Amazingly, about four and half months have passed now since Clare and I decided that we’d take the long way home. In that time, we’ve spent 3 months waiting for our car to be ready, 2 weeks on holiday in the UK and most recently a month finally getting down to the job of getting Totty ready for action. Whilst Totty’s still far from being finished, she’s reached a stage now where we can sleep inside her, and on that basis we set off from Tokyo last weekend and hit the road for the weekend….
To be fair, “hitting the road” kind of overstates things. Actually we had a bit of lie-in, pottered around for an hour, got some food ready and sorted out a couple of jobs to make the camping more comfortable. And at that point… we hit the road.
Having talked about a few destinations, we’d settled on the Boso Peninsular the night before setting off. Whilst neither of us really knew quite what to expect there were a few points that drove our decision – we’d get to stop at Umihotaru service station; we’d see the sea; and it would likely be not busy, making our first attempt at “urban camping” a little less stressful.
I’m not quite sure what I was expecting from the ‘Tokyo Aqua Line,’ but it turns out that what I got was a 7km-long tunnel that emerges in the middle of Tokyo Bay and continues to the other side of the bay as a bridge. What was slightly surreal was that a rest stop has been constructed at the point where the road turns from a tunnel into a bridge in the middle of nowhere. The developers have managed to build something that looks something like a cross between a ship and an airport. Good to finally get to see the sea though!
There’s not a huge amount to report from the rest of the day – we drove and didn’t break down; we saw the sea some more; and we drank our flask of tea at a nice little beach.
In addition to this being a try-out for the car and the camping gear, I think I also approached our weekend trip as a try-out for the state of mind I’m thinking I’ll adopt whilst we’re journeying back to the UK. Aside from taking the expensive toll road across Tokyo Bay, I aimed to take the most minor-looking roads I could that got us to where I thought we were going. With the car’s sat-nav constantly showing a map of our current location, this wasn’t quite entirely the holistic, hippy experience that maybe you’d want, but for me, a very square and rational computer programmer, it provided a nice balance of being off the beaten track but knowing where the track will eventually end up.
Over the years, the two of us have done a little bit of long distance hiking and an even smaller bit of camper van-ing. Generally our modus operandi in these situations is to stop and make camp by 4 or 5 in the afternoon. And this trip was to be no different! As the clock rolled round to 4:30 the search was on. We pulled off on yet another minor road (passing a young man who’d rather precariously parked his car on the side of the road and taken to practising his tuba) and arrived at a semi-picturesque car park where we stopped for a while.
In all honesty, I was all up for trying to camp at the car park but Clare was not so keen and persuaded me to push on. As it turned out we didn’t have to push on much further and after 200m came across a small parking area next to a little fishing village. This was undoubtedly where we were going to set up shop for the night!
At this point in time I don’t think either of us quite have a grasp of what we can and can’t do in terms of pulling up somewhere and spending the night. Objectively speaking, given that our car has tinted rear windows and we sleep inside the car, anywhere we can legally park for a night should represent a viable camping spot. Subjectively though, there’s always going to be the two of us fussing around very visibly doing stuff in and around the car which makes us stand out. What I think we’re going to learn on these little camping trips is where the standing-out threshold lies.
One of the reasons we were keen to get out in the car as soon as possible was to make the most of the winter and find out, in real terms, how cold it was going to be to sleep in the car. For the night we were away the temperature got down to somewhere around 2° which, while not particularly cold, was cold enough to know if we’re totally under equipped or not. As it turned out, whilst we were cold at bedtime, we’d actually gone over the top (we took our down sleeping bags plus our usual down duvet) and both of us woke up a few hours later feeling like we were going to die of overheating!
The best thing about sleeping outdoors is that you get to wake up outdoors! Quite literally if someone opens all the doors!
And the most important thing – tea!! Provided we have tea, we are indestructible.
The view to Fuji-san that morning was quite surreal.
From there we continued in much the same vein as the previous day. Following our noses along roads that were as far from major as possible – Clare took the wheel for a couple of hours and had her first proper turn in the driving seat. As we continued we drove past surf beach after surf beach. To be honest this wasn’t in any way unexpected given what we knew about the area. What was unexpected was that hundreds of Japanese – a race notoriously shy of the cold – were out there bobbing around in the freezing water waiting to catch a wave. For the most part this looked pretty unrewarding as as very little was happening on the wave front. However, we did stop off at one bay that seemed to have a bit more action than the others.
After a late lunchtime tonkatsu stop the reality of work the next day started to dawn and my newfound go-wherever-the-road-leads-me persona was promptly abandoned. We invoked the power of the sat-nav and plotted the route home. As someone who, up until 1 month ago, had never used a sat-nav I have to say that in amongst the maze of Tokyo’s elevated roadways, it’s an absolute bloody godsend!
Aside from an excuse to see a bit Japan that we wouldn’t have otherwise seen, the main reason for getting out for a weekend in Totty was to find out what worked, what didn’t work and what we hadn’t even thought of. I have to say this simple one night trip ticked all these boxes and we now have various lists of things to buy, things not to buy and tweaks to make to the car – we need cup holders in the front!
Excellent blog, and enjoyable post here. I learned from camping with my son’s Boy Scout Troop, that oftentimes, the smaller the tent, the warmer you’ll stay. The smaller space (like the inside of an FJ62) will heat up quite nicely with even 1 person, and more so with 2 people.. which is what I suspect you experienced. I’m so glad you directed me to you blog. I’m already following your Fromewardbound Facebook page. Looking forward to stealing some of your ideas for the bed platform and storage system. Thanks.
Thanks for the like over on FB and taking the time to read our blog! It’s always a nice surprise to find out that someone other than us and our families has been reading about our exploits 🙂
You were asking over on Facebook about the height of our platform…. we were talking about it this evening and, in retrospect, we’d probably build it maybe 50-100mm less high because the mattress we’re using (recycled from an old Ikea fold-out sofa) turned out to be pretty tall – around 100mm. I think also if we only wanted something to use on shorter camping trips then storage space would be less important and you could go for more headroom. As it is, it doesn’t feel claustrophobic in there and, by chance, the bags we use in the drawers fit perfectly height-wise!
Thanks again for reading and commenting!