Last week we went to see the Olympic road race. The corona virus cases were not so big in Japan at the time and the place we watched it from was in a small town called Suyama, in Susono. This was where the Mt. Fuji climb started, so we thought that it would be exciting and the riders would hopefully not be going so fast as it was uphill.
Since then the numbers of coronavirus cases in Japan have skyrocketed. I think this is due to the Olympics and everyone watching the sports together in restaurants, bars etc. and in person like this event and the new variant of course. I don't really like the Olympics, I think its a big waste of money for the country involved, especially this year, but I like cycling.
Anyway, we got there at about 11.30 am. The race was due to go through at 2.30pm, but the roads were being shut at midday, so we found a convenient car park, actually the car park of the shrine in town. After that we walked to the shrine. Its called Suyama Sengen Shrine. There were volunteers all over town and the large, forested shrine was no exception, but we got a special shrine stamp on top of the ordinary one, which was very lucky.
After that, we set up shop just past the 90 degree turn onto the Mount Fuji climb. The weather that day was changeable, sometimes it rained and we had no umbrellas, but a kind neighbor let us use his garage to shelter in and gave us chairs to sit in too! We ate lunch and waited.
After a while cars started appearing, then many many motorbikes and finally the race. There was a breakaway at the time, so we saw two groups going by. Everyone in the village had come out to watch it. It was like a festival. I actually thought there would be no-one because of the virus, but afterwards I watched the race on TV and saw so many people watching the race going through Tokyo. Hehehe.
I didn't see anyone I knew in the peloton, but afterwards I found I had snapped some famous riders with my camera. You can even see us in the actual race feed as the riders go by!
Anyway, after another 30 minute wait, the roads opened again and we went home. It was a pretty interesting experience overall and I got a great souvenir in the shrine stamp.