Tokyo

Biking to Japan Week #54

If you want to watch me read this post, you can do it here ⬆

Since Last Time

Stepping off the boat in Japan felt.. flat.

No triumph. Not some movie finish line. No glory. No cinematic music. No big emotional release. Just satisfaction mixed with a weird anxiety. Like alright. Now what the hell am I supposed to do.

For a year the job was simple. Ride east. Wake up. Pack the bike. Crush miles. Suck down calories. Tell a story about it. Go to sleep. Do it again the next day.

And somehow that felt so incredibly meaningful.

From the outside this probably looked like unlimited freedom. Travel creator life. Do whatever you want. No. It was constraint. Fewer choices. Daily physical effort. One clear objective. Real stakes. Feedback from actual people instead of theories.

Biking to Japan ended up being an experiment I didn’t know I was running. Can only see looking back.

Most of us are taught meaning comes from adding things. More security. More money. More comfort. More choices. If we can just build the right setup, life will click.

This trip did the opposite. I kept stripping things away and the meaning didn’t disappear. No privacy. No long term plan. No certainty things would work.

Same clothes every day. Same bike. Same routine.

Almost always uncomfortable. Hot or cold. Sweaty. Dirty. Tired. But the days felt full. Sometimes more full than the life I left behind. I thought this journey would teach me about my ceiling. How far I could push myself.

Instead it taught me about the floor. How little I actually need. How much uncertainty I can tolerate. How bad things can get before I consider quitting or cheating myself. It turns out meaning didn’t come from comfort. It came from structure.

• Clear directions. I always knew what needed to get done in a day.

• Effort. My body had to be involved. Primal. Hunter gatherer type shit. The day ended when I was tired.

• Constraint. Not 57 options. One.

• Consequences. If I didn’t ride, nothing happened. If I did, the world opened.

• Progress. That you can measure on a map.

• Witness. I shared it. You watched. The effort landed somewhere.

When those things were present, life worked.

That doesn’t mean it was easy. There was fear. Loneliness. Plenty of days that sucked ass. But mixed into that were moments of real happiness that felt earned instead of manufactured.

Favorite Moment

Meeting many of you along the way. Different meetups. Almaty, Ulaanbaatar. Beijing. Seoul. Hiroshima. Osaka. Tokyo.

Those meetups are not my natural habitat. Being the center of attention in a room is uncomfortable. But they meant more than I expected. Because they closed the loop.

Online, this story is numbers. Views. Subscribers. DMs (OF collab invites, nudes (srs))

In person, it’s just people sharing a drink and talking about their own lives. That made the whole thing feel real. We all want to know our effort is seen. Doesn’t matter if you’re riding across continents or sitting at a desk. That recognition is important.

You were a huge part of why this worked.

What I Learned / Reflection

Finishing is unsettling because the structure is gone. For a year I didn’t have to decide what to do with my life. We’re biking to Japan. The road decided. The direction decided. Now there’s choice again. And choice is harder than biking.

I learned that, at least for me, meaning doesn’t require being too comfortable. But it does require deliberately creating the conditions that made those uncomfortable days work.

So now I have to build that again without the obvious container of biking to Japan.

Progress on the Map

Link to the map

Ride at a Glance

Start: Lisbon, Portugal

Finish: Japan

Continents crossed: Europe & Asia

Borders crossed by land: 15+

Ferry crossings: Italy to Albania, Caspian Sea, Qingdao to Incheon, Busan to Fukuoka

Major chunks skipped: 1 (east Iran)

Typical day: Wake up, ride 60 to 80 miles, find food, fix something that broke, make content, sleep, repeat

Average speed of travel: 12 mph (20 kph). Slow enough to see everything. Fast enough to not belong anywhere.

Navigation: Phone + instinct + asking strangers

Mechanical failures: Constant but fixable.

Lodging mix: Wild camping, cowboy camping, drainpipes, abandoned buildings, hostels, budget hotels, fancy hotels, restaurants, strangers’ floors, yurts, chaikanas, and everything in between.

Temps: -20°F (-29°C) to 115°F (49°C)

Biomes: Mediterranean, Anatolian Plateau, Central Asian Steppe, Gobi Desert, North China Plain, Korean Peninsula, Japan Archipelago

Number of countries: 20

Total distance ridden: 11,189 miles (18,007 km)

Time: Just over 1 year on the road

What’s Next

I write to you from Tokyo. But there are unfinished edges that still pull at me. Darien Gap. Sudan. East Iran. Course Antarctica. Those feel like natural continuations of the 7 continent story.

But there are other questions now too.

What does this look like when I’m not riding all day. Is there a way to tell stories when nothing interesting is happening. Do I try to find corporate sponsors. Break the streak. Will brands even want that (I was heroin user. I rip cigs, drink too much. Have a record. Two felony charges.)

Where do I put down a home base. Do I organize this into a longer film. Write more. Speak. Something else entirely.

I don’t know yet.

The only thing I do know is that I’m incredibly grateful you’re here. You followed this weird idea across continents. You showed up online. Some of you showed up in real life. I appreciate it so so much.

I can’t promise perfectly scheduled posts going forward. This phase will probably be messier. But I can promise I’ll keep showing up. Keep working hard as fuck. Keep being honest about whatever comes next.

This one is done and dusted. But there is more work to be done. And that’s the part I know how to do.

Have a lovely week and THANK YOU

Ian

Shibuya Crossing at night w the flag