Le livre est prêt !

Project Biwa a été mise en place en réponse au tremblement de terre et tsunami du 11 mars, pour récolter des fonds pour les efforts de sauvetage et plus tard de reconstruction.
Aujourd'hui, huit mois après, nous vous annonçons la dernière étape de ce projet : le livre est disponible dès maintenant.

Avant de vous donner le lien, voici quelques informations.
Le livre est disponible chez Blurb, en version papier ou ebook.

Le profit réalisé sur chaque vente sera intégralement reversé à la Croix Rouge Japonaise. Par manque de temps, il n'a pas été possible de mettre en place un système pour faire le transfert automatiquement donc nous le ferons de façon manuelle, mais complètement transparente. A intervalles réguliers, le point sera fait, sur ce blog, sur les ventes et le versement des bénéfices.

Le livre est disponible en trois versions (couverture souple, couverture rigide, ebook), pour lesquels le profit est respectivement €3, €4 et €2.50.

Le prix total pour le livre est donc €23.95, €31.95 et €3.99.
Comme le livre est imprimé à chaque commande, le prix de base (sur lequel nous n'avons aucun contrôle) est un peu plus élevé que pour des livres dont des centaines d'exemplaires sont imprimés dès leur sortie.
Selon l'évolution des commandes, nous ferons peut-être évolué le montant du profit, pour maximiser les revenus versés à la Croix Rouge. Dans un tel cas, nous vous tiendrons bien entendu au courant en avance.

Pour acheter le livre, il suffit d'aller sur le site de Blurb, et de choisir l'édition que vous préférez : cliquer ici.

Si vous avez des questions, merci de laisser un commentaire ci-dessous.
Pour toutes les informations sur le projet, vous pouvez cliquer sur le label correspondant, ou nous suivre sur notre page Facebook.

Merci pour votre soutien tout au long de projet.

Project Biwa: the book!

As you know, Project Biwa was started as a response to the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami, to raise funds in support of the relief and reconstruction efforts.
As today, November 11th, marks the 8-month anniversary of these events, it is a fitting date to announce the latest chapter in this project: the book is out now!

Before giving you the link, let me explain how this will work.
The book is available on Blurb, in printed and ebook editions.

The profit we make on each sale will go to the Japanese Red Cross. Originally, I wanted this to be processed automatically, but this is taking too long to set up, and I really have no time to take care of this now, so it will be done "manually" and you can start buying the book today. Of course, this does not change the fact that we will not earn anything from book sales: everything still goes to the Red Cross as explained in earlier posts.
At regular intervals, I will publish updates on this blog with sales figures and donation receipts, to be completely transparent.

The book is available in three versions (softcover, hardcover and ebook), for which the profit going to the Red Cross is respectively €3, €4 and €2.50.

This puts the total book price at €23.95, €31.95 and €3.99.
My understanding for the relatively high base price for the printed editions (over which I have no control), is that it is a result of on-demand printing costs.
Depending on sales figures, I may alter the profit for any of these three editions, in order to maximise the revenue we generate for the Red Cross. If this occurs, I will of course let you know in advance.

To buy the book, simply go to the Blurb website, and choose the edition you want to get: click here.

If you have any question, please leave a comment below.
For everything related to the project, feel free to have a look at the corresponding tag, or to follow us on Facebook.

Thank you for all your support throughout this project.

A fine day on lake Biwa

This week ended up being a lot busier than I expected, so here is a photo from the archive. It was taken this summer while we were cycling around lake Biwa for our fundraising project. If you are not familiar with this project, you can have a look at the Project Biwa label on the right.

As always, you can have a look at sky photos from all over the world on the Skywatch Friday website. Have a good week-end everyone!

Another view of lake Biwa

This week has also been extremely busy so I am going to cover two topics with this single post.

Of course today is Friday, so we are going to look at the sky, but this week's sky is not just any photo. It is lake Biwa, seen from the North, and the photo was taken during our 300km bicycle ride for Project Biwa.

As you can see on this photo, there were times during the ride when the weather was very enjoyable. However, you may remember from an earlier Skywatch post that this was not always true.

The main consequence from this changing weather is that some photos clearly do not do any justice to the places we cycled through. To fix this, a second visit to lake Biwa will be required. This will be a one-day trip (by train), and will occur as soon as possible, (probably in September).
Keep an eye on this blog for further updates.

As always, once you are done with this post, you can have a look at sky photos from all over the world on the Skywatch Friday website. Have a good week-end everyone!

Skies

If you have been following our ride around lake Biwa live on Twitter or Facebook, you know that the weather was not always ideal.

We had a few showers, and there were some fairly large clouds such as the one below. Overall, it was still mostly OK, and after a first look at the pictures, I am fairly happy with what we brought back. More on this over coming weeks.

With this post, I would like to revive an old series on skies, that I started just over two and a half years ago, (see for instance this first post, or this one).

To make sure I keep this series going, I was searching for a nice motivation, and found exactly that. On a blog that I am closely following (Shinjuku Daily Photo), Kaori takes part in a weekly meme called Skywatch Friday, (which involves posting sky photos on Fridays, obviously!). Here is, for instance, the lovely evening sky she posted last week: Quiet Evening.

This is a very nice way to make sure I remember to post these sky pictures regularly.

You can have a look at sky photos from all over the world on the Skywatch Friday website, and you can look forward to my next sky photo next Friday. Have a good week-end everyone!

Project Biwa, the official route

If you are new to this blog, for instance coming here thanks to Hiroki's efforts or maybe this GEMB blog post, welcome!
Please make sure to check the Project Biwa tag to know everything about the project.

Our big ride around lake Biwa will start tomorrow morning (July 30th), probably just after 6am Japan time.
We will post regular updates over the three days, on our Facebook page and on Twitter, so we hope you will follow us closely.

Before we start, I just wanted to share with you the latest version of the route we plan on taking around the lake. We will ride from our flat to Otsu, on the southern tip of the lake, and will then round it clockwise before cycling back home.

The total distance, according to RunningAHEAD, is just over 304 kilometres, and we will also have to deal with a few difficult climbs. Remember that we are using single-speed bikes, and that they are rather heavy (18kg for Vanessa's, 20kg for mine).

Make sure to spread the word, and please donate if you can.
If this is not a good time for you to donate, start saving now for when the book comes out... ;)

Green light for Project Biwa

In case you have not already seen this on our Facebook page or on Twitter, I just wanted to post this brief message to let you know that our big ride around lake Biwa will take place this week-end.

More details in the coming days, so make sure to stay tuned!

Training update

Our training for the loop around Lake Biwa is progressing at a nice pace. We finished last week with a total exceeding 150 kilometres, including a very enjoyable 89km ride on Saturday.

This ride took under five hours (but more than 3000 calories), and was a very useful to test our stamina under the summer heat.
As you know if you have been following the project from the start, we already had some longer outings. The longest to date was 121 kilometres, but this was on May 14th, and the temperature was a lot more comfortable back then.
As our loop is now scheduled for late July, it is important that we get used to cycling for several hours with temperatures well above 30 degrees.

Here are some details about the path we took. We left from our apartment close to Osaka University (Suita campus), and cycled towards Toyokawa station. There, we turned right onto route 171 (which goes from Nishinomiya to Kyoto). We followed this route until Oyamazaki, where we turned right to cross the river and to turn left onto route 13. After cycling past Fushimimomoyama station, we followed route 7 and later routes 36 and 35, until we reached the old Tokaido (route 1), that used to be the main link between Kyoto and Edo (former Tokyo). There, we had a fairly steep climb until just after Otani station, where we reached the ruins of what used to be the Osakayama resting station on the Tokaido. After a short break, we turned around and cycled back home.

Overall, this gives the route and elevation profile shown below, (and provided by the very useful Running Ahead website that I use to keep track of my training, along with the equally nice Dailymile).

To give you a taste of what this looked like, here is a brief video. Feel free to share it with your friends and colleagues, to help spread the word about our project. This would be much appreciated.
Let me know in the comments what you think of this type of video summary of our adventures. If enough people are interested, I might do the same thing for future rides and for the loop around the lake.

The overall objective for this week is to ride about 150km again, probably with another long ride during the week-end. Updates will of course be available on this blog, as well as on our Facebook page and on Twitter.

Heavy bikes, cicadas, and a thousand kilometres

It has been two days since my last update on Project Biwa, and two training rides have taken place since then: 32 km on Sunday, and 22 km before work this morning.

With these two outings, I have now cycled over a thousand kilometres for the project (1010 km exactly). I am quite happy about this, (even though I should have reached this milestone earlier if there had not been delays). The next big target is to reach one thousand miles, or 1609 km. I have to go to Hokkaido for work in the second part of next month, so I will probably need until late July or early August to make it.

While training this morning, we heard our first cicadas of the year. Summer really is around the corner now. Unless another typhoon comes our way, late July (after Hokkaido) should a perfect time to reschedule our loop around the lake. More on this in the near future.

I have been wondering for a while about just how much our bikes weight. We have always known that they are heavy, and climbing a few hills made it even clearer, but I wanted to put a figure on this. We took the scale downstairs yesterday, and it turns out Vanessa's bike weights 18 kg (or 39.7 pounds), and mine 20 kg (44.1 pounds). It explains a lot!

Just a nice day

Things have been somewhat difficult at times over recent weeks. Nothing really serious, but an accumulation of minor irritations.

For one thing, work has been extremely busy. On several occasions, I had to work overnight, which is something I prefer to avoid. I love my job, but having a proper life balance is also very important. For instance, getting back home at quarter to midnight on your wife's birthday is not an enjoyable feeling, however understanding she is!

Everything was supposed to culminate today with a flight to Boston for a conference I was very much looking forward to. Unfortunately, the renewal of my Japanese visa is taking longer than anticipated, and I am currently unable to leave the country.

It is very disappointing, but if I try to get something positive out of this, at least I was able to take a full day off to rest. Much of it was spent cheering on Kevin during his 60km ultra-marathon for his running to help Japan project. Have you seen what an amazing job he did? This is truly impressive, especially when you know how hot it was here today!

As I explained in the first message about Project Biwa, Kevin's efforts have been a major inspiration, and seeing him complete the first step of his project was a real joy, and a definite motivation booster.

It is not that I lacked any, but the project has suffered some setbacks in recent weeks. We had to postpone because of a typhoon, and to reschedule until after the rainy season. My training has also been all over the place lately due to my work overload.

In short, things have been far from perfect. But are they ever, in a project like this?
The most important is pull through, and stay focused on the objective. Seeing Kevin reach his, despite ups and downs during his training, was uplifting.

To cap things off on this very useful day, Vanessa and I shared a drink on the terrace, under a beautiful sky.

  

Congratulations again to Kevin for his great run. Many thanks to him for being such an inspiration, and to you all for your support.
I can't wait to go for my training ride tomorrow!

Project Biwa: thank you!

Recent weather conditions have prevented us from going on our loop around lake Biwa. We still cycle under the rain but, as explained earlier, we need the photos to be as good as possible.

We have therefore started a new training cycle. The idea is to ride between 100 and 200 km every week while the rainy season continues. As soon as the weather improves, we will decide on a new date, and allow some time to taper off before the loop.

I would also like to use this brief update to thank you all for your continued support. It is very much appreciated. We are especially happy tonight, as your donations just reached $1000. It will make it even easier to wake up early tomorrow morning for our training ride.

Rescheduling Project Biwa

As mentioned in my latest Project Biwa update, the weather has not been friendly with us, and it rained heavily on our scheduled project dates.

Tomorrow (Saturday, June 4th) looks like it will be a fine day, but Sunday will be cloudy with a significant risk of rain, and Monday is expected to be even worse.

This is unfortunate, because the project requirements have not changed: we still need a decent weather, and the loop can not be completed in less than three days with our bikes (especially taking into account that we have to stop for visits and to take pictures).

It is now unlikely that we can get a clear 3-day week-end shortly, as we are getting deeper into the rainy season.

Of course, this does not mean we are giving up on the project. We have always made it clear that the loop would eventually take place, but that the exact date may vary (depending on availability, weather conditions, etc.).

The consequence, however, is that we have to enter a new training cycle. Our program was originally designed for us to reach our peak form last week-end, so we can not afford to stay idle or train randomly until we get a good window.

The loop is therefore postponed until after the rainy season, and will likely take place in late July or early August. This is not perfect (it means riding under intense heat, and training in the rain before that), but it still is the best solution given the circumstances.

The details of the second phase of our training will be announced in the coming days, once we have organised everything. I suppose that, overall, this might take us over the 1000-miles mark for the project. This would be a nice figure to reach, even for someone using the metric system!

This could actually be an objective.
What do you think?

Project Biwa: postponed

It has been a while since I posted the last update. This is due to a very high workload, but did not prevent us from training. On May 14th, we covered 120 kilometres, the signal we are now ready to take on the three-day loop around lake Biwa.

Despite the workload and resulting lack of sleep, the loop was still scheduled to take place this week-end. Everything was ready, but the weather decided otherwise.

It rained yesterday, but that was nothing compared to today's visit from typhoon Songda.

We do not mind riding our bikes under the rain when we have to but, here, the point is to take good pictures. This is not going to happen under these conditions, and we had to postpone the ride.

With the rainy season apparently starting earlier than normal, we are not sure exactly when the ride will take place. It would be a lot more comfortable (in terms of temperature) to do it before mid-June, but there is no guarantee it will be possible.

We will of course update you once things are clearer, both here and on the project's Facebook page.

Two months

How big can an earthquake be? Here is the March-11 earthquake, as recorded underwater 900 miles (almost 1500km!) away from the epicentre.

As we all know, this caused terrible damage in Eastern Japan. Here is one of the many videos that can be found on YouTube.

It is exactly two months since the earthquake and tsunami. In many parts of Japan, life is back to normal and I encourage you to come to Kansai and see it yourself. Japan needs the tourists to come back.

In the areas most affected by the tsunami, however, not much has changed, as you can see with the picture from Ishinomaki (Miyagi Prefecture) that CNN's Kyung Lah posted online today.

People there need help, and several organisations are on the ground to do so. You can assist by donating to Project Biwa. If you have not done so yet, please consider doing it today.

We will do our utmost to have the book available for sale on the three-month anniversary. Every little thing helps.

More cycling

As explained in the previous post, last week's training did not exactly start as planned. I was sick for a few days and, when I was supposed to cover about 60km from Monday through Wednesday, I only managed 12km.

Fortunately, the remaining four days went much better, and I finished the week with a total of 151km, just under twenty kilometres short of the initial schedule. Given the circumstances, I am quite happy with this!

The week also ended with two new records: daily distance (87km on May 7th) and fastest pace (23.2km/h over 17km on May 8th). Remember that we are doing this on single-speed, and rather heavy, city bikes.

The objective, for the week ahead, is to cover at least 20km each day, and about 120km on Saturday alone. If this goes well, I think we will be in a position to say we are ready for the 3-day loop. For express updates as the week progresses, you can as always check our Facebook page.

We may also have some good news with respect to the coverage of the project, so make sure to keep in touch with us.

Training update, and thank-yous!

The Golden Week officially ended today, and did not exactly go according to plan, as I was sick for most of it. If trying to look at it on the bright side, I am recovering just on time to attempt tomorrow's 80-kilometre ride, and I might still be able to reach the 170-km target for the week.

The second half of the official Project Biwa team (my wife Vanessa) has thankfully not been sick, and has already covered over 60 kilometres this week, so the target should be no problem to her!

In the meantime, I can happily report than the previous week went very well. The target was 103 kilometres. The week with a total of 108 km, that included both my longest ride to date (52.55 kilometres on April 30th) and my fastest (23km/h over 11.56km on April 29th).

In the previous update, I told you about our Facebook page, available at http://www.facebook.com/project.biwa. If you have not "liked" it yet, please do so now. We would be happy to see you there as well.

So far, Facebook has been a very efficient way to spread the word about this project, but we also got help from several people in the online world. Many friends and followers have been retweeting my Twitter updates, and it therefore comes as no surprise that Twitter is the number 2 referring site over recent weeks.

A number of blogs have also mentioned the project, such as Kaori's Shinjuku Daily Photo and Etienne's Wild Wild Caribou 2 (in French).

As you know, Kevin's Running to Help Japan project is one of the inspirations for our own fundraising efforts. Kevin was kind enough to introduce the project in a recent blog post, and even gave us a shout-out in one of his YouTube videos:

Many thanks to all, as well as to Vivre le Japon, mentioned earlier. If you have a website and want to spread the word about our project, please feel free to do so. It would be much appreciated! Let us know about it, and we will acknowledge it in a future post.

Last but not least, Project Biwa was also covered by the College View, Dublin City University's student newspaper. Thank you!

Hopefully future project updates will contain new people/media that we need to thank for their support. In the meantime, we shall keep cycling...

Another 100 kilometres

Compared to the previous two weeks, this last week had a slightly lighter training schedule, with a target of 100 kilometres. It all went without much trouble (including Wednesday's 50km ride), and the week ended with a total of 103km.

As some of you may know, the Golden Week is almost upon us, and this will be a great opportunity to scale up training again. The plan is to cover 60km this week-end (103km target for the week), and at least 170km over the following week.

Much of the effort, recently, has been focused on trying to spread the word about this project. One of the first steps obviously was to create a Facebook page, which you can now access at http://www.facebook.com/project.biwa. Please make sure to "like" this page. If you could also tell your Facebook friends to do likewise, it would be even better!

Getting media coverage is equally important. This includes both traditional media (radio, print, etc.) and "new" media (blogs, YouTube, and so on). Many people are being nice to the project, and I can see that traffic to the site is increasing. Later this week, I will post another message with proper thanks to everyone.

Three weeks and still going strong

The third week of training for Project Biwa went just as well as the previous two. I was particularly pleased with Saturday's ride. We were planning on doing 50 kilometres, and managed to cover 51.2 in less than three hours. We are still short of the stamina required to cover 100 kilometres in a day, but after three weeks of training, it was an important milestone.

Another two 50k rides are scheduled over the coming two weeks, with the next big step in early May, with 80 kilometres.

The distances planned for the first three weeks were 40, 100 and 148 kilometres. The distances actually covered were 32, 117 and 151 kilometres.
Here is the summary for weeks 2 and 3.

The fundraising is also going great. At the time of writing this post, $525 have already been donated to Global Giving's Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund. Thank you all for your support!

Looking at the stats for this website, I also noticed that some people arrived on the Project Biwa pages from a link posted in the news section of the Vivre le Japon website [Fr]. Many thanks to them for spreading the word.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments below or by email.

A month since the earthquake

Today is April 11th, and it is now a month since the earthquake and tsunami. As of this morning, there are 13,116 dead and 14,377 missing. And there are still almost 150,000 people living in shelters.

We are still as committed as always to raising money through our Project Biwa.

The first two weeks of training went as well as I had hoped. As I mentioned in an earlier message, I covered 32 kilometres (instead of 40km) during the first week, which meant my target for the past week was changed from 100 to 108km.

I am happy to report that I have managed 117 kilometres. Even Saturday's 25km ride went very well, (and ended up being an extra two kilometres longer).

The objective for this week is to increase distances further, and to reach a total of approximately 150 kilometres. I already know that Sunday will probably be too busy to include a ride, so I have planned the next big step of this training cycle for Saturday, with 50 kilometres.

I am also trying to find a way to share this training with you. I tried to attach my camcorder to the bike, but there are a lot of vibrations, and the results is not very nice. The extract below is the best I could get so far, played at 800% speed and using the image stabilisation feature on iMovie.
I am still working on improving the vibration issue, but it might be the best I can do. In this case, would it be something you would like to see anyway?

At the time of writing this post, we have already raised $250 on GlobalGiving. Many thanks for your support!

Quelques détails sur "Project Biwa"

J'ai détaillé dans un message posté la semaine dernière un projet que j'ai lancé en réponse au tremblement de terre et tsunami du 11 mars.

Puisque la plupart des messages en rapport avec ce projet seront en anglais, je vais regrouper ici les informations les plus importantes sur "Project Biwa". Si le besoin s'en fait sentir, d'autres messages en français suivront peut-être. N'hésitez pas à poser vos questions, dans les commentaires ci-dessous et via l'adresse que j'ai créée pour le projet.

Ce projet est une tentative de réponse à une inaptitude. Inaptitude à aller aider directement dans les régions sinistrées. Mon niveau de japonais et mon manque de qualifications utiles (premiers secours, aide psychologique, chauffeur d'engins, etc.) feraient de moi un boulet plus qu'un soutien, et ce n'est vraiment pas le but. Inaptitude à soutenir financièrement les efforts en cours et à venir. J'ai contribué à la hauteur de mes moyens, mais cela ne sera pas suffisant (même si chaque don est toujours utile).

Face à cette double inaptitude, et inspiré par des projets originaux (cf. mon message initial en anglais), Project Biwa se base sur une triple motivation :

• Faire revenir les touristes au Japon. Leurs contributions à l'économie japonaise sera plus grande que n'importe lequel des dons que je pourrais faire.


• Attirer des dons vers les organisations qui en ont besoin. Même si chaque don est faible, la somme de ceux-ci peut représenter une aide non négligeable.


• Mettre, à mon modeste niveau, un peu de baume au coeur aux japonais en leur rappelant la beauté de leur pays et en leur montrant le soutien de tous.

En pratique, le projet est relativement simple : une boucle de 200km autour du lac Biwa, ce qui représente une distance totale d'environ 300km depuis mon domicile, parcourue en vélo sur trois jours. Au fil de ce voyage, des photos seront prises pour documenter la beauté de la région, et elles seront rassemblées dans un livre dont les bénéfices iront intégralement à la Croix Rouge japonaise.

Étant donné que mon vélo n'est pas du tout adapté à ce genre d'aventures (lourd, une seule vitesse, etc.), j'ai déjà commencé l’entraînement et espère accumuler environ 1000km d'ici fin mai.

Pour me soutenir durant la préparation, vous pouvez verser des dons (il n'y a pas de contribution trop petite, le nombre fera la différence) sur une page spécialement créée sur GlobalGiving. L'argent versé est automatiquement dirigé vers leur "Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund", qui finance de multiple organisations présentes sur le terrain, telles "Save the Children", "International Medical Corps", "Japan Platform" (réseau d'ONG et entreprises japonaises) et "Civic Force". Merci d'avance de votre soutien !

Cette page n'est disponible qu'en anglais, mais je pense que son fonctionnement est suffisamment simple. Si vous avez la moindre difficulté, vous pouvez laisser un message en commentaire ici.