Niimi, Okayama & Kitami again

I had kind of lost my desire to travel anymore in Matsue, for a couple of reasons. I was tired of cycling since my hands were hurting due to some kind of nerve damage which must have occurred during cycling, especially with a bike like mine and with distances like I took. So if rest is a good remedy for most ailments, I'm sure it would work for my hands as well so I didn't want to make my hands any worse by prolonging the trip any further. Another reason was that I was running out of money and therefore wanted to be with Tomomi instead of going to new cities, since in my experience, the cities themselves are nothing to be interested about. I don't care that much about old buildings, no matter who gave the order to build them or what kind of destruction was planned inside them. They're overrated anyway.

So while presented with two choices, cycling 120km to Tottori and from there, at least a hundred more to Okayama, or go about 160km straight to Okayama, I took the latter option. Again, there was a pretty severe uphill at the start of it, right after Yonago, but before it got really hot, I was already past the highest peak and on my way down. After that, most of the trip was downhill.

I took a stop at Niimi, which was famous for one thing, its two limestone caverns. One of them, Ikura-do, was kind of built up to be an amusement park for kids and adults alike, with its theme-based restaurants full of miniature waterfalls and caves as well as the souvenir shops all the other adorable amenities of a tourist attraction. In other words, I loathed the place. But the cave itself, after getting over the 1000 yen entrance fee, was beautiful. Only that it was also infested with parasites of human form - children. While I was expecting to have a sort of serene experience just peacefully going through the tunnels, I was condemned to listen to the whine of the kids from 1 to 10 year-olds until the end. The parents didn't think, of course, that their darlings would have disturbed anyone in the cavern. So the kids just screamed constantly. What could've been more fun than that, right?

Well, in any case, after getting over the frustration and building a mental block to all sounds too high-pitched, I could enjoy the beauty of the cave too. It was definitely worth going, but I only wished that the ever-so-polite Japanese would also mind about their kids, as it's not the only place where they let them scream and run free.

After leaving Niimi, I eventually arrived to Okayama in a pretty good shape, all things considered. When I went to measure myself, though, I was only 67 kg, so in these few days, I had lost perhaps 1.5kg more, although I was eating normally. I suppose it's not enough to just eat normally, though. For the record, I'm 1.84m tall, so my weight is really too low. In Finland, it was 72kg before I left for Japan. I'll put myself on gaining my weight back right away.

There's not much else to tell - I spent a few more days in Okayama and then it was time to hit the ferry again. I took a couple of trains and a bus and a ferry and then, I was back in Hokkaido. Because my hands were still aching, I went to Kitami by bus as well. A bit inconvenient but it couldn't be helped, since my hands are more important for me than gaining mileage. I just hope they will get better soon.

Matsue

Although it kind of ended in a sour note, Miyoshi was still ten times better than cycling through completely urban landscapes. It only got better though as I left for Matsue, since there was going to be a whole of 20 km or so of constant uphill! Aces! Well, at this point I really didn't mind about it and in retrospect, it felt good. However, so many people say about the army as well, yet they swore to rather be anywhere else while serving. And some people do like to get spanked, too, so it doesn't really justify my point. That is, cycling on roads with almost no traffic and surrounded by nature was just a great experience.

Doing the same thing in Hokkaido before had no such beauty to it, because I pretty much knew what to expect on those northern routes. Here, I had no clue, since I lacked the map. So I was pleasantly surprised at first to notice a road sign for waterfalls and immediately switched route there. I was even more surprised that there was no tourist resort built around the river which flowed from the said falls and there was just a single car parked on the lot. Even that left pretty soon after I arrived.

After getting off the bike, I went on the short hiking route up to the waterfalls. Pretty soon, I thought to be already there as a 20-meter waterfall was facing me after no more than 200 meters. I thought, "wow, it was worthwhile to come here" but noticed that the path went on, so I just kept on going up. Then another waterfall, and another, and so forth, until I was at the end of the road. At the end stood a two-stage waterfall, perhaps not so tall as the first I saw, but more beautiful on all other aspects. And it was not just the last waterfall which was beautiful, but the whole path through the area. While being there, I felt enchanted and stopped hurrying back on the road, although I knew all too well that lingering for too much would cost me a lot of time from Matsue. I'm glad I didn't mind, though, as I would have rather spent even a night there, had it been possible.

The rest of the route to Matsue was uneventful but as I finally arrived on the shore of the western lake Matsue is situated on, there was a storm about to arrive. Sure enough, I got soaked a few minutes after seeing the lake, but it passed quickly, only leaving strong winds behind.

In Matsue, I took a look at the castle which was the major attraction, but after Himeji-jo, it didn't feel so impressive. No other castle can, I suppose. Then, an important attraction was also supposed to be the fish from the lake, so I went to eat sashimi. Perhaps I chose a bad restaurant, but I honestly couldn't know a difference between the sashimi you get from a supermarket and this one. It was all the same to me, so I made a decision not to waste my money like that again, especially since getting one's stomach filled with just tiny slices of fish is pretty damn difficult. So I bought a Big Mac instead.

Such was Matsue - in the evening, the stormy winds calmed down a little but when I woke up next morning, they were still blowing from the west. Good for me, though, since I was headed east for Yonago and from there, to either Tottori or Okayama.

Miyoshi

Going from Hiroshima to Miyoshi was really easy. There was only a single heavy uphill and during that rise, a few tunnels manifested themselves as well. After that, it was all easy up until Miyoshi itself. There was a single natural event worth mentioning, though, right after the tunnel-infested rise. The plateau was filled with fog and you could probably see 500 meters, no more. The sun was at times completely hidden, there was no telling where the disc was. But the clouds above were moving, momentarily revealing the sun and letting some of the rays through. Then, the sun was suddenly gone again. It was also really cold - only plus 20 degrees! It was the coldest since I had left Hokkaido, which I was really happy about. No sweating was possible in such pleasant morning weather.

In Miyoshi, I eventually decided to find out where the youth hostel was and stay there since it was going to get really hot in any case. So after a while, I ended up in a house with 80-something couple running the hostel and a grand-grandmother of 103 years. If anyone in that house, that lady had lost some, if not most, of her marbles. Even the 86-year old grandma agreed on that. In any case, my Japanese skills are nothing to be held in high regard so needless to say, I was in kind of trouble when they started talking. And did they talk! They just didn't stop when they got it going and it was hard to leave while they were on it. I felt not in the slightest like talking, though, especially in Japanese which is not exactly a forte of mine. But I didn't have a choice so I just sat it out until they grew tired or found other interests. This same event reoccurred later in the evening a few more times.

Miyoshi could be known for Japanese from its winery and grape farm, but I suspect there would have been anything else of interest to draw tourists to. It was really a relaxed village but I grew so bugged out by the over-curious uncles and aunts of the youth hostel that it didn't leave me with a good feeling.

Lastly, in the evening, there was to be some fishing on the river. It was not of the ordinary kind, as the fishing was not done by a pole or a net, but by live birds. The real "original local culture experience" was this circus trick: the birds, which are attached to ropes so as not to escape, catch some local fish and proceed to swallow them. Next, a brutal Japanese man squeezes the fish out of the poor bird's throat and presents it to the audience, who will proceed to pay hefty sums to be able to eat this once-vomited fish again. Such is Miyoshi and I will conclude telling about it here, as next morning I left for Matsue.

Hiroshima

After spending a week or so in Okayama with Tomomi, I decided it was time to go again. I wanted to see a few places on bicycle and Hiroshima was the number one for me, as I had already come from the eastern side.

I started early, as always, around 5am when it still was dark and went off cycling for some time until having breakfast at a convinience store, be it 7/11, Lawson or Sunkus. I saw a sunrise at a bridge somewhere around Kurashiki and went on all the way to Onomichi, to which I stopped since there were some beautiful temples on the hillside all over the city. After taking a look at some of them, I went onwards. There were some problems to occur, though - it was going to be the hottest day of the month or so, perhaps even the hottest of all summer. I didn't know that when I went on cycling, though, and came to regret it later.

On the digital boards above the roads, the thermometers read 39 celsius degrees. If I bought something to drink, it was soon warmer than a cup of cocoa. So, I bought ice, but it didn't last for a long time either. And the distance I had to cover was 160km, which by itself was enough of a problem. Before, when I went from Kitami to Asahikawa, 180km wasn't all that bad and neither was Maizuru to Himeji, around 150km or so. But this was bad. It was positively dangerous and even lethal, but since I'm posting this, I didn't die although I felt like it. My heart was beating crazy every time there was a serious uphill and all I could think of was having something to drink although I drank all the time. Even after 6 liters of drinking, I was still thirsty when I finally got to Hiroshima.

As for Hiroshima itself, I went to a nice guesthouse called J-Hoppers. Oh, the memories from backpacking... it was exactly of that kind, a few locals mixed in with a bunch of Europeans and Americans all with different destinations and reasons to be in the country. After some chatting, though, I quickly passed out, since I was just dead tired from the toil of that day.

The next day I cycled to Miyajima in the morning. This was a mistake, as there were far too many people on the island. I heard later that in the evening, there had been almost no one around so it should've been my choice as well. Oh well, it was still a beautiful place but somehow I didn't feel that impressed. I just had to go there anyway, since it had been advertised as such.

Visiting Miyajima affected me in one way, though. I really didn't want to see any more touristy places after being there, so I dropped my plans to go to the Hiroshima castle and just visited the peace memorial museum instead. There, people at least didn't make a number about themselves, not even the kids. It was a profoundly sad museum with all the stories about the victims as well as all kinds of relics from the city after the bombing. What touched me the most was the story of Sadako, which I'm sure can be found in Wikipedia for those who are interested.

I met some nice folks in the guest house that evening and I ended up going to bed around midnight, getting only 4 hours of sleep. Not enough, not enough. But that's the only way - wake up early or don't leave at all.

The next day, I went to Miyoshi, a small village some 70km north of Hiroshima. I'll write about that later.

Sapporo, Maizuru, Okayama

The journey to Sapporo was a little bit uneventful. It mostly consisted of cycling, drinking sports drinks and getting angry at other traffic and Japanese construction engineers for building roads all the time and having to fix them every few years. How about it, wouldn't it actually be easier to build roads which can last usage, so they wouldn't have to be repaired all the time? I guess the engineers here have a different mindset, for the road was full of all kinds of construction, from new bridges to minor surface repair work.

Otherwise, the sceneries were so familiar from previous trips around Kitami that I rather not mention them. It was not until I was in downtown Sapporo that I actually felt like being in a different city. There was constant urbanization for a good part of the road though, at least farms and whatnot, which is something isn't taken for granted in the areas around Kitami.

Close to Sapporo, there was one event worth mentioning. In Ebetsu, I stopped to eat lunch at a bento place but after getting out of there, it started to rain so much I only got across the street and had to take cover at a Lawson convinience store. There was also a young Japanese guy taking shelter in the same place, so after noticing that the rain developed into a thunderstorm, we started to talk to each other. Ryohei was a 17-year old high school student and of all things, he wanted to be a rock star when he grew up, playing guitar in a punk bank. Why not? It's as good of a profession as any. He could practice his English
and I did my best for Japanese and although the conversation got a bit difficult at times, we could understand each other.


In Sapporo, I was supposed to go sleeping in a capsule hotel. It was most likely the cheapest option still in the downtown area. There were rider houses some 20 km from the city centre, which was too far to really take a look at the city with any ease. So I settled on the same capsule hotel with some other caucasian guy and a bunch of dirty, stinky and butt-ugly Japanese businessmen, whose reason to be there was probably because they couldn't afford anything else after spending their money on hostesses of Sapporo.

Susukino area, in the nexus of which the Capsule inn resides, is famous for just that - hostesses. There's the male alternative too, for women, but both have one thing in common. That is, they both cater for the rich and the emotionally damaged - one night with a hostess serving you drinks can cost tens of thousands of yen if you really have at it and most of the bars of this type are off-limits from gaijin as well. In the evening, the streets start to fill up with the hosts with their almost feminine complexion and dyed, spiky haircuts and some well-dressed businessmen of typical appearance showing up menus of hostess girls to choose from. They're a strictly an affair of no physical contact other than holding hands and the like - it doesn't get deeper than that.

For a great documentary about the host and hostess culture, watch this movie: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6186147595582048109 . It's both funny and somehow sad at the same time, although it's pretty much needless to feel any pity for the hosts, though, being on top of the food chain. It's their customers which make up for the sad parts.

So, back to what I was doing in Sapporo - the first evening wasn't all that interesting, since I was dead tired and just wanted to go to an internet cafe to chat with Tomomi, and I wasn't going to take a look at the nightlife anyway. But later, I met the other tourist in the capsule hotel whose capsule happened to be in the same floor with me so we talked for a good while and thought of seeing each other on the following day. The guy was a German exchange student called Juljan from Tokyo and was much more into the Japanese culture and language than I'm ever going to be.

The next day, it rained a lot. Yeah, it had been raining the day before as well and in fact, every day I had been on this trip so far, it had rained at least a little bit. So why should have Sapporo have been any different? In any case, I spent a good part of the day just reading a book in Starbucks and drinking coffee while it rained, cycled around the city looking around when it didn't, visited the botanical gardens and took a look at a department store just since there wasn't much else to do. Since it was so cloudy, I didn't bother to pay to visit the JR tower from which there's supposed to be a great view of Sapporo. I'm sure there will be chances to see that view later in a better weather.

I also moved my ferry ticket, which had been ordered to me by the only English-speaking staff member of KIT's International center, to leave on 9th. So after two nights in Sapporo, my time was up and I had a mere 35km trip ahead of me to Otaru, a port city next to Sapporo. But since Juljan told me there wasn't a lot to see there, I thought I should just leave later and spent the day with Juljan instead, visiting the Sapporo beer gardens. After all, perhaps Sapporo is more famous as a beer brand than it is as a city.

Back to the ferry tickets though. I used Shin-nihonkai ferry company, for which the ticket cost around 12000 yen a second-class cabin, which in Japan means a room shared with nine other people. Then, there was a cost of 2900 yen for taking my cycle inside. I was put to go together with the bikers as the last in the line and got out of the ship last as well. Unlike I had read from cycling websites, it was in fact impossible to take my cycle with me to the ferry by putting it on a bike bag. In the ferry terminal prior to receiving the ticket, you have to fill out a form, but luckily, this is explained in English, so it's not a problem for someone who doesn't understand a lot of Japanese. On the ship itself, all of the directions were written in English, although the staff didn't seem to speak that language.

The food on the ferry is really expensive due to the fact that there's only one shop inside it, one real restaurant and a kind of cafeteria. It really doesn't compare with the luxury of Finnish ferries for instance, especially with the kind of prices they have. Taking your own food with you is a far better choice than buying something from the ship. Just pack some bentos and instant ramen and it's a whole lot cheaper.

Also, why am I writing
this? Because there's not a lot of information about cycling in Japan on the internet in English, although a few sites exist, so I just want to do it in case someone googles for the information. Most of all, this information would have been useful for me, had it existed, so perhaps it will help someone else too.
so, after getting to Otaru, it was already so late and rainy that there was not much of a sunset to be seen, just a quick bath, a all-you-can-eat dinner and the it was off to the waiting line.

When I got up to the ship, the second-class cabins were listed with letters from A to something like K or P or whatever and it was apparently okay to go anywhere you liked. I didn't know this though, but there was a biker who'd helped me out before in the line and I bumped into him on the hallway again. He'd been touring Hokkaido for three days of his five-day summer vacation and spent two days on the ship. After he helped me out, we talked some more and sort of celebrated my 23rd birthday, but since everything on the ship was actually closed, it was kind of difficult, and I was in kind of murky mood anyway since the people I really wanted to celebrate with were somewhere far away.

So, on the next day, we finally arrived to Maizuru, the port in Kyoto prefecture that we were headed to. We separated our ways with Jinno, the 28-year old biker, black belt of judo and a police officer. I headed for the capsule hotel, he headed for Osaka, a two-hour ride from Maizuru with his bike.

I didn't even have a map of the Kansai area, but as for Maizuru, I got it from the ship's reception, but I found my way to the railway station without it as well. I asked the clerk for a map of Himeji, which would be my next destination, and he was really surprised that I was going there by bicycle. He didn't have a map though, so he drew me one instead. It turned out to be enough for me, so I still don't have any kind of map of the area. I headed for the capsule hotel next, opposite to the station, but since the cheapest form of stay was a rest until 2am, giving me less than five hours of time to sleep, and the more expensive one wouldn't have been so useful since I would be leaving in early morning, I chose the 2am wakeup instead without a capsule. I slept on a reclining, rather comfortable chair for those hours and went off in total darkness. It was an experience by itself though.

I was far away from my apartment, the island I'd been living for the past four and a half months, without a map and without... lights on my bicycle. So I stopped by to eat early breakfast at a convinience store, looked at the road maps and cycled until there were no more street lights. I had to stop for about an hour to a parking lot of an onsen to wait for the sunrise and I just stretched and watched the eastern sky slowly light up. When I could see forward again, I went cycling forward. Then, the sun came up from between the mountains, but it was then I noticed that my camera was full of pictures. I made a stop on a resting area on the side of the road to move my pictures on the laptop and behind the bushes, there was a tent put up with a guy just getting out of there. Of all things, he too was a foreigner and had a cycle with him. I was really surprised to meet anyone on that spot at 6 a.m., but after meeting Caius, we cycled together until the road separated our routes. He went up to the north coast while I headed south for Himeji.

I remember how the Maizuru station clerk said how it's much more than just a hundred to Himeji. So, it indeed turned out to be much more. It totaled around 150 km, cycling on a completely clear day, with no clouds anywhere. But what kind of day it was - after cycling for so long in Hokkaido, everything seemed new again. The houses were made of Japanese wood and with that beautiful, traditional architecture you only see in pictures. Each of them looked like a small temple to me. Then, rice paddies separated the housing blocks from each other and a river flowing through each of the valleys divided the whole landscape apart up until the hills and mountains on the horizon. When I cycled through these areas, I could smell the scent of the wood of which the houses were built upon, see the reflections of same scenery on still lakes and rivers and just enjoy the beauty all around me. Eventually, everything got more urban as I got closed to Himeji, but there, the massive Himeji castle lay in the center of the city with its towers, parks and moots surrounding it.

I won't go explaining the Himeji castle in great detail, as I'm sure it's already been explained in various sources. But it was indeed one of the most beautiful sights I've seen in Japan and easily the most beautiful I've seen on this trip. I could've easily imagined staying a whole day in the castle area just walking around, reading a book in cover of the trees and watching the city from the castle grounds high up on the hill it's built on. But I didn't do any of that, although I did spend a good amount of time on the castle area. Instead, I decided to head for Okayama by train, since it was now really close by, just under a hundred, the train was not that expensive and I had burned myself quite badly after being in the sun all day. Most importantly, though, I wanted to see Tomomi again, which was the reason I was headed for Okayama anyway. So, I packed my cycle on a bag and off I went to the train. Although I was late from the one I was supposed to go, there were other ones coming and I took one of those instead.

So, in total, I have cycled some 490km on this trip so far. Not that much, but the point is not to cover a great distance, rather than to get where I was supposed to go. Besides, I will have enough chances to cycle a lot more later on, too.

Holiday

I had made somewhat accurate plans for the first few days of my vacation, while I would still be in Hokkaido, so that I could spare my time between cycling and doing something else. I was supposed to cycle a maximum of 130 km per day, which was from Asahikawa to Sapporo and sleep in rider houses, a form of almost-free accommodation for bikers and cyclists alike. In Sounkyo, I was supposed to sleep in a mountain hut and climb up on the mountain in the process. I made these kinds of basic plans for each day but thanks to the weather, I had to change them.

I went off cycling around 6 am and Petri was awake again since he'd been up playing games all night. We saw each other in the hallway and he came to see me off, and off I went after perhaps fifteen minutes of trying to put stuff on my cycle.

I could go no further than two kilometers when one of my panniers suddenly fell off the bike after a slight bump. It came off because a support strap came off its seams. I thought of giving up, going back to the dorm and getting it fixed later that day, but instead, I just wrapped the thing on my bike with kind of hooked, flexible bicycle ropes that you use to attach stuff to back of the bike. It wasn't all that solid but held together well enough, so that I could cycle all the way to Sounkyo.

Last time when I had gotten to Sounkyo, I was in such a hurting on my knee(s) that I couldn't consider cycling after that. Now, although I had to go through the same 1km-high peak, it didn't seem like a problem. I had weighed out my problems last time and fixed my bike's saddle post to proper length and this time, I also ate well before going to the uphill battle, so I didn't get so increbibly exhausted.

In Sounkyo, I spent some time resting and saw that going up on the mountain was pretty much useless - it was so cloudy I coudn't see the peak of Kurodake, the mountain Sounkyo is under. So I called Matias to find out about a nearby city called Kamikawa. I thought I could cycle some more, since I didn't feel so tired and I had lots of time on my hands. There was nothing to see in Sounkyo if the mountains were hidden, so I wanted to go to the next city. Matias found out that there was a rider house, or a camping ground or something you could stay in Kamikawa, so I got going.

When cycling to Kamikawa, it was a completely new road for me. The sights were beautiful while I was in the Sounkyo gorge, but what made it even better was that after a while, the sky cleared up and it seemed like a different world. After tens of kilometers of mountains, there were beautiful farmlands again... and a smell of poo in my nose.

There was nothing in Kamikawa. Just another tiny village with nothing special. I was feeling good, so I skipped it and continued to make my way to Asahikawa, in which I was actually planning to stay as well. I had asked in Sounkyo tourist information for accommodation in Asahikawa and got a name and an address of a guest house somewhere in the city, so I was kind of safe regarding where to stay.

The beautiful day became even better when there was a signpost directed to a cycling road headed for Asahikawa. It went on for 35 km at the end of the trip and made the trip all the more pleasant. The bad thing was that on the cycling road, there was not another soul to be seen. Just locusts, which inhabited all the spots on the road next to some fields. The jumped on my bike and on my shoes too, but I got rid of them soon enough.

All in all, the cycling part ended in Asahikawa after some 175 km when I arrived at my guest house. And to my surprise, my knees weren't even hurting at all. Even my leg muscles were pretty much okay, so I was really, really surprised since the longest distance I'd travelled so far was around 130km and that was by accident (as mentioned before). Now, though, with planning, everything seemed to go really well with regard to cycling. Although I drunk a lot, though, I still really underdid it, because the lack of salts made me fatigued for a part of the next day too.

The next day, I had a clear plan of what to do - go to the Asahiyama zoo, most famous of all animal prisons in Japan and fix my bike bags. I was also headed for a cleaning shop since my cycling outfit had to be washed and I was too lazy to do it by hand myself. So in the morning, I woke up and started cycling to the zoo. In the city, though, I saw another touring cyclist for the first time. A Japanese guy called Kenji was headed for Wakkanai, the northernmost tip in Hokkaido. We exchanged cell phone numbers, he showed me around to the cleaner's and went to a ramen restaurant. Then he went off, although it was raining like hell. Unlike me, though, he was actually equipped to cycle in a hard rain as well.

The zoo was such a disappointment that I don't really know why it's so famous. There were hordes of people and their kids, who were screaming and running around. If anything, the animals looked scared and most of them were sleeping. They were in somewhat small cages, especially the big ones, considering their size. After seeing Singapore zoo last year, I think I'm somehow spoiled, because the animals there have huge amounts of space as far as it comes to zoos, so here in Asahiyama, the sight of the poor animals was not at all impressive.

I don't know much else about Asahikawa thought, since I had to go sleeping early anyhow - I woke up at five or so and the road to Sapporo was 130km long, so it was going to take all day again.

Vacation

I haven't updated the blog in a long while. Never mind about that, I'm not going to start updating a lot now either, since it's time for summer vacation! I had the last exam on this week's Monday and was supposed to be going for Sapporo by bike to catch a ferry, but I didn't go. The reason - typhoon. Now that it finally reached here, it's been tamed by the mountain range west of Kitami and all that's left is a lot of rain. With any bad luck, the pipes in Kitami will be jammed again with dirt water.

I will definitely try to post updates from my holiday trip, since it's bound to be more interesting than whatever is happening here in Kitami. To put it short, nothing's been going on lately. I've been actually studying for my assignment at TUT every day for this week and the last, so there was nothing to write about them.

I did go cycling one time, to Tokoro, which is a small town by the sea. However, I deliberately chose not to cycle so that I could spare some time studying. After over 1100km on the road since May, I've seen a lot of Hokkaido, so I just haven't felt like going to take another look at some sights I've stumbled upon.

My holiday trip will be probably 1 month long, but I'm not at all sure yet. I think that's a pretty good estimate, though.

I'll post some computer-related stuff this time too. Ville, another exchange student from Finland, recommended this Firefox plugin called rikaichan to me. It is a Japanese dictionary for kanji and is really useful when browsing websites full of Japanese text.

Another thing worth noting is that since I own a MacBook due to my own stupidity or something, I'm using Windows now with Boot Camp, a program that Apple supplies. Of course, that software is beta right now and they don't have proper drivers for hardware of their own manufacture. So, for instance, the keyboard is recognized as "Apple keyboard" but it doesn't know that it's a Japanese model. In a Japanese keyboard, there's a couple of extra keys for writing katakana and hiragana more easily, as well as switching back to alphabet mode. These keys didn't work, which was a real problem for me.

I tried all kinds of things like updating the Boot Camp software to 1.3, which didn't work, testing Input Remapper which didn't solve the problem either and finally trying to install a new keyboard driver. So, Windows claimed I could install HID Keyboard driver, whatever that meant. That's what I tried first and it didn't work. Eventually, I just installed a 109-button driver for a Japanese USB keyboard. Windows screamed about incompatibilities but what do you know - it works better than the previous, "compatible" driver. For the record, this keyboard only has 80 buttons or something, and even now, some of the keys don't do anything, but it's still better than before. Thanks, Steve.