In which Sid and Doris skirt the far suburbs of Tokyo to visit the justly famous shrines at Nikko.
Days 11 – 13 Niigata to Nikko and two nights at Karuizawa
From Niigata to Nikko is a long day, much of it spent at 43kph when not sitting at one of dozens of red lights (very few of which have sensors, so you just wait). You might expect Sid to be very Zen minded. Teal does not boil, which is good.
Remember, the flag of Japan is a red light on a white background. The Japanese have to live longer to make up for time lost in 40kph zones and at red lights. Japanese life expectancy at birth is 85 years versus 81 in UK. Think about it, four years waiting at the lights.
The day starts with an expressway. These are generally one lane each way, divided by a midline of Armco wire so no overtaking. These expressways are mostly limited to 70kph or 44mph. But some people get up to 80! Anyway, they do have cute graphics to illustrate the rain.
And we see some of these waving us through roadworks.
The route takes us into Alpine scenery.
And over an ice cream-worthy pass. Fred Gallagher recces these in a big turbo-diesel truck while poor old Teal gets a bit warm. (Teal has 90 lbs ft of torque. The base car with cage, twin tanks, welded everything, a spare wheel and some fuel weighs almost 750 kilos. Plus S and D equals about 900, plus another wheel and tyre, spares and luggage must be 950 kilos. A Mercedes Pagoda 2.8 in our class has twice the torque but does not weigh 1900 kgs.)
The stop above Nikko is reached by another Teal-stretching hill climb to Chugushi where the 1930s hotel is very Frank Lloyd Wright and putting us in mind of the American resort hotel at Jekyll Island. Though here there are monkeys by the road. The hotel boat house was built in 1947 as an R and R facility for the US army, which played a part in government until the Treaty of San Francisco in 1952.
Next morning it is downhill behind a concrete truck that delights in queue building as he grinds down the middle of the road at 19.7kph. Ketsu.
In Nikko the rally has VIP parking and we are in at opening time (rather like Sid’s pub going youth). The complex is full of Treasures of Japan, on a UNESCO World heritage Site. About 100 buildings, mainly Shinto with some Buddhist. For a UK audience a lot of this is contemporary with the period from Elizabeth I to the English Civil War and are built to the glory of Tokugawa Ieyasu. And the Gods. They are wooden, carved and painted with cranes, dragons, cats, fantasy elephants,
peacocks, monkeys and characterful characters.
And Japanese society is set out for the Innocent Anthropologist.
After a few more regularity games involving mountain roads with bridges and tunnels we come to Karuizawa.
The town is a ski resort. The hotel is complex is probably more than twice the area of the Nikko shrines with a large hotel, many guest cottages, coach parks and golf courses.
Importantly there is a large car park where RTG cars are cordoned off. On rest day morning Teal is operated on for a poorly fitting conical washer in his driver’s side front hub which has given rise to wheel wobble, poor braking, and Scary Noise. It does not seem to have damaged the bearing. The conical split washer was reduced in size and the hub nut chamfered off to run more deeply into the hub to snug up to the bearing. It is a crummy bit of design worsened by poor metallurgy of the washer and poor machining tolerances in the hub and hub nut. It doesn’t happen on Porsches.
A look at the tyres, Yokohama 12” 165/60 579s, says the fronts will go to the next rest day when two new ones may be brought out. And if not, the local golf carts use 12″ wheels too.
At the end of day 13 we have run more than 3,300kms, with 14 days and another 3,000 kms to go. At this point Teal, S and D are second overall (2 seconds off the lead) and leading the Post War category and up to 1967 cars (and first front wheel drive). Two seconds off the leaders.