We get on rental bikes in the heart of Japan’s biggest city and ride until we run out of daylight.

Japan’s Hello Cycling bicycle rental network offers a handy service. Using the Hello Cycling app, you can search for available bikes near you, get an unlock code, and be pedaling on your way in mere seconds, with payment made through your credit card or other cashless means such as the PayPay app.

Something that really makes Hello Cycling handy is that after renting a bike, you can return it at any of the company’s docks that has an empty space. For a lot of people, the advantage to this is that it’s easy to use Hello Cycling for quick trips around town, such as riding to the next neighborhood over and returning the bike there rather than having to make an immediate round-trip. On a recent morning, though, we decided to utilize Hello Cycling’s ride-and-drop service in a different way: seeing how far away we could get from downtown Tokyo in eight hours of riding.

Accepting this challenge were two of our Japanese-language reporters: Go Hatori and P.K. Sanjun (pictured left and right in the below photo). The pair met up at Hello Cycling’s dock near the Odakyu Southern Tower in downtown Tokyo’s Shinjuku district, not far from SoraNews24 HQ.

Firing up the Hello Cycling app, they had their pick of the parked rides. Rates vary by specific bike model, but there were several to choose from with prices of 160 yen (US$1.05) for the first 30 minutes and an additional 160 yen per 15 minutes after that, or a discounted deal of 2,500 yen for a maximum of 12 hours (meaning that after 3 hours and 45 minutes on the same bike, you could ride the remaining 8 hours and 15 minutes for no additional cost).

For the most part, Hello Cycling’s bikes are well-maintained. However, there are two things experienced users recommend checking before you pick which one to rent. The first is the remaining amount of battery charge, since Hello Cycling’s bikes offer an electric-assist motor that comes in especially handy when heading up inclines. The second is the tire pressure, since an underinflated tire will require extra pedaling effort on your part.

▼ Battery charge for rentable bikes is displayed on the app and on the handlebar display, but you’ll have to give the tires a squeeze to check their air amount.

The bikes are all equipped with lights and baskets, but one piece of equipment you might want to bring is a smartphone mount, if you’re planning a journey across long distances or one with a complicated route and want help from GPS maps.

For this challenge, Go and P.K. would be headed in more-or-less opposite directions. P.K. pointed his bike east towards Tokyo’s neighbor Chiba Prefecture, while Go would be heading southwest, towards Kanagawa Prefecture (heading straight west from Tokyo puts you into steep mountains that aren’t advisably navigated by bicycle).

Go waved goodbye to P.K. as his journey started at 9 a.m….

…and then began his own.

Observing proper traffic safety rules and riding at the edge of the street instead of on the sidewalk, Go found himself moving at a pretty quick pace. However, he was still bicycling through a part of Tokyo that he’s used to ordinarily zipping across while sitting in trains and subways, and he was struck anew by just how big the city is.

After about an hour on the road, he’d gotten to the vicinity of Gakugei Daigaku Station in Meguro Ward, south of the city center.

▼ From Odakuyu Southern Tower to Gakugei Daigaku Station

Unfortunately, his bike’s battery was starting to run low, so he stopped at a Hello Cycling dock to exchange it for a new one. He made sure to check the tires, which turned out to be a very wise move since one of the bike’s was very low on air.

But thankfully Go found not only a bike with good tires and a strong battery charge, but which was also a much sportier design than the one he’d been on until now. Aside from the extra visual flair, this seven-speed bike allowed for a more forward-leaning riding posture, which Go finds more comfortable for long-distance riding.

Meanwhile, P.K. was now in Tokyo’s Asakusa neighborhood, near the Kaminarimon Gate of Sensoji Temple, where he also exchanged his bike for a new one with a fuller battery charge.

▼ From Odakuyu Southern Tower to Kaminarimon

With both of our adventurers on their second bikes of the day, they pedaled on. At around 10:30, Go reached the Tamagawa River, the southern border between Tokyo and Kanagawa Prefecture.

It took P.K. a little longer to get to the Tokyo/Chiba border, but he made it there around 11 a.m., two hours after starting his ride…

…and was in the Chiba city of Kashiwa by 12:30.

Things had gone smoothly up to this point, but now P.K. had a bit of a dilemma. A lot of the towns in Chiba that are near the border with Tokyo are essentially commuter towns for people who work or go to school in the capital. As such, they’re fairly heavily populated and rich in amenities, including Hello Cycling docks. After you get past Kashiwa, though, things get much less densely developed, and some big gaps in the Hello Cycling network start showing up, sometimes with entire towns not having even a single spot to rent or drop the company’s bikes, as you can see on the map of docks here.

So if you are heading northeast from here, the smart plan is to do what P.K. did and change to a new bike with a strong battery here in Kashiwa, since it’s going to be 35 kilometers (21.7 miles) or so until you get to the next cluster of docks in the town of Tsuchiura.

Switching back over to Go, he was having an easier time routing his journey to the southwest, as there’s an unbroken string of pretty populated communities, and thus Hello Cycling docks too. At around 1:30, he arrived in the town of Ebina, famous for having some of Japan’s best melon bread…

…and at 2:30, he was in Hiratsuka, at the Shonan Hiratsuka outlet shopping center, where he got himself his fourth bike of the day.

Of course, more so than shopping, Kanagawa’s Shonan region is famous for its beaches and ocean views…

…and for the next leg of his journey, Go was treated to some nice setting-sun scenery.

Heading west along the curve of Sagami Bay, Go was now approaching the town of Odawara, and was now so far from Tokyo that Mt. Fuji was looming extra-large on the horizon.

At about the same time. P.K. had safely made it to Tsuchiura City (土浦市), with his bike’s battery still having some charge left, at a little after 3:40 in the afternoon.

Ironically, it was Go who ended up running his bike’s battery all the way down…

▼ パワー 0% = Power: 0%

…but he was able to get a new ride at a Hello Cycling dock near a Lawson convenience store branch in Odawara…

…which allowed him to squeeze in just a little more riding until the 5 o’clock time limit that he and P.K. had agreed on, with Go’s final stopping point being Odawara’s Hakone Itabashi Station.

And P.K.? He ended up in Kasumigaura Comprehensive Park, all the way in Ibaraki, one prefecture past Chiba!

▼ Kasumigaura Comprehensive Park

However, while P.K. was able to bike two prefectures away from Tokyo by 5 o’clock and Go only made it to one, Go actually covered the greater distance on his ride, as he finished 70 kilometers (43.5 miles) away from their starting point in Shinjuku, compared to P.K.’s 63 kilometers. Those are the straight-line, as-the-crow-flies distances, too. When converted to their actual, as-the-SoraNews24-reporter-bikes distances, Go traveled a total of 96 kilometers, and P.K. just 71.

Go even had the lower-priced journey. As mentioned above, the most cost-effective way to use this rental bike service is to ride the same bike for an extended time. However, if you’re burning through battery charge like we did, and thus not able to get up to the break-even point for the 12-hour discounts where the rest of the ride becomes effectively free, the more cost-efficient plan is to swap bikes frequently, since you get 30 minutes of riding time for the initial fee, but only 15 minutes for each additional fee payment for the same bike. Over the course of their eight hours of riding, P.K. used a total of 4 bikes, but Go used five, and between that and the specific costs of the bikes they chose, Go ended up paying a total of 5,360 yen (US$34.50), and P.K. 6,040 yen.

Either way, though, their day-long rides were a great source of both fun and fitness, and thanks to the electric-assist motors, their legs weren’t particularly sore the next day. If you don’t happen to have a weird job where you’re up against a coworker in a time/distance contest, though, we recommend taking some periodic breaks to stop and stretch your neck muscles, since eight hours is a long time to have your head in more or less the same position. Also, since Hello Cycling’s core user base isn’t in the habit of using their rental bikes for eight-hour rides, preparing some extra padding isn’t a bad idea.

Go’s butt was very grateful that he’d thought to wear a specially padded set of bicycling shorts with gel cushions, and odds are yours will be too if you decide to follow in his and P.K.’s pedal tracks.

Related: Hello Cycling
Photos ©SoraNews24
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