanding. In this race too, the winning machines in the 350cc and below category were exclusively Japanese. The names Yamaha and Honda were known to everyone. I attended another speed race that was somewhere between a speed race and motocross, held near Downingtown close to New York, but again it was dominated by Japanese motorcycles just like the previous race.
A Massive American Market
What about automobiles? Even though exports had increased, except in Los Angeles, it was rare to see Japanese cars. Still, occasionally I spotted a Bluebird, Fairlady, or Datsun truck in Canada or the eastern United States. Near Los Angeles, I saw many Bluebirds and Fairladies. They called the Datsun the Datsun Sports. Seeing the Bluebird and Fairlady among American cars, they looked to me to be about the size of a kei car like a Subaru or Carrol. Watching them run competitively alongside the big, bulky American cars always made me feel somehow happy.
At a red light in a town called Savannah, Georgia, a Fairlady stopped next to me.
We exchanged a few words.
“How does it run?”
“It’s a really nice car! Are you doing a round-the-world trip? That’s a Yamaha, right? Mine’s a Datsun. You know, right?”
Before I could even think that of course I, a Japanese person, would know, the light turned green and he waved and drove off. In Los Angeles I also saw a Corona. Isuzu had trucks there.
America, whether it’s motorcycles or automobiles, is still a country where there is much to sell, and its potential is beyond measure. If something has the world’s best performance, wouldn’t it sell with the right advertising, and price being secondary? There are surely still various difficult factors involved.
Chapter Three: Central America
Travel period: March 23, 1966 to May 28, 1966
Total distance traveled: 9,294 kilometers
Mexico’s Giant Cacti
From March 23, 1966, when I took my first steps into Central America at Tijuana on Mexico’s western edge, through April 11 in Guatemala, April 15 in El Salvador, April 20 in Honduras, April 29 in Nicaragua, May 3 in Costa Rica, and May 7 in Panama, I covered 9,294 kilometers across Central America.
Central America is a land with Mayan and Aztec ruins scattered throughout various locations and old colonial towns—a region full of travel romance. Away from the cities, there are shabby farmhouses with thatched roofs, made by bundling branches and coating them with mud. Horses, cattle, and donkeys were their transportation and played an important role in hauling goods. Many farmhouses had no running water or electricity, and I often saw women and children walking barefoot with water jars on their heads. Mexican farmhouses in particular seemed to be the poorest.
Mexico is also a country of cacti. Cacti could be seen throughout the vast landscape. In the desert regions of the north, the cacti were giant specimens as thick as telephone poles, stretching as far as the eye could see across the vast desert. When the sun set over distant mountains, watching the cacti appear against the deep red glow of the sunset was the greatest pleasure of my Central American journey. Even when I wanted to reach the next town before dark, I always looked forward to this sunset. After seeing the sunset, even if I arrived at the next town at ten or eleven at night, I felt no fatigue.
South of Guatemala, there are many volcanoes and lush vegetation. Except for the stretch between Costa Rica and Panama, the countries in this region were small enough to be driven from capital to capital in a single day. The coastlines were humid and sweltering, but the capitals—Guatemala City in Guatemala, Tegucigalpa in Honduras, and San José in Costa Rica—are located at altitudes of more than nine hundred meters, making the temperature somewhat lower and more bearable. The main products are agricultural goods like bananas, sugar, coffee, and cotton, and industrially, sugar refining and cotton textiles were just beginning to develop.
Competed in a Race and Proudly Took Second Place
My Skill Wasn’t Praised—It Was the Yamaha
When I met the president of a motorcycle club in Honduras, he strongly encouraged me: “Please, you must see the race that’s happening on Sunday.” The race was announced in the newspaper, so expecting a great event, I deliberately delayed my departure by three days to watch it.
But in reality, both the way the race was run and the people running it were completely haphazard, the participating bikes didn’t show up properly, and it was just a fundraiser for the club. Still, about six hundred spectators gathered, and the race was broadcast on the radio.
This town had no Yamaha dealer, and the fifteen bikes that participated were Hondas and Suzukis, divided into three classes: 50cc, 125cc, and 250cc. When the 250cc race came around, there were so few entries that I ended up being drafted. Yamaha had only one bike entered, and its rider was the only Japanese person from across the sea, so the eyes of six hundred spectators were unavoidably focused on me. Even though I agreed to it, I had zero racing experience, so I secretly hoped I wouldn’t come in dead last.
There were five bikes in the race including mine, and we had to do twelve laps around a four-hundred-meter gravel track.
Start! On the straightaway, my Yamaha had good power and high RPMs and was running well, but I dropped to last place at the first curve—you can’t navigate a gravel curve well unless you’ve actually done it in a race. In the first half, I’d speed up on the straightaways and fall back on the curves, but around lap six, I started to understand how to slide the tires through the turns. I clawed my way back, and by lap nine I was in third.
On lap ten, the second-place bike crashed, so I moved into second, and on lap eleven I finally shot into first. I thought I had it! But it was only for a moment—at the crucial last corner, I accelerated too much and drifted way out to the side. The other rider passed me on the inside, and I sadly dropped back to second.
But the club guys and the president were thrilled all the same, and when I crossed the finish line I was mobbed with handshakes. The radio station interviewed me. The spectators crowding around me kept repeating “wonderful, wonderful” and praising me. But to be honest, this was praise for my Yamaha, not for my skills.
Central American road conditions
Most major highways are paved. Mexico’s roads stand out above all
Back in Japan, there were roads I couldn’t clearly investigate, but when I actually traveled them, the major highways were generally in good condition. Mexico in particular has excellent roads. There are three routes from the United States to the capital Mexico City—one on the Pacific side, one in the center, and one on the Atlantic side—and all are completely paved.
The longest one is the Pacific route that starts from Tijuana on the west coast, which I took, and it reaches the capital at a distance of two thousand nine hundred thirty kilometers.
South of Guatemala, if you use the Pan-American Highway, you only encounter eighty kilometers of gravel road in Nicaragua, three hundred fifty kilometers in Costa Rica, and eighty kilometers in Panama—the rest is paved, though there are places with rough surfaces.
Of course, coming from the perfect roads of the United States into Central America, even driving on paved roads felt rough, but when I recalled the roads of southern Kyushu and southern Shikoku that I traveled during my motorcycle tour around Japan in 1962, I decided these were actually better. Poor road surfaces show clearly in how fast tires wear. But even with bad surfaces, visibility is good, so you can do eighty kilometers per hour.
The tires I changed in Los Angeles lasted over ten thousand kilometers, but in Guatemala the rear tire tread was already down to just two millimeters. In the United States, tires used for twenty thousand kilometers still had four millimeters of tread on the rear.
The worst road: San José to the Panama border mountain range
Tire damage on gravel roads comes fast. Between San José in Costa Rica and the Panama border, there is a steep mountain pass of three thousand three hundred thirty-five meters, which is a difficult stretch on the route down Central America. When I went through, we had entered the rainy season and encountered a downpour, so the road became like a river with mud flowing. Rocks were suddenly jutting out, and there were rockfalls, so I drove with great care.
Just before reaching the border, I hit a pothole—one I couldn’t see because it was full of muddy water—and punctured the front tire and crashed. That’s when I noticed that my front tire had two cuts one to two centimeters long, and my rear tire had two as well. Fixing a flat in the rain is unpleasant, but if I had become unable to ride, that would have been really serious.
Honduras has bad roads, but beautiful scenery
Honduras is the least modernized country in Central America. Its capital, Tegucigalpa, sits at an elevation of nine hundred seventy meters and is surrounded by mountains. The whole town has a Spanish character, with red-brick roofs and white-walled houses that continue up the mountainsides, making it a beautiful place. Feeling the appeal of such a place, and knowing it was bad for my tires, I made a round trip of three hundred kilometers from the capital Tegucigalpa to San Pedro Sula on the Atlantic side.
This road is one of Honduras’s main highways, but it was incredibly rough. Because it was the end of the dry season, the road surface had lost its moisture and was covered in lumpy mud. I had to cross three such bad-road passes, but what made up for it was the spectacular scenery. Once I crested each pass, I could see small stone villages and distant mountains wrapped in green, harmonizing with the tropical trees—bananas and palms—unfolding a magnificent landscape. If I had to call any country in Central America the most beautiful, it would be Honduras.
Watch out! Cattle, horses, and road signs
What you have to watch out for while driving on Central American roads is cattle and horses. They’re let loose everywhere and come onto the road anywhere. There were cattle that wouldn’t budge even when a big truck blared its horn at them. Around curves where you couldn’t see ahead, you’d encounter cattle or horses instead of cars. Along the roadside you’d see cattle and horses that had apparently been hit by vehicles, lying in pitiful heaps, and perched on top of them without mercy were close to ten vultures, pecking at the meat.
I never had to use the eight-liter spare tank I had prepared in Los Angeles. Except in Mexico, American gas companies were everywhere. Two-cycle outboard oil was also available at stations in every country except Mexico.
Road signs become less common the farther you get from the capital. In the northern towns of the vast country of Mexico, once you entered a town you couldn’t figure out where the exit was, and I had to ask people for directions several times. As someone riding a motorcycle, traveling alone, it was a good opportunity to learn Spanish.
Mosquitoes, ticks, cockroaches, and mice
Hotels exist in even the smallest towns, usually charging around two dollars a night, but I was appalled by their filthiness. Cockroaches were everywhere, and I suffered from mosquitoes and mites. Mice once made off with some of my precious food supplies. In the worst cases, bats flew into my hotel room in the middle of the night. In Central America, I avoided pitching a tent alone for security reasons.
I traveled through Costa Rica and Panama for ten days using a Volkswagen microbus from Alaska, with a pair of German and Australian travelers. When we camped in the mountains and on the coast together, it was far more comfortable than any hotel. That must be one of the advantages of group travel.
Japanese vehicles thrive in Central America
Motorcycles capture hearts
Japanese motorcycles are found everywhere. Mexico was the only exception—with the domestic motorcycle manufacturer Moto Islo and one other company, imports were virtually banned, and the only Japanese bikes on the road were a few Yamahas sold before the restriction took effect. For young people, motorcycles seem to have more appeal than cars, perhaps because they’re more within reach. Park a motorcycle in town and five or six young people quickly gather around. Since there are few motorcycles over 250cc in Central America, my Yamaha felt enormous there. Everyone kept saying “Big! Big!”
Cars also make a remarkable showing. With many mountains and only narrow gravel roads outside the main highways, Japanese vehicles are perfect for these countries. It seems almost every Japanese automaker has entered the market, so there’s a huge variety of models. However, since Japanese cars arrived later than American and European brands, their sales force is far weaker. These countries struggle with having a small middle class. The wealthy buy American cars, peasants use horses, and Japanese vehicles serve the middle class, cargo trucks, utility jeeps, and minibuses—and they perform outstandingly in those roles. Still, when only one to two hundred vehicles enter a small town, they stand out, but the absolute numbers aren’t that large.
Given the living standards in these countries, even motorcycles are difficult to afford. Incomes are low, and except in Panama, motorcycle retail prices run nearly double Japan’s prices. Car prices are about 1.5 times higher. Typical salaries are around eighty dollars for skilled motorcycle and car repair workers, about fifty dollars for shop workers, and twenty to thirty dollars for domestic help. Since even food isn’t cheap in Central America, imported goods like motorcycles, cars, machinery, and electrical appliances remain out of reach for most people.
As the middle class grows and incomes rise a bit more, won’t Japanese vehicle sales increase dramatically? Still, that time seemed quite far away.
Chapter 4: South America
Travel period: May 30, 1966–December 9, 1966
Total distance traveled: 27,947 kilometers
Entering South America—a nerve-wracking motorcycle landing
Crossing the ocean as cheaply as possible is the key to the success or failure of the journey
On May 28, 1966, I boarded a small cargo ship I found at the port of Colón on the Atlantic side of Panama. With ship breakdowns and other delays along the way, we stopped at the Caribbean islands of San Andrés and Providencia, and what normally takes a day and a half by scheduled ship took eleven days before I finally reached Cartagena, Colombia. A scheduled ship would have cost one hundred dollars for a day-and-a-half journey including the motorcycle. The cargo ship had only crew beds, and I slept each night on top of beer crates. At twenty-one dollars total for transporting the motorcycle, I had no right to complain. How cheaply I could cross the ocean with my motorcycle was the key to the success or failure of my journey.
Unloading the motorcycle onto land was difficult. The ship was anchored ten meters offshore, which was inconvenient. If there had been a crane, it would have been no problem, but the cargo ship didn’t have such a fancy thing. I repeatedly urged the captain to unload the motorcycle, but he kept lowering beer and cola bottles and ignored my bike entirely. I didn’t know when it would happen, so I lost patience and negotiated with what appeared to be the foreman of the dock workers waiting for work at the ship’s bow to unload the motorcycle. He found a wooden plank about ten centimeters thick, thirty centimeters wide, and just long enough to span the ship and shore, judged that we could slide the motorcycle across it, and agreed to do it with four companions for forty pesos (about one thousand yen).
They laid the plank between ship and shore. Since thirty centimeters was narrow, we could fit only one person on each side of the motorcycle—front and back—with no room on the sides. The motorcycle began inching forward. If it tilted even slightly, the force holding it from the side was nearly zero, and that would be it—”splash!”—into the water between shore and ship. This unusual motorcycle landing immediately drew a huge crowd. I stood on shore holding my breath, watching their every move. They were cautious too. At that moment, I was so anxious I never thought of taking a photograph.
The motorcycle crept closer to shore, but when it was halfway, the plank began to flex and slope upward. The motorcycle had no choice but to stop. Two people supporting the motorcycle and the motorcycle itself became immobilized on the thirty-centimeter-wide plank. The two dock workers supporting the motorcycle front and back turned bright red, their muscles bulging. I couldn’t take it anymore and leapt into a small boat nearby. I shouted to the other workers to board the other small boat and support the motorcycle from the opposite side. When two men in boats on both sides began supporting the motorcycle, it slowly started moving again. The captain, who had been looking away, must have decided he couldn’t stay silent anymore at this sight—he began shouting loudly from the upper deck at the dock workers.
After all the chaos and confusion, I finally set foot on South America. But just my feet touching the ground didn’t count as landing. It only truly counted once I was astride my motorcycle.
Majestic South America
South America’s terrain and customs were far more varied than anywhere in North or Central America, and the journey was beyond imagination—wonderfully impressive and memorable.
Every country was still very much a work in progress, blessed with abundant natural resources, and its future seemed to hold boundless potential. The vast lands had clearly distinct characteristics depending on the country, and the scale was so immense it defied description in words.
The rugged mountains and deep valleys of Colombia and Ecuador, the coastline stretching across all of Peru, the barren deserts and rocks of northern Chile extending over four thousand kilometers, the well-formed green mountains and beautiful lakes of southern Chile, the snow-covered high Andes mountains separating Chile and Argentina, the flat pampas stretching from Mendoza to Buenos Aires in Argentina—truly, all of it was the majestic work of nature, beyond human capability. Uruguay, South America’s smallest country, is an entire landscape of green pastures rolling in hills, while Brazil, South America’s largest country, stretches nearly five thousand kilometers from its southern border to Belem in the north, and the two thousand kilometers between Brasilia and Belem consist only of desolate red earthen poor roads without a single town to speak of.
South American road conditions
The rugged mountain roads of Colombia
The Pan-American Highway, which is broken between Panama and Colombia, begins anew from Colombia and connects the countries of South America.
Because three mountain ranges run north to south through Colombia, from Cartagena on the coast where I first set foot in South America to the capital Bogota, I had to cross three major mountain passes.
Even so, each pass was around three thousand meters high, and there was paved road only in small sections connecting the capital Bogota with the major cities of Medellin and Cali; otherwise it was nothing but rough gravel roads full of bumps and steep slopes. As you moved away from the areas around cities, passenger cars were almost never seen, only long-distance trucks and jeeps. Motorcycles were rare; even in the capital Bogota I saw only a handful. I think large truck drivers, because there are so few motorcycles in Colombia, drive as if someone like me on a motorcycle doesn’t exist. On sharp curves and even on straight roads, two trucks would often appear side by side coming right at me.
The roads running through deep valleys have no guardrails at all, so they were extremely dangerous. There were many crosses planted along the roadside. I had seen these in Central America too, but the number here was astounding. On the most dangerous sharp curves, there were four of them. I was told these were erected at accident sites to pray for the souls of those who had fallen off cliffs and died, those who had died in traffic accidents.
The most treacherous was the five-hundred-kilometer stretch from Cali to the border town of Tulcan in Ecuador. On the left, a deep valley; on the right, a vertical cliff—a steep uphill road that seemed to go on forever. I was amazed that anyone had managed to build a road passable by automobiles through such a difficult landscape. But as mountain after mountain appeared, I wondered whether the road had deliberately been routed over the highest peaks, summit after summit. Why hadn’t the road been built to avoid the mountains? No—here you can’t go forward without crossing mountains. It’s a mountainous country after all—I told myself these obvious facts to keep going. Traffic was light; I met a large truck only occasionally, when I happened to remember them.
Two bandit groups still active
I had heard there were bandits in Colombia, and seeing the deep mountains, I could only nod in agreement. There had actually been terrible murder incidents in which all the people in an entire village were killed, and a bus with fifty people on board were all killed. Once there were ten such bandit groups, but the government had reduced them to two through suppression operations, or so I was told. I had been warned to especially avoid touring at night, but because progress on mountain roads was slow, I often had to tour late into the night. When a human figure suddenly appeared illuminated by my headlight, I must admit it was not a pleasant feeling.
Ecuador, not hot under the equator
Ecuador means “equator” in Spanish, and true to its name, it’s a country right on the equator. But if you think it would be hot, you’d be mistaken—mornings and evenings were almost chillingly cold. This is because the capital Quito is located in the mountains at 2,860 meters elevation, and my travels through Ecuador took me along high mountains from the border town of Tulcan with Colombia until I exited into Peru.
The map deceived; paving was a cruel lie
Looking at the map, on the Ecuador side of the border there was supposed to be paved road. Delighted at the thought of finally leaving Colombia’s terrible roads for paved highway, I entered the Ecuador side only to find it was cobblestone—long rectangular stones laid down loosely with huge gaps, a bumpy mess of a road. I pressed on expecting the road to become paved eventually, but paving never appeared, and cobblestone continued for two hundred sixty kilometers all the way until just before reaching the town of Quito. It was a treacherous road running at high elevations around three thousand meters, but the scenery was magnificent. Indigenous people farmed the mountain slopes at tremendous heights, and the mountains looked like they were wearing checkered kimono patterns. The small towns too were gathering places for these indigenous people, who came together carrying their harvests on the backs of horses and donkeys.
The cobblestone was only about three meters wide in the middle of the road, so when automobiles passed each other, both vehicles had to move to the outside onto unpaved earth, raising tremendous clouds of dust. Indigenous people wearing black cloaks traveling the road had to step aside each time and avoid the dust.
From Quito to Ambato was just over a hundred kilometers and was nicely paved. Among the high mountains, one stood out, even higher and snow-capped. Snow does fall even directly on the equator. From Ambato paving ended again, and we were back on gravel road. There were cliff collapses at two points along the way, construction work was underway, and I was delayed about an hour. One bus and several trucks were stopped, but the Ecuadorian people were remarkably patient about such delays. It seemed I was the only one getting irritated.
From Cuenca to near the Peruvian border at Agua Verde was the most thrilling road of all. Since I traveled it after dark, illuminated only by moonlight, I could see only the silhouettes of the high rocky mountains on the right and the deep valley on the left. Ahead, the road appeared only as a slight depression in what looked like a sheer cliff face falling straight down.
Desert with no life at all, nothing but sand, rock, and sun—Peru
Peru has the Pan-American Highway running along its coast. A short distance south of the border, you soon enter the desert. This desert is completely different from the semi-deserts seen in Texas in the United States and northern Mexico—not only are there no cacti, but not a single drought-resistant plant grows there. It is a world of nothing but sand and rocks. After driving a hundred or two hundred kilometers, a small town appears like an oasis, with a sign reading “water available.” It only strengthens the feeling of being in a desert region.
Outside the winter months when I traveled through, this desert zone is said to be brutally hot during the day. On windy days, I encountered sandstorms. Sand gets blown by the wind and spills out onto the road. If you drove at high speed through such conditions, you would flip over instantly. Yet despite being in such a desert, the city of Lima is so green and modern that it makes you forget the desert exists. But the moment you leave Lima, the desert continues again.
Peru: almost completely paved, except for a few sections
Peru stretches approximately 2,500 kilometers from north to south, and except for about a hundred kilometers near Moquegua in the south, it is completely paved. It’s a two-lane road with a slightly undulating surface, but with excellent visibility, so you can easily do 100 kilometers per hour. Because of the good visibility and low traffic volume, vehicles travel at considerable speeds. However, in some places there are tight curves with poor visibility and steep hills. Because it’s an easy road to get careless on, accidents are severe, and you see cars on the roadside twisted beyond recognition.
Chile’s excellent roads and Santiago
The desert continued even after entering Chile. The road surface in Chile is magnificent, and traffic is extremely sparse. I was amazed that they built such fine roads in a place with so little traffic. To develop the northern regions, they built excellent roads first. It was truly a wise approach.
Gas stations are few and far between—there wasn’t a single one from the border at Arica until a small village 230 kilometers away. The further south you go, the closer the spacing becomes, but there are frequent stretches of 100 kilometers or more without a gas station, so you need to be careful.
The desert that began at Tocopilla, a short distance south of the Peru-Ecuador border, continued all the way to Caldera in Chile, 400 kilometers further south. More than just monotonous, I was in awe of the greatness of nature as I rode. From Caldera, the road gradually entered the mountains, green increased little by little, and eventually I entered Santiago. Santiago is a quiet town facing the snow-capped Andes right before you, with a dozen or more high-rise buildings standing side by side. Many of the buildings, blackened with soot, were built during the heyday of Chilean nitrate production.
An assault on the Andes in the dead of winter
Tears at Portillo
To enter Argentina from Chile, you must cross the Andes mountain range. Looking at the Andes mountains from Santiago in the dead of winter, they are covered in deep snow, appearing as though they would not allow us to approach. I decided to first try the route from Los Andes to Mendoza in Argentina. It’s a road with a pass at 3,832 meters, but it’s the main route.
Along the way, I met various people and gathered information. The long-distance truck drivers’ accounts seemed the most truthful. But their prediction was that it would probably be impossible. Still, I couldn’t give up until I actually went and found it to be impassable myself.
Past Los Andes, the road suddenly became narrow, and I climbed a steep, sandy track along the river. Partway up, I was stopped by a police officer who, when I said I was going to Argentina, said absolutely not—Portillo at best. I said okay, just take me there, and continued on. Before long I was deep in the bosom of the high Andes, and the road became snow-covered. The snow was over two meters deep, and the road surface was icy and brittle. Because the skiing world championships were to take place in a few days, snow removal was being done, but due to the steep grade, cars without chains were spinning their rear wheels. I climbed a zigzag road where cold wind was blowing down, and after cresting it, I reached Portillo, ten kilometers from the border. I was impressed at how the motorcycle didn’t skid as much as I expected on the snow. The seventy kilograms or so of cargo on the back must have helped.
Beyond Portillo, deep snow blocked the way completely, and forward progress became absolutely impossible. Looking at the sheer mountain in front of me, I turned back toward Santiago. I had known it was impossible, yet turning back anyway felt lonely.
Another challenge via the Lonquimay route
The desire to cross the Andes in the dead of winter hadn’t changed, so I headed south to the Lonquimay route, which seemed to have possibilities.
Eight hundred kilometers south of Santiago, there is a road that crosses the Andes. Judging by latitude, conditions are unfavorable, but this is where the Andes mountains become lower.
Southern Chile is said to be the Switzerland of South America, with scenery so beautiful. Through peaceful rural landscapes where farmers plow the fields using horses, a concrete-paved easy-to-drive road continues. It’s flat and straight, but at the entrances and exits of towns there are wide curves designed to slow down your speed.
Once you leave the main road, the mountain path suddenly becomes narrow and turns into a muddy road. You pass through Pucon, a tourist destination that gets busy in summer, but being off-season, it had a quiet air. Villarrica, a volcano small like a miniature Mount Fuji, is snow-capped, and in front of it sits Villarrica Lake holding its waters. It brings to mind the scenery of Japan’s Fuji Five Lakes. The road from Pucon becomes even narrower, cutting deep into the Andes. No cars pass through, and occasionally you only meet a farmer wearing a poncho, sitting astride a horse.
Eventually the road became so narrow and rough that you wondered if any vehicle actually traveled it.
Falling in a freezing stream
It was a small river, but there were two places without bridges. The first one was shallow, so I was able to wade across carefully, touching bottom. The snow-melt water was cold. But when I crossed the second river, the large rocks on the river bottom caught my handlebars, and I went flying.
The river was only about ten meters wide and shallow, but since the motorcycle fell over, I soaked my lower half in the cold water. Completely drenched, water got into my saddlebags, and books, stationery and other items got waterlogged. But I didn’t let it stop me and kept going.
I wondered if this could really be a border-crossing route—the path was so rough and narrow. The road was covered in snow, so narrow that only one person could walk through at a time. As I continued, I could see footprints scattered here and there in the snow. Eventually those footprints too entered a farmhouse and disappeared. Before long, I reached a village called Puescos, sixteen kilometers short of the border. A cold sensation gradually seeped into my gloves, and my entire body began to get soggy. I could hardly feel my fingertips.
The snow is too deep to go any further
I pressed on further, but the fog grew thicker. The snow built up to about thirty centimeters, and I couldn’t move another step forward. It was bitterly cold. The place where I had fallen in the river and gotten wet was now frozen solid and crackling. This was just two kilometers past Pesco. Through breaks in the fog, I could occasionally see the sheer rock faces of the Andes. I guess it really was impossible after all. On the way down, I was consumed with regret, my head drooping in disappointment. This time my body was utterly exhausted. From the time I started descending from Santiago, the cold had been sapping my strength.
When I reached Pucon, which I had passed earlier, I went into the first hotel I saw. My body was cold and my head was spinning. I guzzled down wine, carried my baggage to my room, and collapsed into bed, falling asleep immediately.
Crossing the Andes in the depths of winter was impossible. I had no choice but to cross the border using an international train from Los Andes in Chile instead.
The Road to Belém
The Perilous Mouth of the Amazon
On August 26, 1966, I entered Brazil from a town called Xui on the coast. For one hundred thirty kilometers from the border, the road was difficult to travel, with sand piled up nearly ten centimeters deep, but beyond that it became a paved road, and after crossing several low mountains, I arrived in São Paulo.
Using São Paulo as a base, I ventured out to Paraná, Belém, and Rio. When I was about to set out on a twenty-two-hundred-kilometer journey to Belém at the mouth of the Amazon, many people opposed me and tried to stop my trip to Belém. There was no precedent of anyone traveling alone by motorcycle to Belém before, and people said it was such a dangerous journey that even trucks and buses always traveled in convoys of two or three, prepared for accidents and breakdowns. Moreover, they said that occasionally Caboclos—people of mixed Indian and white descent living in remote areas, who grew bananas and papayas and raised small numbers of livestock—would attack people for food when the weather was unfavorable. They worried that if I went, I should ask a truck driver to let me join a convoy and travel with them.
Generally, warnings tend to be exaggerated. When I was heading from America to Mexico, Americans said Mexico was dangerous and told me to be careful, and in Panama they said that once you entered South America it was truly dangerous, and a Black man even gave me a shiny jackknife, though I had no weapons or anything. But contradicting all those warnings, the trip turned out to be leisurely, and people were kind wherever I went.
I decided to ignore the warnings.
Overriding Objections, Heading Straight for Belém
On September 28, I departed Brasília. Going back about one hundred kilometers on the road from São Paulo, there is a town called Anápolis. I went around the rotary there and turned right in the direction of the Belém arrow. The moment I turned right, the asphalt ended and the road changed to red earth. This bad road would continue for twenty-two hundred kilometers across the Brazilian plateau all the way to Belém at the mouth of the Amazon.
There was little traffic on the red earth bad road, and occasionally I would meet trucks and buses raising tremendous clouds of dust as they sped along.
Usually two or three came in a row. When passing, the dust would completely obscure my vision.
The trucks were like roller coasters. Because they carried heavy loads, they went slowly uphill, but on downhills they would descend at tremendous speed without even braking.
Although the road was wide, the surface had formed regular waves like a washboard, making it difficult to drive. A single stretch of low scrubland extended as far as I could see. Occasionally there were farmhouses. There were more people than I had expected. The sun on the Brazilian plateau was scorching hot, beating down relentlessly, and by the second day, my hands and face, which were already dark, had become even darker.
Amazed by the Ox’s Tenacious Will to Live!
On the evening of the second day, as the sun was beginning to set, I went around a curve and entered a straight section when I saw a large truck lying on its side with its belly facing up. I approached to see what had happened. The truck bed had been left on the road, the front end was smashed into a ditch, and the driver’s seat was completely crushed. Beside it stood a woman holding a baby, with blood running from her nose. Her feet were caked with mud. The baby was completely naked and crying loudly. A man was trying to cut the truck bed with a hammer. He said something rapidly. Looking beneath the truck bed, I could see about ten cattle struggling underneath. Beside them stood one cow, which must have been thrown out when the truck overturned.
The woman was tending to her crying child, exposing her breast and rubbing her scraped places. I hurriedly opened my baggage and gave the woman water. The man seemed eager to get the cattle out alive as quickly as possible and paid no attention to the woman.
From the gap that had formed in the depression, the cattle finally started to emerge. There were about five calves. They had no injuries at all.
The larger cattle were difficult to extract because the truck’s weight was pressing down on them. Then a large truck came along. Using a wire, they managed to finally right the overturned truck. Of the four cattle that had been underneath, one had its neck broken and was completely dead. The other cattle could only move their heads and could not stand up. Then one of them struggled to its feet, and the remaining two barely managed to get up as well. How strong they are! I thought admiringly. The dead cow had its neck cut immediately with a short sword, the carotid artery was severed, and the blood was drained using the slope.
I was impressed by how the passing truck driver helped as if it were his own problem. “What I was told in São Paulo was a lie. Even when accidents happen like this, people will help you properly,” I thought, and my worries about the journey ahead eased. I felt like the difficult part might not be so bad after all.
As night fell completely and the cold attacked—opposite to the heat of the day—a long-distance truck came along, and the family from the overturned truck rode away with it. After seeing the truck off, I continued on my way. A snake lit up by my headlight darted across the road. I didn’t have time to swerve and I ran over it. The moon was perfectly round. Was today a full moon? There were many clouds but I could see the stars clearly too. A rabbit suddenly darted across the road. Then another snake appeared. This time I managed to swerve and avoid it.
That day I had been riding since early morning, but I had only managed four hundred forty-one kilometers before entering the town of Gurupá. The next day, I set out again early. The bad road continued. Two trucks with broken rear axles were stranded in the middle of the road with no way to repair them. My motorcycle was holding up remarkably well. The heat and the rough road were enough to make me frustrated just from driving. I was annoyed and irritated, riding recklessly at full speed. There were no signs of any houses.
I saw an animal like a wolf cross the road. An ostrich, which I thought existed only in Africa, was startled by the sound of my motorcycle and flew out from the woods. It ran in front of my motorcycle at tremendous speed and escaped to the other side of the road.
The Caboclos I occasionally met all carried old guns. They carried them for hunting and self-defense, but at night, when lit up by my motorcycle’s headlight, seeing several people appear with guns was not a pleasant sight.
I ran almost out of gasoline twice, but managed to survive in the nick of time.
At the dormitory (kodomitori) in a village along the way—mainly where drivers stayed—some places didn’t use lamps at all. Instead, they would pour oil into a dish, light a string in it, and use that for light.
Five days out of Brasilia, the landscape finally changed from what we’d seen before, shifting from highland scrubland to tall, dense jungle. The slopes grew steep. Incredibly steep. Even after cresting a hill and starting down, the bottom still wasn’t visible. The road surface grew drier still, pocked and rough, grabbing at the tires. The tall primary forest all around had leaves only at the top, with scrubland growing underneath. Large butterflies flew past now and then, their wings a brilliant blue and shiny like metal. There were butterflies in other colors too—yellow and red—but apparently their numbers have dropped dramatically because of indiscriminate collection and export.
Arrived safely in Belem
After running three hundred kilometers that day, we hit asphalt for the first time in four days. After that, the riding was smooth. We ran a hundred kilometers through squalls and arrived at our destination, Belem.
We entered the town of Belem around six o’clock. Maybe because we’re close to the equator, the people aren’t Black, but they’re dark. People’s clothing is modest, and many go barefoot. Mango trees grew thick everywhere, making it truly tropical. The town after the rain, with its clear air, felt wonderful.
From Anapolis to this point, we’d entered bad roads for twenty-two hundred kilometers—roughly the distance from the start of Hokkaido to the beginning of Kyushu. The motorcycle had done an excellent job of carrying us through.
The biggest accident: the front of the frame breaks
From Belem, after visiting a Japanese settlement in the Amazon, we headed back through those bad roads toward São Paulo.
On the way to Belem, even though the roads were bad, I was interested because we were heading into unexplored territory for the first time. But on the return, it was a road we’d already traveled—and we had to cover twenty-two hundred kilometers of those bad roads again. Just thinking about it gave me a headache from the start. I pressed on toward São Paulo, relentlessly. The pace was six hundred kilometers a day.
On the third day out of Belem, at a point with just three hundred kilometers left to Anapolis, I was pushing hard through wavy road surface at nearly seventy kilometers per hour. Suddenly I noticed in the back mirror that part of it was lower than normal. As I eased off the throttle to stop, the seat dropped with a soft thud, and then came a terrible rattling sound. I’d never had a breakdown like this before. I stopped to check and found that the front of the frame had cracked—and the engine was actually touching the ground. If I’d been going at that speed when it happened, I would have been badly hurt. The odometer read sixty-five thousand, three hundred sixty-seven kilometers. We’d been on these bad roads for four thousand kilometers now. A round trip on roads this brutal is enough to make any motorcycle want to go on strike, and this Yamaha had been carrying at least seventy kilograms of cargo for sixty-five thousand, three hundred sixty-seven kilometers under these harsh conditions. Stranded here like this, I couldn’t help but “sympathize” with the motorcycle.
On the way to Belem, I’d had two punctures. Under the blazing sun where even standing still was exhausting, I sweated through and managed to fix them somehow. But this time, no tool I had or spare part would do any good. All I could do was wait for a truck. I stood in the blazing sun with no shade, waiting listlessly for about two hours, and then a truck came from the direction of Belem. I stepped into the road to stop it, explained the situation, and the driver kindly gave me a ride, loading the motorcycle onto the truck. As I sat in the cab, relief and fatigue took over and I fell asleep without realizing it.
When I woke, it was dark around me, but the truck was moving slowly and we still hadn’t reached Anapolis. We ended up staying at a dormitory along the way. The driver and his assistant stayed at the dormitory, but I was worried about the motorcycle. I laid out my sleeping bag next to it in the truck bed and crawled in. It didn’t cost anything, and the air outside was comfortable.
The next morning, we reached the town of Anapolis before noon. I got down from the truck at a repair shop we found. The driver charged ten contos (fifteen hundred yen). For three hundred kilometers, that was unavoidable. I disassembled the motorcycle, had the broken part of the frame welded, and made it back to São Paulo on October 14th.
Motorcycles and automobiles in South America
Brazilians who don’t like to work
Several Japanese companies have established operations in São Paulo. Among them, I visited Toyota, Kubota, NGK Ishikawajima Shipbuilding, and others. None of them were particularly large—perhaps because every company was worried about inflation and holding back on capital investment.
Unlike the big corporations, there are many problems. What troubles every company is the employee issue. By Japanese standards, it’s unthinkable, but employee capability is less than half that of Japanese workers. In short, they don’t like to work.
“Brazilians think that profit is less about making money than about slacking off,” the factory manager at Kubota told me. The restroom keys are held by Japanese staff members, who hand them out only when needed. Leave the restroom unlocked and some employees will go in and not come back for thirty minutes, an hour, or longer. Also, there was an employee who worked quite well, so they gave him a raise. But after that, he started taking more days off, and ultimately the raise had no effect.
Materials also go to the big companies first, and only get delivered to smaller operations as a side job. Because of this, materials often run out and the factory shuts down.
For all these reasons, car prices are extremely high. A Toyota jeep costs eleven thousand, eight hundred eighty contos (one million, eight hundred thousand yen). Even Volkswagen, Brazil’s largest automaker, costs about one million yen in Japanese currency—the price of a luxury car in Japan. This Volkswagen accounts for more than half of all automobiles in Brazil. Besides Toyota and VW, Renault, Simca, DKW (two-stroke three-cylinder), and Mercedes-Benz have entered the Brazilian market.
The continent where motorcycles are least common in the world
After Brazil, Argentina is South America’s next-largest automobile producer. In Argentina, most vehicles are domestically produced Fiats. In other countries, domestic production capacity doesn’t yet exist—they’re only just starting on knockdown assembly.
Now, what about motorcycles? Even in Brazil and Argentina, where automobile production has been active, there are no large manufacturers. With such a huge population, it’s puzzling why the motorcycle industry hasn’t grown.
Japanese motorcycle exports face strict import restrictions and only tiny numbers get through. They’re used for recreation by wealthy sons, and practically not at all for practical purposes. These people simply don’t know what motorcycles are for. No other continent has so few motorcycles.
When affordable, high-performance Japanese motorcycles penetrate the market and people discover what motorcycles are for, this continent holds enormous potential for explosive sales.
Chapter Five: Europe
Travel period: December 23, 1966 to August 17, 1967
Total kilometers traveled: 34,232 km
The plan was to travel from Brazil to the Union of South Africa, but I encountered racism there, was made to wait for forty days, and was ultimately refused entry. Shipping a motorcycle from Brazil to other African countries by sea is difficult. I decided to go to Europe first and traveled to Portugal.
From Portugal, I headed north through Europe’s winter, passing through Spain, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. After that I headed toward West Germany, where I worked as a woodcutter for three months to earn travel expenses, and was fortunate enough to get the chance to see four major races: the West German G.P., the Isle of Man T.T., the Dutch G.P., and the Finland G.P.
West Germany
German camping enthusiast
The day before the May 6th race, I left the village early in the morning with two motorcycle fans I’d met while working there. Southern West Germany, which had seen snow throughout April, now basked in warm spring sunshine in May.
The two friends I set out with were fellow enthusiasts who loved long rides whenever they had time off work. They really knew how to open it up. Roads away from the Autobahn are not particularly wide. Even on narrow, winding country roads, they’d cruise at a hundred kilometers an hour, a hundred and ten without any hesitation. I got a clear sense of the difference in speed. We rode in a line through the crisp morning light. From the village, Hockenheim, where the West German G.P. was held, is a nondescript little German town situated near the beautiful medieval town of Heidelberg.
When we arrived at Hockenheim, it was already filled with colorful tents. Germans in particular among Europeans love tents, and you could constantly see people setting them up and enjoying tent life.
Every large town, small town, mountain area, and lakeside has a tent village, and even if you lost your way, you could quickly find camp site signs. Speed enthusiasts with motorcycles and cars loaded with tents had pitched their tents around the course days before the race, watching practice sessions while waiting for race day. They cleverly used this race to spend a few days leisurely in early spring. Some people put deck chairs in front of their tents and sunbathed naked while listening to music; others read books or got caught up in conversations about the race—it was all quite varied. They’d brought cooking equipment, folding tables, and chairs, and when mealtime came they’d gather around the table to eat. Our group found a spot and pitched our tent just like they did.
Meeting Giacomo Agostini
Rain began after noon and continued into the night even after practice ended. I wandered through the rain-soaked town filled with motorcycle fans. Finding nothing particularly noteworthy, I headed back toward the tent village when I noticed a team doing some final work in the back courtyard of a hotel. Of course I went over.
One of the team members addressed me:
“Hey! You’re Japanese, aren’t you?” I replied,
“Yeah, I am! Where are you from?” but he didn’t answer, whether he understood or not. I learned later that he was Giacomo Agostini, the 500cc world champion. If you’re a motorcycle fan coming to watch a G.P. race, you should know his face. That he didn’t respond probably wasn’t because he didn’t understand—it must have been because he thought I was joking or being sarcastic with my answer. But the small, dark-haired Italian boy Agostini gave me a sense of familiarity as I watched my first big race.
I encountered Agostini again at the Isle of Man and Finland G.P.s, but he seemed to have completely forgotten the Hockenheim encounter.
He expressed amazement at my journey with comments like “You’ve been touring on a motorcycle for two years!”, and even invited me saying, “You really should come to Monza in Italy!”—he seemed eager to show Italy’s race to as many people as possible.
1967 West German G.P. Race Results
The race drew an audience of two hundred thousand, a huge success. The venue itself was an impressive stadium with grand stands surrounding the start and hairpin curve.
The people who’d been waiting in tents streamed into the stadium early in the morning to grab good seats, and an hour before the start, the main stand was so packed you couldn’t find anywhere to step. The rain everyone had worried about stopped, and it turned out to be perfect racing weather—clear and calm. However, the race itself was a bit chaotic, and the results were as follows.
▽50cc class: Unquestionably Anscheidt (Suzuki) won, while Graham (Suzuki) and Katayama (Suzuki) dropped out due to machine problems, with Cryderman taking second place.
▽125cc class: Read (Yamaha) and Ivy (Yamaha), who had been running well ahead of the field, got caught up in a crash involving a rider one lap down mid-race, and both went down. Of the four cars one lap down, the one running in front crashed right in front of our seats, and Read and Ivy, who were attempting to overtake them, got caught up in it and crashed in succession. Katayama (Suzuki), who’d been running third, took the win.
▽250cc class: Hailwood (Honda) and Ivy (Yamaha) disappeared from view shortly after the start. Read (Yamaha) was leading with Bryans (Honda) in second, but partway through the race Read pitted, and Bryans took the lead. Then Read’s assault coming out of the pits was tremendous. The spectators held their breath as Read closed the gap with each lap, but Bryans held on by a narrow margin to take the victory.
▽350cc class: Hailwood (Honda) won.
▽500cc class: From the start, Hailwood (Honda) surged ahead, opening a big lead over Agostini (MV). In the second half of the race, Hailwood smoothly pulled into the pits and didn’t come back out, giving Agostini the victory.
The T.T. race, the road to the Isle of Man
Two friends from West Germany
On June 5th, exactly one month after the West German G.P., I set out for the Isle of Man with the two German friends. Alfred, a welder, owned a Honda 450cc. He was a big fan of Japan and had a large photo of a Japanese rider who’d visited Hockenheim pasted in his album. He was my closest friend, but he spoke no English at all, only German. Though I’d understood almost no German at first, after three months I’d learned to understand him fairly well thanks to his patience.
The other was Hermann, a mechanical engineer who owned a BMW 600cc. He’d had a major motorcycle accident and undergone major surgery, leaving him with a three-centimeter difference in leg length. Undeterred by such an accident, he remains hooked on motorcycles.
To England
We crossed the English Channel from Calais, France, and set foot in Britain. Dark clouds and cold rain awaited us. The ship was large and impressive, but Alfred, riding a large ship for the first time, felt sick during the one-and-a-half hour crossing that hardly swayed at all.
At Dover, Hayden, Hermann’s English friend, joined us. He had a Norton 600cc and had come all the way from Bridgend in Wales, four hundred kilometers away, just to pick us up. That day we rode four hundred kilometers from Dover through London to Hayden’s house. Southern England has no mountains, just a succession of small hills. There are far fewer divided highways compared to Germany. Still, the road surface of the two-lane ordinary roads is smooth, and once you leave town, you can reach seventy miles (one hundred twelve kilometers). As you know, Britain, like Japan, drives on the left side of the road. For me, it was my first time driving on the left in two years. Speed limits throughout Britain are uniform at seventy miles (one hundred twelve kilometers), whether on highways or on ordinary roads with no designated speed limits.
Another crash, another painful right ankle injury
The day before entering the Isle of Man, we went to the motorcycle club that Hayden belonged to and chatted over Britain’s awful beer. In Britain, the sale of alcoholic beverages is limited by law to 10:30 p.m.
After that, it’s fish and chips and potato chips eaten standing up at the outdoor stand.
From Hayden’s house to Liverpool is three hundred fifty kilometers. From Liverpool, we would take a ship to the Isle of Man.
June 9th—today was the day we would finally enter the Isle of Man. We left his house at 6 a.m. sharp. Wales is a mountainous region, and on those winding roads, sheep were grazing loose, wandering about, so we had to be careful not to hit them.
Outside of town, we were speeding at seventy to eighty miles (one hundred ten to one hundred thirty kilometers) per hour. With seventy kilograms of luggage loaded on my bike, I could barely keep up with them on an unfamiliar road. Still, my Yamaha YDS-III held its own against the large displacement of the Norton, BMW, and Honda. It’s a two-lane road with poor visibility, but even at one hundred thirty kilometers per hour, there’s no worry of people or cars suddenly appearing, so we could ride with confidence. The four motorcycles continued on cheerfully toward Liverpool.
But then, just thirty kilometers before Liverpool, an unexpected crash happened. As we went around a curve, about fifty meters ahead the road was under construction and had been narrowed to one lane. Unfortunately for us, our light was red and a truck was coming from the opposite direction. Hayden at the front suddenly hit the brakes hard. I was running third, and to make up for my smaller displacement and to use the slipstream, I was riding right on the tail of Hermann in second place. My braking was a fraction of a second too late, so my speed didn’t drop as much as Hermann’s. To avoid a collision, I turned the handlebars to the right and went over hard.
I injured my right ankle again—the very one I’d broken in Canada. An ambulance took me to the hospital, where they stitched up my left hand and took X-rays of my right ankle. Fortunately, there was no fracture, but the pin they’d inserted at the fracture site in Canada had broken.
In Britain, all medical care is free—if you’re going to have an accident, Britain is the place to do it. For me, without any insurance, it was an enormous help.
Limping into the Isle of Man—helped by the Yamaha Racing Team
When we heard the hospital would take us to the ship, they went ahead to the Isle of Man. The next day, it turned out they would take us only as far as the nearby bus stop, not all the way to the ship. When I got off the bus in Liverpool and was limping to the harbor, struggling every step of the way, a gentleman lent me his shoulder. I was also about ten shillings (about five hundred yen) short on the ship fare, and he paid that for me too.
The ship to the Isle of Man was packed with young people. Hundreds of men and women dressed in leather jackets lined up and boarded the ship one after another on their motorcycles. Separated from my motorcycle, that precious means of transportation, I felt a new loneliness come over me. After three and a half hours, we arrived at the port of Douglas, the main gateway to the Isle of Man. The motorcycle fans hurried off with joy, leaving only the roar of big engines in their wake. I was the only one left behind. After waiting a while, not Alfred and the others, but a car from the Yamaha Racing Team appeared. They had heard about my accident and came to pick me up. That day I stayed with the racing team members in a warm hotel, sharing meals and sleeping accommodations.
Countless motorcycles on the island
The island had an incredible number of motorcycles. Along the roads facing the coast, hundreds of motorcycles were lined up. At night, I would take a walk looking at these motorcycles, and it was more fascinating than visiting an auto show or a museum.
The British motorcycle fans didn’t leave their motorcycles the way they came from the shop. Everyone customized theirs according to their taste, changing the seat, changing the tank, changing the shifter position, repainting the color—every one you looked at was an individual creation.
I reunited with Alfred and the others, and further merged with four of Hermann’s friends, making eight of us altogether. We pitched our tent at a quiet campground outside of town. It was a well-equipped campground with washroom facilities, showers, and a shop, and it was free.
The rugged Isle of Man course
The course, which is one lap of twenty-seven point seventy-three miles (sixty point thirty-seven kilometers), has a rough road surface. I rode it myself and found it to be a terrifying course with great elevation changes and many dangerous curves. There was a hairpin curve called Goosesneck with a steep climb, and from Keppel Ghaut the steep descent was narrow, with stone walls on one side.
Akiyasu Motohashi, the Yamaha rider who came in third in the 125cc class, was making his Isle of Man debut. He told me that on this course, you can’t use the technique you’d use on ordinary courses. British riders use incredibly unconventional riding techniques, but in practice that’s actually faster, and you can’t imagine how much of an advantage riders experienced on the course have.
The race was held over the course of a week, one race every other day, and this week was T.T. Week, with festival-like excitement all around. Fortunately, the entire week had clear skies without a single cloud.
Isle of Man T.T. Race Results
▽250cc Class: Hailwood (Honda) shoots out from the start. I was watching the race from a point thirty-four miles (fifty-four point five kilometers) from the starting line, down from the mountains, but his cornering was tremendous. He accelerates faster than anyone else coming out of a curve. He opens the throttle well before the middle of the curve. Read (Yamaha), who had a bad start, chases and takes second place. Ivy, who was running in third, disappears on the fourth lap, and Braynes takes third place instead.
▽125cc Class: Katayama (Suzuki) and Ivy (Yamaha) fade away, leaving a one-on-one between Read (Yamaha) and Graham (Suzuki). Graham ate away persistently but Read wins by a narrow margin, with Motohashi (Yamaha) taking third.
▽350cc Class (JUNIOR): Hailwood (Honda) wins.
▽50cc Class: Graham and Unshite (Suzuki) shoot out. Katayama (Suzuki), about two minutes behind at the start, pursues spectacularly. By the third lap he jumps into the lead. But the machine doesn’t hold and Graham wins. Stewart Graham, who lost his father Les Graham in this T.T race, finally has his long-dreamed-of victory on the Isle of Man.
▽500cc Class (SENIOR): Agostini (MV) put up a strong fight. He leads Hailwood (Honda) from the start. Only a few seconds difference, but he maintains first place even after completing the fourth lap and looks like he might get away with it, but on the fifth lap his chain breaks—bad luck. If the chain hadn’t broken, there’s no doubt Hailwood would have had a tougher time.
The Road to the Dutch G.P
The Journey with Alfred
After parting with Hermann and Hayden, I was alone with Alfred. I could barely grip the clutch with my left hand. I was in poor condition, perhaps from taking too much medicine the hospital had given me, and I felt dizzy every day. I had no energy to look at towns, and whenever I arrived at my destination on the motorcycle, I would just lie down in the tent. Alfred, who didn’t speak English, seemed bored sitting around in the tent since I wasn’t going out.
On July twenty-first, we crossed the Dover Strait headed for Assen in the Netherlands. We crossed Dover by ferry at ten o’clock at night. Despite passing through France in just a few hours, I was charged nine francs (six hundred thirty yen) for two days of insurance. Every country in Europe charges this insurance fee at entry. It’s painful. The cheapest insurance in Germany was ten marks (nine hundred yen) for a month, and in the expensive Scandinavian countries it was seventy marks (six thousand three hundred yen) for a month, and if I paid everything properly, there’s no way I could manage. But there are always loopholes, and I made full use of them. After driving about an hour, we entered a cafe at eleven at night. French young people, having nothing to do, were making noise around a billiard table and a table soccer game. When we Germans and Japanese came in, there was a moment of silence and they looked at us. We sat down at one table, but their stares didn’t want to leave us. We tried to order something to eat in Japanese, English, and Alfred’s German, but nothing got through at all. Everyone started making noise, and in the end Coca-Cola and sandwich were the only things they understood. France has few campsites even for Europe, so after we got some food, we pitched our tent by a roadside in a rural area near the Belgian border.
Belgium’s roads aren’t good. The Autobahn is just a name, it’s all patched up. Even regular roads have lots of cobblestones and are uneven.
Once we entered the Netherlands, the roads became beautiful. Throughout the small country, well-paved Autobahns crisscrossed in all directions. In the midst of green farmland, old-fashioned windmills could be seen here and there, and it was truly peaceful. Alfred and I headed for Assen at a speed of one hundred ten kilometers through this scenery.
When we rested in a town along the way, Alfred found a motorcycle magazine in a bookstore with an article of mine in it. It was a magazine called “Motor Sport” in the Netherlands, and when I entered Germany at the end of February, I visited this magazine company and sold them an article about my travels so far.
I sold articles in France too, but it’s a great way to help pay for travel expenses. But if you don’t do it right, it won’t sell. Since there are so many freelance writers, if you run into one of them, they’ll write the article and sell it all over the place.
We pitched our tent in a campsite within the course, but the practice session the day before was cloudy, and the first half of the race day was rainy. It’s a seven-point-seven-kilometer circuit with lots of curves.
Dutch G.P Race Progress
▽50cc Class: Katayama (Suzuki) wins without complaint.
▽350cc Class: The rain lightens and eventually stops. Agostini (MV) is in the lead with Hailwood (Honda) sticking close right behind. I didn’t think Agostini could get away. As the middle phase began, using the pack of riders one lap behind, Hailwood jumps into the lead. It was a moment when I witnessed his rich racing experience and skilled tactics firsthand. After that he pulls away from Agostini and crosses the finish line.
▽125cc Class: Read (Yamaha) and Ivy (Yamaha) have a bad start, more than thirty seconds behind the others. Katayama (Suzuki) goes to the top. With his fifty cc victory as well, he is Japan’s only Grand Prix rider and enjoys tremendous popularity wherever he goes. In the second half, Read and Ivy move to the top, and Read wins.
▽250cc Class: Read (Yamaha) takes the lead. Hailwood (Honda), Braynes (Honda), and Ivy (Yamaha) follow in order. In the second lap Read’s machine shows trouble and gradually falls behind, Hailwood takes the lead and wins, and Ivy edges out Braynes for second place.
▽500cc Class: Hailwood leads from start to finish. Agostini (MV) has his hands full with Pasolini (Benelli). He’s kept in second place by Pasolini until the final stages, but Agostini takes second place by a narrow margin.
The Road to the Finnish G.P
Back to a Real Solo Journey
Alfred, who had taken two weeks of vacation and traveled with me constantly from Germany, headed back to a village in southern West Germany as the Dutch G.P. came to an end. Parting ways with him, I returned to my original solo journey.
I headed straight north from Hamburg, passed through Denmark and the west coast of Sweden, and entered Oslo, Norway.
The Scandinavian countries, except for Finland, have borders between Denmark, Sweden, and Norway that are practically meaningless—there are not even customs officers.
Sweden drove on the left side of the road, just like Japan. It would make sense for island nations like Japan and England, but I asked several times why only Sweden, which borders Norway and Finland, drove on the left. The only answer was that it had always been that way, and no real reason was given. Interestingly, even Swedish-made cars like Volvo and Saab had left-hand steering wheels. I couldn’t understand how left-side driving could go with left-hand steering, but the answer was simple: the most commonly imported car, the Volkswagen, had left-hand steering, and the population had gotten used to it, so it stuck. In summer, when tourists flooded in, Sweden alone had left-side driving, which caused many accidents. Because of this, they had decided to switch to right-side driving in September of that year. Everything had to be reversed, which meant enormous expense. Traffic signals that had been prepared for right-side driving sat wrapped in bags around town, waiting for September to arrive.
Beautiful Nordic nature
From Oslo, Norway, I made a round trip to Bergen on the west coast, and the scenery created by the lakes, forests, and fjords was truly magnificent. Near the fjords, there are high mountains, and remnants of snow still lay four or five centimeters deep on both sides of the road. In this intricate fjord region, ferryboats go everywhere. Even though the fjords don’t freeze in winter thanks to the ocean current, in this snowy region, cars can’t run in winter, so the ferryboats become unnecessary.
I returned to Oslo and immediately entered Sweden, heading north from Stockholm. The forests and lakes of Sweden are beautiful, but there’s absolutely no variety—it gets boring. The farm girls working in bikinis in the countryside and Swedish girls sunbathing in bikinis in their gardens were far more pleasing to the eye.
From Sweden, I entered Finland, headed north through Lapland, and reached North Cape, Europe’s northernmost point, on July 16th.
At latitude 71 degrees north, close to the Arctic Circle, not a single tree was to be found—only moss and a small amount of grass. Even at midnight, the sun never set; it was the midnight sun, where the sun tilted to the north, stood still for a moment, then began to rise again. In that landscape, herds of reindeer grazed on meager grass and lived peacefully—it was like something out of a fairy tale.
Popular Japanese automobiles and motorcycles
Upon entering Finland, the first thing I noticed was how many Japanese automobiles and motorcycles there were. Datsun led the way, followed by Toyota, Isuzu, and recently Mazda had entered the market. Japanese cars had a good reputation, and future growth was expected.
Interestingly, Soviet-made Moskviches and Volgas, Czech-made Skodas, and Polish-made automobiles were also imported, and motorcycles included many Soviet-made models, Czech Javas, and East German MZs. Recently, the numbers have decreased, but they said at one point there were enormous quantities. The reason was that they were unbelievably cheap, and the import companies adopted an unthinkable system where they didn’t pay upfront but instead received the automobiles from communist countries and paid from the proceeds of sales. In terms of performance, they still had frequent breakdowns, and many people avoided them despite the low price.
Motocross world championship
Before the Imatra Finland G.P., a motocross race was held on July 30th in a town called Hiibinka, about a hundred kilometers north of Helsinki. In Scandinavian countries, motocross is even more popular than speed racing. Seeing a motocross race for the first time, I was amazed by the sheer amount of dust. Swedish-made Husqvarnas dominated the field, and Czech CZs were also seen in large numbers.
I had a friendly chat with world champion Torsten Hallman (Sweden), who said he had been racing motocross since he was eleven years old. He races every week in Europe and America, and said he’d very much like to go to Japan. When he asked if there were any Japanese motocross machines, I found myself stirred with competitive spirit on behalf of Swedish Husqvarna as I replied that Japanese-made machines would soon appear in Europe too.
The race was two heats, with two twenty-lap runs on a course about two kilometers per lap. After about an hour, another twenty laps—it was intense racing. The riders, covered head to toe in mud, said that by the second half, their vision was so obscured they could barely see. That day’s race was won by Peterson, also from Sweden. Hallman came in second.
Between races, there was an announcement over the loudspeaker introducing me, and in front of the spectators, I was allowed to run the course solo. I was once again amazed by the course: it had a thick layer of sand with large gravel rolling around, and sharp ups and downs.
Chapter Six: Eastern European countries
Travel period: August 19, 1967–August 30, 1967
Total distance traveled: 3,821 kilometers
Soviet entry denied
How are automobiles and motorcycles different?
The clear summer sky over Helsinki, in harmony with the green trees and intricate inlets, was beautiful. From Helsinki, I began preparing to enter the communist countries.
The only major hurdle was the Soviet Union. I went to the Soviet Embassy, surrounded by forest near the city center, and applied for an entry visa. However, the official told me that solo entry into the Soviet Union by motorcycle was not permitted.
I had expected as much. I had checked on entry to communist countries at both the Soviet embassy in Geneva, Switzerland, and in Stockholm, Sweden, and both times I was told solo entry by motorcycle was not possible.
At the time, I couldn’t accept it. I had come with a sliver of hope that once I actually got to Helsinki, there might be a possibility, but now that it was indeed impossible, I was deeply disappointed. Entry to the Soviet Union was only possible by bus, train, airplane, or by automobile on a predetermined route. Automobiles and motorcycles are the same kind of vehicle, but motorcycles are too small for surveillance to be effective.
With the Soviet Union out of the question, Poland was my next option. Fortunately, Polish coal ships ran between Helsinki and Gdansk, Poland. Entry was simple. A tourist visa required a hotel reservation and the requirement to exchange a predetermined daily amount in dollars beforehand.
A transit visa, however, required none of that bother. I was only allowed to stay a maximum of three days, calculated from the time I entered Gdansk to when I would pass into the next country. On a transit visa, I obtained visas for six Eastern European countries: Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. Yugoslavia, despite being Eastern European, had even simpler entry—no visa was required, just simple formalities at the border.
A Journey Through Poland
Surprised by a Customs Officer Dealing in Black Market Dollars
Seeing off by the Yamaha dealer Forsbom and his family in Helsinki, I boarded a Polish coal ship on August 17th. The three-thousand-ton vessel, blackened by coal dust, carried my motorcycle and me across the Baltic Sea toward Gdansk.
Poland’s specialty is strong vodka. They call it votka. When evening came, I was invited to a small cabin to drink vodka with the crew, and these large sailors certainly knew how to drink. One of them explained just how much they could hold.
“In Poland, if three people share half a liter of vodka, and two of them don’t drink while one person finishes it all, the one who drank it doesn’t count as a drinker.”
After two days at sea, I arrived at the port of Gdansk, with its blackened buildings, blackened cranes, and heavy, gloomy appearance.
At eight in the morning, a customs officer from a communist country arrived for the first time. I was made to write down the motorcycle and camera numbers and the amount of money I had. They didn’t inspect my belongings at all. Even as a communist country, the Eastern European nations outside the Soviet Union are courteous to travelers.
For some reason, the customs officer offered to exchange dollars for me. “At a real bank, one dollar is twenty-four zloty, but what about one dollar for seventy-two zloty?” This astounded me. The customs officer was running a black market dollar exchange. And on top of that, the rate was three times better than the official one. I was itching to make the exchange, but I told myself that breaking the rules from the start would not lead to a smooth trip through the communist world, so I declined.
A Laid-Back Gas Station
The motorcycle was lowered to the wharf by a large shovel crane for coal with a rope attached. At last, my journey through the communist world had truly begun. I crossed the railroad tracks on a terrible road of large stones to reach the town of Gdansk. Houses built of dull brick-brown brick, cobblestone roads everywhere. People waiting for streetcars. In shops all over town, people stood in lines waiting. Few cars drove through the town. Besides Polish-made vehicles, I saw many Soviet automobiles. I felt anew that I had truly entered the communist bloc.
I bought a postcard at a shop on a street corner, but the dull color looked as if it had been in stock for ten years. The cigarettes were the same way. No cellophane—the wrapper was old, and the box was dull. The brand was called “Extra.”
At the edge of town, I stopped at a gas station. I had no idea how many kilometers apart the stations would be on the way to Warsaw. First, I had to fill up. I had assumed that when a customer arrives, someone would come out and fill up the gas, as a matter of course, but that was not the case. When I shouted in German, “Give me gas!” the answer that came back was, “Wait!” I was to wait until the gasoline finished being transferred from the tank truck.
Soon three cars and two Jawas lined up behind me. Once the gas transfer was complete, they told me to wait until I finished pumping. The people waiting said nothing, but gathered around my motorcycle, looking at it curiously.
I filled the tank and headed straight for the capital, Warsaw. Once I left town, the road turned to asphalt. The surface was wavy and in poor condition. There were few cars; motorcycles, bicycles, and pedestrians were plentiful. Jawas, which are Czech-made, were hugely popular motorcycles. Everyone wore helmets—women in skirts, small children clinging to their fathers’ backs, everyone on a motorcycle wore a helmet. Because of the rough road surface, I kept my speed down to eighty to ninety kilometers, yet I was still far faster than other vehicles. Most cars were going seventy kilometers or less.
When entering towns and villages, I had to watch out for people. Even in the daytime, people gathered here and there in town, chatting about something. The towns were dirty and not well swept. Only the young people’s clothes, surprisingly stylish and modern, stood out. Sometimes people would suddenly dart out in front of me. I almost hit geese, which I saw everywhere. When the road entered a town, it always became a rough cobblestone street, but when it left town, it turned to asphalt, lined with trees on both sides, as if running through a tunnel of trees. Horses loaded with hay went along peacefully; I also saw tractors, but the power of livestock was still significant.
I Got a Traffic Ticket but a Police Motorcycle Escorted Me to the Campground
The distance from Warsaw to East Germany was short, but I still had two days to spare. At the Warsaw camp, a moped traveler I had met told me, “Since you’ve come to Poland, you absolutely must see the old city of Krakow,” so I pushed on further east.
I headed toward Krakow in the rain. The road was better than the day before, and Jawas were still common. When I stopped for lunch along the way, I met a group of six young men and women on Jawas. They were all wearing jeans and jackets, with helmets on—cool young people.
They had heard of Japanese motorcycles but had never seen one before, and their eyes grew as wide as saucers. Compared to their Jawas with their monocoque frames and single-cylinder engines, my Yamaha with its twin-cylinder and pipe frame fulfilled their dreams, and when they discovered the two carburetors, their eyes sparkled as if they were looking at a racing machine.
I’m not sure if they understood the explanation about the two-stroke and oil injection, as language was a barrier. The woman seemed more interested in my belongings than my motorcycle, probably because she couldn’t get nice things where she was from. She kept pressing me to give her the neck scarf I had bought with difficulty on the Isle of Man.
From Krakow, I headed toward East Germany on a road that wasn’t shown on my map at all. It wasn’t on the map, but large industrial cities continued one after another. I kept driving, wondering if this was a route tourists were allowed to use and whether I might get caught by a police officer. When I arrived in the town of Kaobitze and was wandering around the rotary in the center of town, I was stopped by a police officer. Speaking in broken German and English, I told him I was just looking for a campground while checking a sign, but he didn’t understand. A police motorcycle came by, and apparently only my word “camping” got through to him, so the motorcycle officer went out of his way to guide me to the lodging place. He must have thought what a nuisance this traveler was, breaking traffic laws and then needing to be guided to lodging.
A Close Call! I Arrived at the East German Border Just Two and a Half Hours Before My Visa Expired
Traveling so freely, I ended up taking the wrong border crossing. According to the map I had obtained in Switzerland, I was supposed to pass through East Berlin to West Berlin, but I was chased back by gun-carrying soldiers, and as I drove through the dark countryside, I arrived at the Frankfurt border with East Berlin just two and a half hours before my visa expired. I learned that even in Eastern Europe, a trip off the beaten path taken on a whim is allowed. If this had been the Soviet Union, it would have been a real disaster.
A Visit to the Jawa Research Laboratory
After stopping at West Berlin, the island of freedom, I drove through the East German autobahn once more and entered Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia, from Dresden. There I happened to get an opportunity to visit the Jawa research facility. While talking with a staff member at the campground, I mentioned that I wanted to see the Jawa factory, and he immediately called and got permission for me. The reply was that they couldn’t show the factory, but they would give me a tour of the research facility.
I rode to the research facility on the outskirts of Prague on a Japanese-made Yamaha. At a desk in front of a large room with red carpeting, the white-haired director Josef greeted the distant visitor warmly.
As a competitor in motorcycle production, he had studied Japanese motorcycles well and never forgot to praise them. While production numbers were far smaller than Japan’s, Jawa was known not only throughout the communist countries but also across Western Europe and to the distant American market. Josef said,
“Since Japanese companies are making sports-type models, Jawa wants to expand exports with practical vehicles,” and described the current situation as follows:
① Personnel: 6,000 people (factory), 300 people (research facility)
② Annual production: 100,000 units
③ Exports: 90%
④ Technology exports abroad
There are factories in India, Turkey, and Egypt. There are plans for factory construction in Iraq.
⑤ Oil injection
This was planned over a decade ago but was unsuccessful; currently it is being planned again.
The research facility had various testing equipment, all based on ideas developed at this facility. Inside triple-glazed windows, an engine was running with a loud noise. Reaction testing, frame testing, vibration testing and so on—I was shown a place full of energy and drive.
They were in the middle of testing machines for a six-day trial to be held in Poland. In addition to various tests, this facility manufactures motorcycles for factory racers.
After finishing the tour and returning to Josef’s office, I asked him:
”In your country and other communist nations, there is no domestic competition, is there? I think competition in sales accelerates technological development, but wouldn’t communism have disadvantages in that regard?”
Josef answered, “Of course there is no domestic competition, but there is competition abroad, so it’s the same thing.”
Josef handed me a badge and cap with the Jawa logo as a memento, shook my hand firmly, and sent me off saying, “From here on, please take great care and I pray for your safe return to Japan.”
Motorcycles and automobiles of the communist bloc
During my stay in Prague, there was one more discovery. As I walked through town, I happened to notice the Japanese flag at a newspaper stand on a street corner. I immediately bought a copy and looked through it to find two pages introducing Japan’s automobile industry. While I couldn’t understand the text, from the figures I could tell this was an article saying that Japan’s automobile industry had risen to second place in the world after America.
When I departed from Japan, I’m sure we were in third place after surpassing Britain, but I never expected to learn this in a communist country. Several photographs of Japanese cars were printed, and the models had changed to newer ones, making me realize again how long my journey had been.
I walked around and found the newspaper’s publishing company. On the second floor of a small building, about ten employees were working on producing the newspaper.
I visited hoping to learn about motorcycle and automobile production in communist countries, but they didn’t have comprehensive data, so I was only told what the editor-in-chief knew.
As for motorcycles, there are Jawa and CZ from Czechoslovakia, and Pobeda scooters. In East Germany there are MZ, Simpson, Izhevsk from the Soviet Union, SHL from Poland, and others.
As for automobiles: from the Soviet Union, Moskvitch, Volga, Zil, Zaporozhets, Chaika. From Poland, Warszawa, Syrena. From Czechoslovakia, Skoda, Tatra. From East Germany, Wartburg, Trabant. Additionally, Italian Fiat has entered Yugoslavia and Poland, and plans are underway for a technical partnership with the Soviet Union in the near future.
Of these, Czechoslovak Jawa and Skoda and Soviet Moskvitch are exported in considerable numbers to Western Europe. Both of these cars, which recently underwent model changes, have completely transformed their styling to become modern.
According to Finnish users, durability is poor and breakdowns are frequent. However, the appeal is the low price—less than two-thirds the price of Western European and Japanese cars.
I came away with the impression that unless the communist bloc countries engage in domestic technological competition, the performance gap won’t narrow.
Chapter Seven: Africa
Travel period: September 23–October 25, 1967
Total distance traveled: 7,920 kilometers
Green-less Morocco
My journey through Africa began by crossing the Strait of Gibraltar from Algeciras to Ceuta. Flat-topped mountains, completely without greenery. Seeing men in jellaba (white robes) and women wearing litham (veils), I felt I was truly in Africa and readied myself for the journey ahead.
A man perched on a donkey crossing a vast, tree-less hill, wearing a bag of rice bran on his head because of the heat. The occasional houses that appear are pure white and square.
The roads are narrow with many potholes, but they are paved. Hot! Yet the motorcycle runs on pleasantly. I encounter Moroccan children watching sheep, cattle, and goats at a leisurely pace. A donkey laden with large bundles of grass walks by with harsh breath. A dog walks in the shadow beneath the donkey’s belly. The donkey hangs its head, and the dog does the same.
I headed from Tangier toward Fez. It was completely without trees. Around mud-built farmhouses, cacti grow. They rely on cactus fruit as precious food. The medina of Fez had the feel of pre-medieval times. I found a cheap lodging there and stayed for three nights before heading to Algeria.
Touring the desert
To Bou Saada, an oasis town in the Sahara desert
When I arrived in Algiers, I immediately sought out Bujili, a Yamaha dealer representative. Bujili, a big-eyed man with a mustache, welcomed me warmly despite my having no letter of introduction or anything like that.
What was supposed to be two or three days turned into ten days. Once my own motorcycle was serviced, I worked alongside them repairing motorcycles that had been left for repairs.
On Sunday, I ended up going out to Busada, an oasis town three hundred kilometers into the Sahara Desert, with the dealer’s crew.
We had four Yamahas and one BMW, five motorcycles in all. There are no Thunder Clans in Algeria. The five motorcycles tore through the town like thunder. For about thirty kilometers from Algiers, we rode through flat vineyards.
Once the vineyards ended, we entered the mountains. Sharp curves, steep climbs, narrow roads through deep valleys with poor surfaces. The pass was high. After crossing the pass and speeding down a steep slope, we came to flat terrain—the entrance to the Sahara Desert. We passed through several small towns, but there were huge crowds of people. So many children. Men in turbans, and poverty was evident everywhere.
We finally entered the desert. Through the hot, completely flat desert ran a rough asphalt road. We simply kept the throttle fully open, traveling at around 130 kilometers per hour. The wind cut by the motorcycles was so hot that we actually needed our leather jackets against it.
We arrived in Busada in the late evening. The oasis in the desert was large and had become a tourist destination with several hotels. That night we stayed at the finest hotel in Busada. Since it had been a French colony, nearly all the tourists were French. Of course, the tourists just flew in from the capital, Algiers, in an airplane, skipping over the desert in one leap.
Busada, where you cannot see women in the town
At night in Busada, men in turbans and white clothing sit along the roadside in the cool evening air. Children run about among them. There is not a single woman to be seen anywhere.
The desert morning is refreshing. Donkeys and carts pass back and forth busily. Breakfast at a café consists of café au lait and fried semolina. Every shop is packed.
We left town and went out into the desert, but the Sahara beyond Busada was a land beyond imagination. After gazing for a while at the desert stretching endlessly with no way to know where it ends, we decided to go for a swim at an oasis near town. Bujili, Azedin, Suadahamed—all of them stripped down to just their pants and frolicked in the strikingly cold, clear water.
The midday heat became intense. In the shade it was not too bad, but direct sunlight was extreme. Ten of us ate couscous. Two big wash basins full. Couscous is food unique to the Arabs, eaten widely in North Africa—in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia here.
Wheat ground to about the same fineness as Brazilian cassava flour is served with a sauce of carrots, daikon radish, paprika, lamb meat, and whatever else you like.
Today they used rabbit meat instead of lamb. We drank cold beer, and for dessert we had delicious melon. Satisfied and full, we left Busada at two o’clock, and the five motorcycles headed straight back to Algiers.
A close call entering Tunisia
Entry refused! The name of Tunisia was not written in my passport
Algeria’s coastline is covered in beautiful greenery. My visa for Algeria was valid for eight days, but because Bujili and the others held me back so strongly, it ended up being fourteen days, though the immigration officer let me leave without saying anything.
I had confidently assumed no visa was needed for Tunisia and handed my passport to the immigration officer. After looking at it for a while, he said I could not enter. The reason was that the name Tunisia did not appear in my list of countries to visit.
”That can’t be!” I tried to find Tunisia among the names of nearly seventy countries listed in my passport.
”It’s not there!”
It should have been. In the plan I made two years ago, Tunisia was definitely included. It’s impossible to go from Algeria to Libya without passing through Tunisia. Somehow, in some oversight, it had been left off. I was already on my third passport. The name “Tunisia” was not in my first passport either. I ground my teeth at the thought that I had carried it for over two years without noticing.
”Without the country name, we cannot let you enter. Go back to Algiers and visit the Japanese Embassy to have the country name added,” the two immigration officers said.
They said it so simply, but the round trip was fifteen hundred kilometers, and just having “Tunisia” written in one word on my passport would mean enormous gasoline costs.
I explained the purpose of my journey and asked them: “This is due to an oversight on my part—please let me through. Call the Japanese Embassy in Tunis.” It was only two hundred kilometers to Tunis. In response to my repeated pleas, one of the immigration officers shouted.
”Go back to Algiers and add the country name! This is Tunisia. You cannot enter Tunisia for even one second without the country name. Now take your bags and get out!” He grabbed my bag and tried to pull me out by the shoulder. I shook his hand off and shouted back.
”I’m only heading to Libya. I’m not moving until you let me through!”
He left, and the other immigration officer, who didn’t understand English, went into the back. I sat down on a dirty bench and tried to think of some way out. I looked through my passport again and again, but the word “Tunisia” would never appear. All the while, several people passed through the border. Each time, the immigration officer said, “Get out!”
Resolved to sit it out until I could enter… but the sun was setting
Three hours passed. The sun had gone down completely. If I went back to Algiers, it would take more than two days, and the gasoline would be expensive. Even if I held out for one night, it was worth it. I decided I would not move until they let me through. The immigration officer, at his wit’s end, spoke to me quietly.
“I’ll call the immigration bureau headquarters at the foreign ministry, and you’ll follow whatever they say.” That was about all they could do. And that was all there was.
I gave an evasive answer. Would headquarters really allow someone whose passport had no country name to pass? The immigration officer had already gotten the phone line. I was thinking, “What if headquarters refuses?” when the immigration officer asked for my passport.
Bang! He gave me an entry stamp. Persistence paid off. But he was a stubborn immigration officer. Or perhaps I was the stubborn one.
Rain fell in the desert
Nomadic people, camels, and the desert
In Tunis and Tripoli, I was allowed to pitch my tent in vacant lots next to police stations.
As you exit Tripoli, date palms and cacti are planted for several kilometers. They are a crucial food source for the people here. I would sometimes see nomadic peoples traveling through the desert, herding sheep and having camels and donkeys pull carts. I even caught sight of nomadic tribes with tents pitched right out in the desert. I found myself wondering what they ate and whether they had access to water, worrying about them despite it being none of my concern.
At night, you have to be careful not to collide with camels. Camels resting beside the road get startled by the motorcycle’s exhaust noise and bolt away. They’re blinded by the headlight and you can’t predict which direction they’ll run. I had to hit the brakes hard more than once because of camels suddenly bolting into the road.
Sand is dangerous too. Wind-blown sand accumulates in patches, covering the road surface deeply in some places. If you hit one of those patches at full speed, a motorcycle doesn’t stand a chance.
But there’s something wonderful about the feeling of riding on and on, seeing nothing but empty space stretching to the horizon. After riding about seven hundred kilometers through the Libyan Desert from Tripoli, a tall gate came into view. This was the administrative boundary between Tripoli and Benghazi. Five police officers were posted there. They carried themselves with such gravity that you’d have thought this spot was the most important place in the world from every political and cultural perspective.
A cup of chai (tea) in a whiskey glass
It was eleven at night. After I finished showing my passport, I decided to sleep near the gatehouse again.
Far, far removed from any town, the place seemed utterly quiet and like a strange other world. One of the officers, dressed in pajamas and with sleep in his eyes, turned on an old radio. It blared out noise.
For them, drinking chai (tea) is the most enjoyable time of day. They fetch buckets of water and rinse out a small iron kettle. They rinse small glasses. They empty the rinse water into a tray and wash the tray itself. Water is precious. Using an empty can, they start a charcoal fire and boil water. They add plenty of tea leaves. Then they let it bubble away.
I lay in my sleeping bag on the sand and watched every step of the process. When offered chai, I got up and drank it, but it was bitter and strong, served in a glass as small as a whiskey glass. I drifted off to sleep gazing up at the clear starry sky without a single cloud.
Abandoning the African continent
I woke in the middle of the night to rain hitting my face. By then it was too late—my entire body was soaked through, sleeping bag and all. I never imagined it would rain in the middle of the desert like this. This rain turned out to be the only rain in all of North Africa.
The desert went on and on. Benghazi was a town I reached after riding fourteen hundred kilometers from Tripoli. Blue sea, blue sky, but the town was dust-covered. Leaving Benghazi and heading for Apollonia, then on through even more beautiful coastline toward Egypt. My plan had been to attempt a continental crossing of Africa again, but once again I hit a wall. I couldn’t get entry from Egypt into Sudan. Because of conflicts in northern Sudan, travel southward from Egypt was limited to flights only. With my limited funds, I had no choice but to abandon the idea. I decided to give up my dream of crossing Africa and head instead toward the Middle East.
Chapter Eight: Middle East and Asia
Travel dates: October 26, 1967 to January 6, 1968
Total distance traveled: 12,563 kilometers
Two days of maintenance on the Yamaha YDS III
On October 25, 1967, I boarded a ship from Alexandria, Egypt and arrived in Lebanon, which sits at the western edge of the Asian continent. From here, if I could ride overland, I could pass through the Middle Eastern countries and reach India. If I got to India, Japan would be just around the corner. Thinking that way got my heart racing with anticipation.
First things first, I stopped by a Yamaha dealership in Beirut to service my motorcycle, my most essential companion. It took two days. The bike had carried heavy cargo and gotten me this far without complaint. I couldn’t help but encourage it: just a little bit more, hang in there. At this point I had already ridden an astonishing 84,712 kilometers. That meant I’d gone around the Earth more than twice.
Jordan on a war footing
Turned away from camping in front of King Hussein’s palace
Lebanon, a commercial nation, was the wealthiest of the Arab countries. Being a free trade port, it had vehicles from countries all over the world, and plenty of them. As soon as you leave Beirut, you climb over high mountains. There are vineyards and apple orchards, and farmers line apples and grapes along the road to sell them. The mountain roads are steep and long, and from them you can see Beirut spread out far below. The descent is also steep and long, but you can negotiate the winding roads at around a hundred kilometers per hour. Just as I finished the descent, I got a flat tire. I breathed a sigh of relief thinking how bad it would have been if it had happened while I was coming down.
Riding through a barren mountainous landscape, I entered Damascus, the capital of Syria.
The road from Syria to Amman, the capital of Jordan, ran through territory where intense fighting between Israel and the Arab forces had occurred. In the undulating desert, soldiers were prepared for combat. It looked as though the Israeli army could attack at any moment. Large trucks were spaced out at regular intervals across wide stretches of desert. Tents were pitched, and on high ground, anti-aircraft guns were trained in the direction of Israel.
There were many soldiers throughout the town, and checkpoints everywhere. The soldiers were so taken aback by my strange appearance that they forgot to call out to me and just stared. I made a point of always acting as though I didn’t notice them and just passing through. If I stopped, I’d have to wait while they went through my passports page by page. I had three passports, and they examined every page of each one.
As I wandered around Amman not knowing where the center of town was, I found myself in front of King Hussein’s palace. Soldiers stood there grimly, holding guns. I asked for directions to the town center, but they didn’t understand. When I gestured to ask “Can I camp here?”, they looked at me as if I’d said something ridiculous. It turned out the town center was close to the palace. It was a shabby town, full of gaudy cheap neon. The center of the town lay in a depression, a valley, and houses were built climbing up the hillside. Square stone buildings stood packed together, with hardly any greenery.
The third floor of a small three-story building was a hotel. Small cheap hotels everywhere are like this. There were two beds: one for three hundred yen a night, and the other, they said, was for whoever came later.
The next morning, I got up before the sun rose over the town and left the cramped, messy place. Climbing the mountain, the center was no longer visible, just dense neighborhoods built climbing all the way up the hillside.
Leaving town, the same scene of military combat preparation continued as yesterday. If Israeli planes flew over here, this place would explode and become a battlefield. In the previous war, this area had been a battlefield too, and it had been devastated.
The photography incident
At first it was military reasons; then it was that dirty places weren’t allowed
After riding about thirty kilometers from Amman, I entered a market in a small town. Arab clothing varies slightly from country to country. A marketplace, where many people gather, is a good place to photograph Jordanian clothing. There were fig sellers, sandwich makers, fruit vendors, vegetable sellers, and plenty of women carrying baskets. They wore beautiful, spotless white clothes. I asked a sandwich vendor if I could take his photograph, and he nodded readily. I figured if I set up the shot with the baker and some women around him, I’d get a pretty good photo, so I raised my camera.
Then, from among the people trailing behind in a group, about three of them stepped forward and blocked my way, saying “You can’t take pictures here!”
”Why not?” I asked back.
”You’ll get caught by the police and end up in jail,” they said.
”No, that’s not what I’m asking. Why can’t I take pictures?”
”You’re going to take the pictures you took here and show them to people in Israel, America, and Britain.”
”I’m a Japanese traveler. I won’t do that. Even if I did show them, what would you lose?” I asked.
They said they would go to the police. We went to a nearby police station, and a huge crowd followed along. One of them went inside to call someone. A police officer who appeared in the doorway suddenly changed his expression and, instead of looking at me, turned toward the crowd and unfastened his belt, swinging it around wildly like a madman. To me, he looked completely insane. His head was shaking, his whole body was tense, and he was flailing about with all his might. People scattered and fled in every direction.
When I offered my hand to shake with the officer, his face instantly transformed into that of a different person, calm and composed. I asked again whether I could take pictures, but he didn’t seem to understand. The officer ignored me and instead spoke, as the three men had before.
”What are you going to say when you go back to Japan and show pictures of such a filthy place?”
”That’s not the issue. It’s different from Japan. Very different. Even in terms of clothing, the sandwich vendors aren’t dirty at all. The women’s clothing is really quite beautiful.”
The direction of their criticism toward me changed. At first it was that we were in a state of war, but now it had shifted to saying I couldn’t photograph because the place was dirty. The government’s prohibition on photography was for military-related sites. The market I had intended to photograph was completely unrelated to the war. But it seemed that if I did photograph it, I had no idea what the crowd might do to me. Their emotions, in a state of war, were decidedly not in a normal state.
A tent in the desert beset by sandstorms and ants
The rapidly changing climate of the desert
Near the border town of Rutba, I pitched a tent in the desert. Thinking I’d be able to enter Baghdad the next day, I was setting up the tent by starlight when something suddenly stung the palm of my hand. For a moment I froze. A scorpion!
I looked at my palm and saw something—an insect with its teeth sunk into my skin and not letting go. There was no point in panicking now. I lit a match to examine it and felt relieved. It was just a large ant.
The weather in the desert changes suddenly. When I had pitched the tent, it was a quiet night, but in the middle of the night after I had fallen into a deep sleep, a violent gust of wind woke me. It came like a single solid mass. The tent stakes at the foot of the tent pulled free, and the tent began flapping wildly. If I had hesitated even a moment, the tent would have been blown away completely. Instinctively, I grabbed the edge of the tent and pulled it in under my body. Now I couldn’t move at all. Sand blew mercilessly at my face and into my sleeping bag alike. I pressed myself face-down, shut my eyes, and desperately held onto the tent, only praying for the wind to stop. This was the first time I’d encountered such a violent gust. After about an hour, the wind stopped as suddenly as if it had been a lie. Absolute silence. I brushed the sand away, straightened out the tent, and crawled back into my cozy sleeping bag.
The next morning when I woke up, there was a large ant colony right next to the tent. The night before, not only had I endured the violent wind, but I’d also been tormented all night by ants that had burrowed into my sleeping bag, stinging me again and again.
Cheaper than water: the price of gasoline in wealthy Kuwait
From hot Baghdad, my journey continued to Kuwait, the oil kingdom. The roads in Iraq have poor surfaces but are fully paved. Once I entered Kuwait, there were fine, American-quality roads running through the desert. Many of the cars were large American vehicles. Gasoline was sixty yen a gallon, so fifteen yen a liter. It’s no exaggeration to say it was cheaper than water. From Kuwait I headed toward Teheran in Iran. The heat had vanished. The Iranian plateau was cold. And cold it should have been. Snow covered the surrounding mountains. People’s clothing had changed to black and heavy materials.
John, whom I met in Iran
Speeding through the darkness, frozen by the cold
On November 10, I passed through Teheran and headed for Mashhad. Bald mountains with no trees at all.
Buses and trucks were frequent on this road. This was my third winter this year. It looked like snow could fall any moment. Cold rain fell from the low-hanging clouds. Snow had already fallen on the mountainsides higher up. Tunnels occasionally cut through the mountains.
There was no electricity, and when I entered a tunnel, it became pitch-black except for the light of my headlight. After about a hundred kilometers of such mountain road, I entered the flat agricultural area along the Caspian Sea. This region, covered in greenery, is Iran’s important grain basket. The Caspian Sea was barely visible through the clouds. From Gorgan, I drove about three hundred kilometers along the border with the Soviet Turkmen Republic as far as Bojnurd. Until Bojnurd it had been a paved road surrounded by greenery, but beyond that it became a terrible gravel road going uphill in complete darkness. The densely forested road eventually turned into desert. The crescent moon and star, symbols of the Arab world, dominated the cold night sky.
Cold. I drove and drove but saw no villages. On a cold night of riding, the absence of lights made them all the more missed. There were no other vehicles at all. Even after driving for two hours, I hadn’t encountered a single person. Had I taken a wrong turn somewhere? To dispel my unease and loneliness, I shouted loudly to myself and muttered things. Perhaps I’d driven about one hundred and fifty kilometers since passing the last light.
Far ahead, in a gap between mountains, I could see a light. That faint, barely visible glow boosted my spirits a hundredfold. Would there be something warm to drink? Might there be something to eat? My hopes soared. The small light slowly drew closer. It took forever to reach. I was getting impatient. I drove wildly across the rough road at full speed. I entered a small village. There were about ten houses on either side of the road, and one of them was a small restaurant serving as a rest stop for long-distance buses.
My body wouldn’t stop shaking from the cold. I went into the nearly empty restaurant and gratefully received some chai, letting out a sigh of relief. I asked the restaurant owner if there was a place to stay, and he said he would put me up for twenty rials a night (ninety-five yen). Twenty rials was cheap. In the small shed of about eight tatami mats built behind the restaurant, two other men were already sleeping wrapped in blankets on the concrete floor. I set my luggage beside me, kept my leather pants on, and crawled into my sleeping bag. The next day, as soon as the sun rose, I left the rest stop. It was a crisp morning, but bitterly cold.
With John all the way to Mashhad
After driving about a hundred kilometers on gravel road, a gas station appeared. It was the first gas station since Bojnurd. A BMW caught my eye. A mud-covered man was fixing a flat tire. The license plate was German. He was British, had bought the BMW in Germany, and traveled this far. The tall, blonde Englishman was named John. He said he was heading to Australia and planning to work there.
We were both motorcycle enthusiasts. We hit it off immediately, and for a while my lonely solo journey became a shared adventure with John.
We filled our gas tanks and headed toward Mashhad. The road was a series of washboard corrugations covered thickly with gravel. Gravel road easily grabs your wheels, and the rear wheel slips left and right. On this gravel road, my Yamaha, loaded with plenty of baggage, was actually faster than John’s much larger BMW.
John had a large rucksack strapped on top of his gas tank, which reduced the rear-wheel load, causing the rear wheel to slip and preventing him from riding smoothly. There were no steep climbs, only the concern about the dust clouds raised by trucks and buses when we passed them or they passed us. The two motorcycles ran side by side. Even motorcycles kicked up billowing clouds of dust. Even starting early in the morning, we only covered four hundred kilometers that day. As Mashhad began to appear in the dusk ahead, the road changed to asphalt.
When I stopped the motorcycle to look at the sunset behind us, we caught each other’s eye and burst out laughing. Both of us were covered from head to toe in a thick coat of white mud. I had not noticed it at all until then. Seeing each other’s terrible appearance, we could imagine our own pitiful state. And we laughed until our sides ached. The mud had penetrated through our goggles, and chunks of mud the size of peas stuck to our eyes. We took off our gloves and, congratulating each other on our perseverance, brushed the dust off one another.
Parting with John in Herat
On the second day with John, we traveled from Mashhad to Herat, in the western tip of Afghanistan. We ran on the same gravel road as the day before at sixty kilometers per hour. We crossed the border between Iran and Afghanistan after dark. There are cheap hotels in Herat for travelers. Dozens of Europeans and two Japanese travelers were staying there. Almost everyone traveling through the Middle East and Asia passes through Afghanistan. The roads that spread into several routes in India to the east and Iran to the west converge into a single road here in Afghanistan, so travelers gather here.
The one-hundred-yen-per-night inn had two beds and no decoration whatsoever, but it was kept clean. After bringing in the heavy baggage, I went to the dining hall attached to the inn and asked for leftovers. It was already past ten and the dining hall had closed. I received rice and lamb and drank water. That water turned out to be a problem.
I was exhausted and fell into a deep sleep, but when I woke the next morning, John was looking dejected and wide-eyed.
“I was running to the toilet all night long,” he said, looking worn out.
I immediately understood: the water had gotten to him. At dinner, I had drunk a cup of water despite my own doubts about whether it was safe, driven by my thirst. But it seems it got to me too. John being affected was just as bitter as if I had been affected myself.
“I took medicine but it didn’t help. But I’m okay now. It’s finally settling down,” he said, and after a while John seemed to fall asleep at last.
By afternoon John was awake. I brought lunch for both of us to the room, but although John’s diarrhea had subsided, he had no appetite. John said he was fine now. But he said he would rest here for two or three more days. I decided to go on ahead. Since we were taking the same route anyway, we would surely meet again somewhere. We said goodbye with a handshake, promising to meet again, and departed Herat before dark.
Hashish, hashish, hashish…
A paradise for hashish addicts
I speed along a magnificent desert road with virtually no traffic. I weave through rocky mountains. Occasionally there is only a small house made of mud with a domed roof. Between here and Kandahar there are five hundred seventy kilometers with not a single town. It got dark before we covered even half the distance. The rocky mountains gradually gave way to flat, easy-to-drive desert road.
I overtook the English jeep that had left Herat ahead of me and approached Kandahar. As the town appeared in the distance, dotted like stars, I transferred gasoline from the reserve tank to the main tank. Worried about running out of gas, I drove slowly into Kandahar. The town was already fast asleep.
I pounded on inn doors, and at the second one I found an empty room. The gatekeeper, rubbing his eyes as he came out, led me up the worn stone stairs to the room. Two hitchhikers were already asleep in their sleeping bags.
After receiving the hundred-yen room fee, the gatekeeper lay down on a wooden bed in the hallway the same way he had been before I arrived.
While I was brushing my teeth at the washbasin downstairs, a small, black-haired man came down. As we talked, I learned he had come from New York, but from his appearance he looked like he was of Spanish descent, perhaps from Puerto Rico or thereabouts. He was washing a syringe. “Why on earth is he carrying a syringe?” I thought as I brushed my teeth, and the conversation lapsed for a moment. When the man finished washing,
he asked, “Ever tried hashish?”
“No,” I replied.
“Come to my room. There are some interesting people.” He grinned ominously and went up the stairs. I had heard about hashish. Hashish is a type of drug, and Afghanistan and Tibet are its home. Some drug addicts from the West, seeking cheap drugs, have drifted eastward, eastward, and found what they imagine to be paradise in Afghanistan and Tibet. In southern Europe and North Africa, it’s called marijuana and is sold in places like the casbah.
Being offered hashish
Perhaps that man’s room is where drug addicts live? If so, it might be worth taking a look. With that thought, I knocked on the door where the black-haired man in front of my room had entered.
”Come in!” came the reply from inside. When I opened the wooden door, I was momentarily taken aback. These were not the faces of living human beings. Five men with wild, staring eyes all turned their gaze toward me. The man from before said “Come in!” once more. As I entered the room, I said “Good evening!” but they did not answer, though their faces relaxed into a relieved expression.
Everyone was lying on beds, eyes staring wildly, faces pale and hollow-cheeked, arms protruding from sweaters like skin and bones. The room reeked with the distinctive smell of hashish.
One man said “Smoke!” and offered me a water pipe packed with hashish. Normally it is smoked mixed with tobacco, but here, because it was cheap, they smoked hashish alone. They had plastic bags full of hashish. I took the water pipe and tried smoking it. I smoked it twice in the normal fashion, but it did nothing special. Only an unpleasant smell remained in my mouth.
The way they smoked was extreme. They did not hold the hashish smoke in their mouths but drew it all straight down into their lungs.
”Oh! So that’s how you do it—if tobacco couldn’t take that kind of drag, there’s no way hashish could. I gave up.”
Now I understood what the syringe was for. The catfish-whiskered man took the syringe from the black-haired man and loaded something into it—drugs of some kind. He wiped his thin arm with cotton moistened in alcohol. His arm was covered with injection marks, a terrible sight.
Once injected, the catfish-whiskered man’s eyes went wide and his face became inhuman. He seemed to be enduring pain, or holding back something. When the needle came out, his expression turned slack.
”What will happen when the money runs out? Their faces will twist into something even more horrifying than that injection face, desperate for drugs. Drugs, drugs, drugs—I’m sure they see nothing anymore: not the natural scenery they’ve traveled through, not other people, nothing.”
With these thoughts, I decided not to linger and headed back to my room to sleep.
Poor India
An Indian moped partnered with Yamaha
From Kabul, climbing straight up the difficult Khyber Pass on the Silk Road, and we were in Pakistan.
The climate of the basin is hot, and Pakistan’s roads are completely paved, running through Lahore.
Pakistan, made unstable by the Kashmir conflict. Fortunately, I was able to cross the Indian border. India, a poor country, is completely different from what you hear about it to what you see with your own eyes. More than being dirty, the poverty of its people was heartbreaking.
In my first town, Ludhiana, I sought out Mr. Kanti Bhil of Pearl Scooter. He manufactures mopeds by importing engines from Yamaha.
The company president’s house, built at the factory entrance, was a well-maintained impressive residence. The ordinary Indian people I saw in town and countryside were thin and dark-skinned, but he was plump and light-skinned—what you’d call the typical Indian you see in Japan.
In this country where the caste system still persists, the rich and ordinary people seem like entirely different races.
The president’s house had numerous servants. The man who swept the floors only swept floors, the woman who did laundry only did laundry. Everyone could do only their assigned work. The president’s brother, Satish, showed me around the factory, and it was a large operation full of energy. Everything except the engines was made in India. The finished mopeds were crude compared to Japanese models, but in India, where finished imports weren’t possible, these mopeds with Japanese engines sold as fast as they were made. The problem was that the government limited the number of imported engines, so production couldn’t be increased as much as they wanted.
Satish told me that general factory workers made about thirteen dollars a month—4,680 yen. Even so, having a steady job was considered good. A schoolteacher’s salary, which requires education, is also thirteen dollars, so it’s not bad at all.
The caste system, Hinduism, a population of 400 million, and cattle
How many people have no work becomes clear just by walking through town. India, bound by the caste system that has calcified, constrained by Hinduism, carrying a population of over 400 million—what will become of India’s future?
Because India was a British colony, all the main roads are paved. But the pavement is narrow—only wide enough for one truck—so when passing another vehicle, either we have to stay on the asphalt and push the oncoming vehicle off onto the dirt outside, or we get pushed off the pavement into the mud ourselves. In town, there are so many people and cattle that you must be careful.
Toilets are only for the wealthy
Traveling eastward through peaceful rural scenery. You can’t cover up poverty. Along the roadside trees, monkeys dot the landscape and occasionally cross the road. I think people who love animals should come to India. Peacocks and large yellow-green parrots fly everywhere. Camels, mongooses, squirrels, and rats roam the roads. It’s rare to find a country where wild animals live so freely and abundantly.
People work in pairs or groups of four, drawing water. They use a basket attached to a rope and skillfully draw water from the river to the fields. I often saw scenes of cattle being used to pump water from wells to fields. Drawing water with no motor is hard work.
When night falls, it becomes completely quiet. Small villages have no electricity, just the faint glow of lamps. In the light cast by headlights, silhouettes appear with their backsides exposed. Usually there are two or more in a row. Beside them sits an aluminum pot filled with water, glinting in the light. After defecating, they wash with the water from the aluminum pot, but there’s no sign of digging a separate hole. After that, the dry air evaporates the moisture and the wind carries it away. Only people with decent means own toilets.
I traveled to Madras via New Delhi and Calcutta, then took a ship from Madras to Penang in Malaya.
Chapter Nine: Australia
Travel period: January 12 to February 4, 1968
Total distance ridden: 6,963 kilometers
January is midsummer in the Southern Hemisphere
A disinfected motorcycle
In perpetually warm Singapore, I took a twenty-day rest waiting for a ship to Australia. The new year had come, and on January 12, 1968, I landed at Fremantle on the west coast of Australia, the final continent. In the Southern Hemisphere, January is midsummer, and when I stepped off the ship, the direct sunlight beat down relentlessly.
Temperature: 106 degrees Fahrenheit (41 degrees Celsius). No wonder it was hot. What bothered me as much as the heat was the flies. And these weren’t ordinary flies. They were persistent. They’d land on my face, and even when I shook my head, they wouldn’t leave. I’d wave them off, but they’d fly through the gap between my hands and land on my face again. They’d land on my eyes, my mouth, without any hesitation.
Bringing the motorcycle in took more time. I thought I’d cleaned off all the dirt from the Middle East and India in Singapore, but the customs officer touched the underside of the motorcycle’s fender and found a tiny bit of mud that remained. He deemed it unclean. As a result, I had to pay five whole dollars for a complete steam disinfection. And the fox fur I’d acquired in Afghanistan and was using as a motorcycle seat was also taken to a furrier because there was concern about insects.
I was glad they didn’t lodge a complaint against me personally. Despite my shabby appearance, they chose to respect human dignity.
Welcomed even at the Perth races, riding in front of the spectators
I visited Yamaha dealer Ken George, and that evening he took me to see a speed race in the town of Perth. At the oval dirt circuit, motorcycles, cars, and sidecars roared as they raced around. This race, held every Friday night, doesn’t involve betting—it’s purely for the love of speed—and apparently every Australian town has one, making it one of the nation’s most popular recreational activities. Young men through those past middle age were hunched over race cars built specially for dirt circuits, covered in grease as they checked them over.
At this circuit too, I was welcomed by the organizers and introduced to the spectators. An announcement came over the loudspeaker, and alone on my motorcycle, I rode out onto the dirt circuit, which had fallen silent at the announcer’s words. I was greeted with thunderous applause and slowly circled the track.
They gave me generous applause as this rare visitor from Japan.
Crossing Australia from north to south
Setting out on a solo journey of 4,500 kilometers in five days
The next evening, I left Perth early and set out on my journey across Australia. I had already booked passage on a ship from Sydney on the east coast to New Caledonia. To make the ship on time, I had to cover approximately 4,500 kilometers from the west coast to the east coast in five days.
My body was fully recovered from resting in Singapore, but the motorcycle had nearly 130,000 kilometers on it. Loaded down with heavy gear, and despite changing some parts along the way, the machine was showing considerable wear. “Running 900 kilometers a day for five straight days might be impossible, but once we go this far, we’re almost home! Come on, don’t give up now,” I prayed.
I pushed on eastward through gently rolling hills with sparse vegetation. After running about 60 miles (100 kilometers), houses disappeared, and I’d pass through a village every few dozen miles. Because it was Saturday evening, gas stations everywhere were closed. There were no people around.
The warmth and kindness of the couple at Seventh Pump Station
At midnight, after running 640 kilometers, I arrived at Seventh Pump Station. This pump station is where water is pumped inland from Perth through a pipe, and the pressure is increased by pumps at intervals along the way.
Being the seventh pump station from Perth means there’s a pump every 100 kilometers. Since a pump station functions as a small village, I went in hoping to find something to eat. But all I found in the darkness was a water tank and a few houses. Luckily, I met a man there. He was heading to the pump station for the night shift.
”If you don’t mind, you can camp in my yard!” he said, and took me to his house.
”Camping will be a hassle—sleep here instead!” he said, pointing to the veranda, and then left for work.
Despite it being midnight, two grade-school children were still awake. As I sat on the veranda smoking a cigarette, sweat began to ooze out. The daytime heat didn’t ease up even after dark. The children brought me tea and bread. I was grateful. I stuffed two slices of ham sandwich into my empty stomach and fell fast asleep.
I woke at 6:30 a.m. to sunlight streaming in through my eyes.
As I was preparing to leave, the wife, who hadn’t appeared the night before, came out and showed me to the dining room. She served me tea and a ham sandwich while telling me various stories about the hardships since immigrating from England to Australia.
”We immigrated from England twelve years ago. I’ve been working at this pump station for four years now. My husband works nights and has to sleep during the day, but because of the heat, he can’t sleep at all. The children are so uncomfortable in the heat at night that they can’t fall asleep either. Shopping requires traveling far away, and prices are high. The only thing that helps is that because my husband works at the pump station, we can use as much water as we want and don’t go without. That’s a real blessing.”
Her expression bore clear traces of the hardship they had endured. Now that I thought about it, while the surrounding area was parched and barren of grass, this house’s yard alone was bursting with green.
I couldn’t give something to each of the two children, but I had one shirt in my baggage that I’d received in Singapore—pure white with a bright blue “YAMAHA” mark. I gave one shirt to the two children as thanks, thanked the wife politely, and continued on.
Nallarbor (the Australian desert)
The endlessly stretching water pipe—there is no water in Australia’s interior
Kalgoorlie is 1,000 kilometers from Perth and was the last town worth calling a town in the west. It’s a gold mining town said to be one of the world’s most important, and it was once packed with people during the gold rush. With mechanized mining, the town has become deathly quiet.
From Perth to this town, a thick pipe has been laid, and a thinner pipe continues another 300 kilometers to Norseman. The people of Kalgoorlie can only live because of that pump. For them, the water pipe is truly a lifeline. If you ask what the biggest problem in Australia is, the answer is water. There is no water in the interior. The scattered lakes are all salt lakes, and simple wells don’t produce water.
The scorching sun! The burlap water bag that proved useful
Past Norseman, the Australian desert of Nallarbor begins. There are no villages at all anymore. The daytime heat was nothing like the 41 degrees I’d experienced in Perth. There were only the occasional trucks passing by, and I just kept driving.
In this desert region, the burlap water bag I’d received from Ken George in Perth proved invaluable. The five-liter burlap bag is a relic of pioneer times, and it’s still considered the best way to store water in hot regions today. Between Perth and Kalgoorlie, passing cars often had this kind of bag hooked to their fenders.
In the desert, water is an absolute necessity. Water seeping through the burlap evaporates and draws off heat through evaporative cooling. Because it constantly seeps out gradually, the water inside the burlap bag stays surprisingly cold.
I hung the bag from my cargo rack, and the five liters of cold water eased the heat and restored my energy. Along the way, I refilled it at wells near gas stations.
Even animals are fed up with the heat and only become active after nightfall
The desert, which was quiet during the day, comes alive as the sun sets in the west. The main characters are kangaroos, rabbits, and emus (the fire bird). During the day, the heat is so intense that they hide in holes and in the shade of trees. Dead kangaroos hit by cars were constantly visible along the roadside. Large kangaroos with big tails would bound on their thick hind legs, darting across my motorcycle’s headlight beam.
Large emus, resembling ostriches, also startled at the light and bolted. I only managed to cover 639 kilometers that day because I spent time looking around the Kalgoorlie gold mines.
From midday on the third day, the pavement ended and turned to sand. The Nallarbor asphalt is a poorly surfaced narrow road, but with virtually no traffic, I could easily maintain speeds of 90 to 100 kilometers per hour.
Sand roads are not easy to drive on. Fine sand covers the surface, and here and there underneath are hidden large holes. The sand alone made steering difficult, so I crept slowly through the desert.
Pressing on with nothing but distance ahead
At a gas station along the way, I bought some bread and a little ham, then drove until I got sleepy and crawled into my sleeping bag under the stars. I was single-mindedly focused on covering distance.
The sandy road ended after four hundred fifty miles. As I approached towns in the east, the green of farmland increased. When I entered Port Augusta, rain began to fall—something I never would have expected in the Nullarbor. I hated driving in the rain, but this time I was grateful for it. I had had enough of that scorching sun of the Nullarbor.
1,618 kilometers in a day
A forced drive to make the ship’s departure
I arrived in Adelaide on the fourth day after leaving Perth on the west coast. The calculation of nine hundred kilometers a day worked out only on paper; in reality I had only covered two thousand nine hundred sixty-eight kilometers. I had to arrive in Sydney no later than the morning of the eighteenth. I never imagined that on the final day of my journey to Sydney, the effective endpoint of my long trip, I would have to cover the longest distance.
I left Adelaide at seven-thirty in the morning on the seventeenth. The highway had light traffic, was flat, and had good visibility. I headed east at speeds of one hundred to one hundred ten kilometers per hour. It was easy to ride. A truly easy road to ride on. Even in populated areas of Australia, there were only pastures and few houses. After covering seven hundred fifty-two kilometers, I arrived in Melbourne as the sun was setting.
When night fell, large semi-trailers took to the road. Semi-trailers that are not permitted on highways during the day come roaring out with tremendous force. If we did this in Japan, the distribution of goods would become difficult all at once. At night the highway becomes the road of semi-trailers. Passing long trailers requires careful attention.
In this area, curves and gentle rolling hills continue. In the middle of the night, I became unbearably sleepy. As I grew tired, my speed had already dropped well below eighty kilometers per hour. In all my long journey, I had never experienced motorcycle riding to be this exhausting.
Twenty-three hours of continuous riding while battling sleep
「I thought: missing the ship doesn’t matter, all I want is to lie down by the roadside.」 I kept almost nodding off. The trees around me would blur, and I would jolt awake. After doing this several times, I worked up the courage to stop the motorcycle. To shift from being on the verge of sleep to actually stopping is no easy feat.
It was two in the morning. I pulled out a small stove and mess kit from my luggage and made strong coffee. I sat by the roadside, sipped the coffee, looked at the map, and fixed in my mind the course I still had to cover to Sydney.
The drowsiness faded somewhat. I traveled on slowly but steadily, extending my distance.
「Motorcycle, please keep running to Sydney without any trouble,」 I pleaded with my motorcycle.
Just before the capital, Canberra, dawn broke. This was when I felt the sleepiest. I reduced my speed and kept going.
Twenty-three hours after leaving Adelaide, I arrived in Sydney at nine-thirty in the morning, having covered one thousand six hundred eighteen kilometers. As I entered Sydney, my drowsiness had cleared and I felt oddly alert and awake.
Epilogue
Back to my beloved homeland, Japan!
Total distance traveled: 135,230 kilometers
From Sydney I sailed to Noumea, New Caledonia, and from there I boarded the Nippon Yakin ore-carrying vessel Gyokuryomaru and headed for Japan at last. At the thought of returning home after two years and eight months, even the fifteen-thousand-ton ship felt slow.
The endless Pacific Ocean spread out before me exactly as it had when I headed toward Canada.
On February nineteenth, the familiar mountains of Japan came into view through a snowstorm. The Gyokuryomaru, passing slowly through the Kanmon Strait, was rocked like a fallen leaf on the turbulent Sea of Japan. As I watched the mountains of Sanin faintly through the snow, the ship endured twenty hours of rough sailing and entered the calm bay of Miyazu Port in Wakasa Bay.
Thus my long journey of two years and eight months came to an end.
The strength of Japanese motorcycles
Japanese motorcycles were strong. The two hundred thirty-some pages of motorcycle data I kept writing throughout my journey proved this beyond doubt. They withstood the American highways, steep grades that required over four thousand revolutions per minute in low gear, the rough roads deep in the mountains of Colombia, the Andes in the dead of winter, the roadless paths to the Amazon, the endlessly spreading Sahara Desert, and the scorching heat of over forty degrees in Australia’s Nullarbor—they endured all natural conditions.
I consumed: seven thousand four hundred forty-five liters of gasoline, two hundred sixty liters of oil, sixteen tires, sixty-eight spark plugs, ten chains, nine sprockets, and four clutches.
Total distance traveled: 135,230 kilometers. The people of sixty-three countries I met on that long journey and the magnificent nature I witnessed will never fade from my memory.
Finally, I would like to sincerely thank Yamaha Motor President Kawakami, my teachers, friends, family, and everyone else who provided invaluable cooperation and support.
— THE END —
Source
The Adventure Rider Around the World: Part Three, pages 191–322
Yaesu Publishing Co., Ltd.
Published July 25, 1969
This work is published by Good Loop Co., Ltd. with the permission of copyright holder Shigeru Yoshida and publishing rights holder Yaesu Publishing Co., Ltd. Unauthorized reproduction or copying is prohibited.