Contributor: Koen Rijnsent
When my girlfriend and I were planning our cycling trip to Japan in 2024, some things connected in my head. My girlfriend, a sculptor, creates artwork from the stone released during the recent renovation of our Dom Tower in Utrecht (NL). Secondly, I knew that in Japan, there is a Dutch-themed park with a copy of our Dom Tower, located in Huis Ten Bosch Park. How cool would it be to bring them a sculpture made from our tower as a gift? And as comics/cartoons are very popular in Japan, what if she could incorporate Utrecht’s famous “inhabitant”, Miffy, on the sculpture?
Project Miffy
She started with a historic stone that once sat 80 meters high in the original Dom Tower. It’s a monument—a structural piece with centuries of weathering. She sculpted it by hand with several Utrecht elements: the tower itself, the city’s name, and, of course, Miffy (Nijntje). Miffy was a challenge, as it took some discussions with the copyright owners to get a green light, but they were very helpful and also arranged the connection with the theme park itself. Before we set off, the sculpture made a short farewell tour through Utrecht—visiting the Dom Tower, the Rietveld-Schröder House, and Miffy Square. Of course, we did this tour by bike with a small trailer.
Cycling to Japan
Well, not the entire way—but mainly the part in Japan. The sculpture weighs 41 kilograms, so we’ve reinforced our borrowed Radical Design Cyclone IV trailer with some aluminium bars. That trailer came in very handy when we had to walk at the airports of Schiphol, Shanghai, and Fukuoka. As we wanted to keep the statue safe, it had its own seat reservation, so I carried the box with the statue to its seat.
In advance, we’ve connected with some Warmshowers members in Japan to discuss how we could get from the airport to my ideal starting location: the former Dutch trading post of Dejima in Nagasaki, 60 km from the park. Transporting our bikes, trailer, and statue was nearly impossible, so we decided to cycle the 120 km with the statue. At the park, we were welcomed by the whole team and left the statue with them. The next day, Laura and park director 
Takamura unveiled the statue in a great ceremony in front of their Dom Tower. It was really cool, with Japanese TV present, a radio interview with Dutch morning radio, and a 1-minute Facebook/TikTok video made by RTV Utrecht that went viral in the Netherlands.
Kyushu & Shikoku
After that, it was really great to leave the stress and 41 kg behind and cycle through Japan. We left the park at the start of spring, the perfect time to enjoy Sakura season (cherry blossom). It was, however, a bit chilly at times, so there were plenty of nights where we had to put on all our fleece layers in our tent. Kyushu was amazing to cycle, the roads were wonderful, and when the sun was out, it was really nice and warm. We avoided Japanese cities due to traffic lights and found more tranquility and nature inland.
On Japan’s second island, Shikoku, we bumped into the pilgrims’ route, which passes by 88 Buddhist temples. Most days, we would greet pilgrims and we even bumped into some other cyclists. Most memorable was one evening, when we were starting to search for a (wild) camping spot, a car stopped and the lady in the car shouted at us to stop. She happened to own a pilgrim’s lodging place 1 km back and invited us to stay the night at her place.
Honshu
After Shikoku, Honshu – the main Japanese island – was something different. Many more big cities, but also lots of rivers. Those rivers were by far the best place to cycle – on top of dikes, there often was asphalt for work vehicles, pedestrians, and cyclists. Like on the first two islands, Warmshower hosts were sparse, but we had some great stays near Hashimoto and near Lake Biwa (thank you Jacqueline & Sakamoto family!).
About a decade ago, Laura had been cycling in China and had a lovely chat with an American man and his Chinese wife. They exchanged contact details with his words, “If you ever are in Tokyo, contact me”. So we stayed at his place and had a memorable cycling trip with him at 05:00 on a drizzly Saturday morning heading for the Tokyo tuna market. Tokyo itself is impressive, cycling between all skyscrapers, but even more impressive is that you can get to about 10 km from the city centre, mainly following rivers.
Hokkaido
One word: avoid… The island itself is lovely and the food is the best in Japan, but the percentage of a****s on the road is too high. In general, cars and trucks in Japan are really considerate, but on Hokkaido, the speed and distance with which cars and trucks overtook us was a trip-ending, dangerous way too many times.
Home
Back home, we were greeted with a train strike, but luckily we had our bikes, so we cycled the 50 km home at the end of a long day of 30 hours 😊.
Learn more about Project Miffy
