Hi, it’s me.

Here’s my little report for the Swift Campout 2023.
June in Japan is normally considered as the rain season, so I was a bit worried throughout the trip, but I never forgot the spirit of having fun.

Our destination was the Wakasu Camp Ground, located right in between Odaiba and Tokyo Disney Land.

9:00 a.m. – We met up at Blue Lug Kamiuma.
Our theme of the trip was : “A slow and easy camp”🏕

The Wakasu Camp Ground is approximately 25km away from Blue Lug Kamiuma. It’s a pretty decent distance for a relaxed bikepacking ride.

The members of this trip are…

Tani, the store manager of Blue Lug Kamiuma.
Timo, the staff behind Open Distribution.
Smash, the accountant.
And myself, Konno from Cook Paint Works.


First we head towards Shibuya and pass through the Emperor’s Palace.

That day was pretty hot, so we soon stopped for a coffee break. Gotta say admit that bikes loaded with a buncha gears look really nice…

I know you are probably wondering about the yellow Black Mountain Cycles bike, that Timo built up for this trip, but we’ll get into the details later.

Mmm, that ice latte sure hit the spot.

After the short coffee break, we headed down to Tsukiji for some grocery shopping for the camp!

But before that, we made ourselves to Salumiland Tokyo, which is right next to the coffee shop to get some dry-cured ham.

Tsukiji. We saw many tourists and the place looked very busy first time in a few years! I had been wanting to cook Takoyakis for this campout. Our search for octopus begins…


There it is! The last one!

Now, I am ready for camp. I already knew this fresh octopus from Tsukiji was about to be bomb.

Alright, now we got that out of the way, we hopped on our saddles and started pedaling again.




3:00 p.m. – We finally arrived at the camp ground, located right below the Tokyo Gate Bridge. We set up our tents before it got dark and rented a grill and a cooler box from the camp ground.

After everybody got done setting up their own tents, it was time to cook dinner.

For cooking Takoyaki, I brought a Nalgene bottle. I poured in water, eggs and Takoyaki mix in the bottle and shook the heck out of the Nalgene to mix all the ingredients.

Now, add the oil…


Pour it in the Takoyaki pan…

sprinkle some of that green onion…

♪♪♪

The fire became weak, so we got together and blew into the fire.


Put on some sauce, mayo and sprinkle fish flakes and we have ourselves a hot plate of  delicious Takoyaki!!!

Eating outside adds a little more flavor than usual,  but this takoyaki was truly amazing. Carrying the Takoyaki pan was quite a pain, but I say it was totally worth it.


We also ate a lot of stakes that night and went to bed shortly after eating.



Day two.
Everybody woke up pretty late. Smash fixed us coffee. (It sure did hit the spot again)

I on the other hand cooked some nice and toasty grilled sandwich for the boys, which I think I did a pretty good job at.

Let’s see what Tani is cooking up…

He made us his signature Instant Ramen Carbonara


I was really surprised that you can make an exquisite pasta with ramen noodles, cheese and heavy cream.
Fun fact, the pan I brought had a really loose handle, so Tani ruined two dishes of carbonara. I’m so sorry.🙏

The second day was unbelievably sunny, as it was still rain season. It was such a nice day, so we just laid on our mattresses for while.

 

Now we got some rest, let’s check out our bikes!

First up is..!




Tani with his freshly built RIVENDELL joe appaloosa

If you want your Rivendell to look beautiful, let this guy build it!
He had two Swift pannier bags on the front and a Sackville bag on the rear. The well aged Swift pannier sure does look great on the Appaloosa.




Here’s Smash with his RIVENDELL* clem smith jr

Smash also had two panniers on front, with a front basket. It’s a roll top pannier he custom ordered a long time ago. This also aged really well. He had his basket fixed with Voile Straps. I was mind blown when he took the basket off and made it into a table by using the basket plate when camping.




Timo with his new Black Mountain Cycles Mod. 0.

Great frame color. He had two panniers on the front and a frame bag and that was it. I really liked his minimum packing style.
This bike can do tours and can also do some dirt riding…it’s an exciting new bike of his for sure.



Last but not least, me, Konno with my Frances Cycles Platypus

I wanted to camp with a cargo bike someday and I am glad that the dream came true. I threw on the Giant Delivery Basket on the huge front fork. The bike didn’t have rear rack mounts, so I used the bottle cage mounts and three mounts to load up my water bottle, Nalgene bottle and my Stanley Growler.


I threw most of the stuff in the Max Tote and put the bag into this HUGE basket. I love this bag btw.

The Catalyst Bag hanging down from the saddle had all my clothes stored.

It was now time to head back. We had a nice little ride by the sea near the camp ground.

Then we went to Kanda to eat Unagi (eel dish), then went home after a few stops at the nearby convenient stores.
I really enjoyed this chill campout.

For people who live in Tokyo like us, it’s sometimes hard to go out in the wilderness to bikecamp. You either need a car or you need to do some amount of rinkoing, which not that easy considering the amount of stuff you need to take with you, especially if it is a multi-day trip.

We’re just very lucky to have a place where we are able to camp in this concrete jungle, with a decent amount of  nature.
If you are in Tokyo and want to do your first bikepacking trip, I highly recommend Wakasu Camp Ground!