The Secret Language of Inches and our Mikawa-wan Bicycle Odyssey

My friend (Minority) and I are planning a bike trip and I'm trying to squeeze comprehension out of the massive amount of kilometers we have to ride. Japan speaks in kilometers, centimeters, Centegrade, kilos, and other confusing numbers.

In short, numbers are difficult for this American girl. Don't even get me started on how strange counting in Japanese is for English-speakers.... zero, ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand, ten ten thousand, hundred ten thousand, thousand ten thousand, oku. And then there's all the counters and stuff. Ok i guess I started, but I'm finished now.

But, when we talk about height, and I'm trying to get an image of how much 176 centimeters actually is compared to the boys I have known my whole life... Hark! My British friend says he is 5 foot 11! I feel like we just have made a huge mental link! Someone speaks inches! I'm 5 foot 8! How cool is that! What else can we talk about?? But, alas, that's about as far as our conversation in inches can reach.... if I ask him how much he weighs, he say something about 9 1/2 stones. Stones. 9 1/2. I have absolutely no concept of what that is.... alas. But, every so often, I still ask a British guy (er, I don't know any British girls right now..) or my Filipino friend how tall he is, just to feel this special glow felt in the presence of a inch-measured human. ^_^

But our trip! We originally planned to take our bicycles up to the big city above us, Nagoya. About 41 kilometers, so 82 round trip. But, we decided that would be a pretty boring route, since there's just a lot of nothing between here and Nagoya. So, we are taking a friend's suggestion (enter friend Al Capone ^_^) and bicycling around Mikawa Bay instead! Mikawa-wa, or Bay the area right around our city Nishio.




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This is just a rough look at our trip. It will be around 134 kilometers, or about 83.2637 miles. We are taking two days to to it ^_^, crashing in a manga cafe for the night. We're excited... we'll be around the ocean for a good part of it, and hopefully get to stop off at a couple of tiny random places along the way. ^_^ Oh yeah, lol. No, we're not planning to test our supernatural powers by cycling over the top of the sea... there's a ferry from peninsula to peninsula we can take our bikes on ^_^.

We leave at dawn! (Or actually 8 a.m. ^_^)

PHOTO NOTES:

- The pictures were taken on on the top of a mountain-shrine in Hazu, about half an hour south of us by car. I went there by bicycle on day.. by accident actually. But it was a good day. I look so hot and tired right? Can you see the little fly around my head?? So annoying...

- I can speak to garden gnomes. They speak inches, too.