The weather was good today, so I rode 93 km! It was great, but far too hot! It was about thirty degrees.

My derailleur had slipped out of alignment and a spoke had broken too, so I went to get my bike repaired. I don't know how, but somehow the derailleur got fixed for the time being as well. I can use all my gears again now.

As my grandad once said, "if you watch closely, you'll be able to do it yourself later," so I tried watching. Even concentrating hard, it was difficult because his hands moved too fast. He was really skilled and fixed everything within 20 minutes.

I was given another present. This time it was an iced coffee. The car in front of me stopped, the driver called out to me, and he handed me an iced coffee through the window. Cheers!

Sometimes I want to write, but I'm tired, so I just sit and zone out. The weather was good today, so I didn't think too deeply and just looked at the scenery.

Even so, I was thinking about the things I want to do while I'm in Japan. Of course, spending time with my girlfriend and friends is my top priority, but I have other goals too.

I plan to work, but aside from that:

• Cycle the length of Japan
• Train at a kickboxing gym and fight on Breaking Down too
• Put together some kind of solo exhibition from my photos and blog and apply to a gallery somewhere
• Appear on the "Korekara" podcast
• Finally pass JLPT N1
• Go to lots of concerts by artists I like
• Spend a whole day in an internet café and binge-read a manga series or book I've picked out
• Try every Japanese martial art
• (Go to Fuji-Q with Yuma, of course)
• (Get hammered with Bates, of course)

My phone died, everything died, disaster, asked at 7-Eleven if they had a socket, they didn't, went to McDonald's, they did, relief, ate a Samurai Mac. McDonald's in Japan really is good, isn't it.

A baby was crying in McDonald's. I asked myself why babies cry so much. It's probably because a baby can see this world objectively. They haven't been influenced by anything yet, and every experience is new. Every second, they're seeing all of the world's beauty and ugliness. They can't understand any of it, so they get overwhelmed and sad. Sometimes the same thing happens to me. Something I've never experienced happens, I have no idea how to react, and so I just cry. But the next time, I'm able to deal with it. Maybe that's real growth, and everyone is growing at their own pace. The baby is growing too. So even though it was annoying, just this once I said nothing and forgave the baby.

I really love riding a bike. I've ridden ever since I was a kid. I rode in the nearby countryside almost every day and gazed at the beautiful scenery for hours. When I'm riding, there's something nostalgic about it. I've experienced so much and grown up while riding a bike. Like me, a bike is clumsy at times, but it always does the job and gets you where you want to go. Riding a bike is how I came to know myself. I'm grateful to bikes.

I like riding at night too. It's 10 o'clock now and I'm still riding. As I ride I can see the empty streets, which puts me at ease. It's hard to explain, but I lose the sense of my body too. I'm not thinking about the time either, so it feels as though I could ride forever.

When I was in Kitakyushu, there were lots of fireflies and it was beautiful. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't catch one. Tonight a firefly landed softly on my shoulder, and I took it as a sign saying welcome to Japan.