Fresh air, meat, and so, so much darkness.

Tokyo’s rush-hour trains feel shockingly crowded to tourists and other new arrivals in the city, but eventually most locals get used to them…but not all of them. Even after 15 years of living in Tokyo, the train ride to/from the office is still a source of daily dread for our Hokkaido-born Japanese-language reporter Ahiruneko.

Ahiruneko lives in Hachioji, one of the outer-ring residential areas of Tokyo, but SoraNews24 HQ is in the city-center Shinjuku neighborhood. So every work day Ahiruneko’s shift is sandwiched by two slices of hell as he rides a packed train on the 45-minute trip between the two neighborhoods.

But one recent day was an exception, because after Ahiruneko clocked out…

…he didn’t head to Shinjuku Station to get on a train home. Instead, he walked over to an automated bike depot operated by bicycle rental service Hello Cycling.

If you’ve been following Ahiruneko’s pedal-powered adventures on our site, you can probably guess what he was up to. On this pleasant late-spring evening, rather than stuffing himself into a packed train where he’d have to stand pressed against a half-dozen strangers for the entire ride, he was opting to bike home from the office.

After signing in to the service’s app and scanning the QR code to unlock a bike, he was ready to get going.

Breezily pedaling past the congestion of Shinjuku Station, Ahiruneko continued heading west along the Koshu Kaido road, which goes all the way to Yamanashi Prefecture. Ahiruneko didn’t need to travel that far, but a road sign he passed under reminded him that he had some 38 kilometers (23.6 miles) of pedaling to do before he’d be home.

▼ Google Maps’ Shinjuku-to-Hahioji bike route

Still, this experiment was more about the psychological benefits of skipping the train and biking home, not finding the absolute quickest point-to-point method of commuting. And so far, Ahiruneko was feeling fine. He even decided to take a slightly less direct route by hanging a left at the intersection with Kannnana-dori, since that road has less car traffic than the Koshu Kaido, making it a little more relaxing to navigate on bike.

This route also meant he’d be going through part of Setagaya Ward, a downtown-adjacent part of Tokyo with a relaxed vibe and even a picturesque streetcar line.

Now on the street named Setagaya-dori, Ahiruneko noticed the sun was starting to come down as he crossed into the next part of Tokyo, Komae City.

Komae doesn’t have a lot of major sightseeing attractions, so unless they live or work there, most people don’t have much occasion to go there. This was Ahiruneko’s first time in his decade and a half of living in Tokyo to find himself in Komae, and the scenery was completely unfamiliar to him…until, about one hour after he’d started riding…

…he spotted a sign for Yakinuku King.

Yakiniku King is a chain of yakiniku restaurants, known for its tasty grill-it-yourself meat. They’re usually found in the suburbs, but, to Ahiruneko’s great sadness, there aren’t any branches near his home. There is one that’s sort of accessible if he rents a car, but that makes it more of a special-occasion meal, which means he and his wife will take their young daughter along, and since customers at yakiniku restaurants cook their own food at in-table grills, Ahiruneko ends up spending most of his time cooking and making sure his kid doesn’t burn her fingers, grab the uncooked meat, or do any of the other ill-advised things a curious little tyke is apt to do.

And so, even though Ahiruneko was still in the middle of his ride home…

…he couldn’t resist the siren song of a solo yakiniku dinner.

Ordering the King Course, Ahiruneko truly felt like royalty as he enjoyed the decadent meaty luxury.

As one of the most enthusiastically unabashed tipplers on our staff, ordinarily Ahiruneko would have paired his feast with a nice cold beer, but since he still had a lot of bicycling left to do, he had to settle for a pretty nice cold soda.

Ahiruneko spent about an hour and a half on his unplanned yakiniku pit stop, but emerging from the restaurant with his stomach full and the taste of yakiniku still lingering on his lips, he had no regrets (at least not yet).

Back on the bike, Ahiruneko continued on his way, until he came to this set of steps.

He walked his bike up the ramp in the center, and when he got to the top, he say that he’d reached the Tamagawa River.

With the soft glow of the setting sun reflecting off the waterway, Ahirunko felt more sure than ever that he’d made the right call in deciding to bike home today.

However, that certainty began to fade along with the daylight.

As Ahiruneko continued down the path, it got darker and darker, and since the riverbank area isn’t particularly developed…

…once the sun is completely down, there aren’t many other sources of nearby light.

Occasionally he’d pass by pools of illumination, but hardly any of them stretched to the path he was riding on itself, meaning that he had often had to rely entirely on the rental bicycle’s light.

▼ Without the bike’s light, he might have ridden right into the river.

This was, however, a solution with a ticking clock, because he now noticed that the battery for his bike, which also powers its electric assist function, was running low, according to the indicator on the handlebar.

▼ Hmm…maybe stopping for yakiniku wasn’t a perfect idea after all?

Luckily, when Ahiruneko whipped out his phone and fired up the Hello Cycling app again, he saw that there was another depot not too far from his current position, and that it had both an empty slot to drop off his bike and available replacements with charged batteries.

Feeling like an anime hero who gets a new mecha at the series’ mid-point, Ahiruneko hopped on his second bike with a renewed sense of confidence.

Yep, nothing was gonna stop him now!

Oh.

OK, this low-bride was going to stop him, since there wasn’t enough room for Ahirunko, let alone his bike, to pass through.

Luckily, though, using the bike’s light, he was able to spot a path down to a lower road…

…which did have enough clearance.

From there it was almost entirely smooth sailing back to Ahiruneko’s home, though he admits to feeling pretty freaked out in one final very dark section of his route with forested areas on either side of the road pitch black beyond the range of his bike light.

But he managed to make it all the way home safe and sound. So how long did his trip take? He’d left the office at 3:30 p.m., and arrived in Hachioji at 9:20. Subtract the time he spent chowing down on yakiniku, and his riding time works out to approximately four and a half hours.

So yeah, time-wise it was quite a bit longer than taking the train. On the other hand, he’d had a great meal, enjoyed some beautiful scenery, and even had a few darkness-induced suspenseful thrills along the way, so he can’t complain too much…

…and when he did get home, he was absolutely certain that he’d earned himself a beer.

Related: Hello Cycling, Yakiniku King
Photos ©SoraNews24
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