1. (1) The Internet and Mr. Takashi Kasori

2. (2) Panama, the last country of my trip around North America

3. (3) The Internet situation in North America

(1) The Internet and Mr. Takashi Kasori

I have traveled to foreign countries about 30 times since I got a job after the graduation from the university. Personal computers didn't exist before and even after the advent of the Internet I didn't take a PC with me for traveling because my trip was always short and usually a month. But I got an early retirement this time for a longer trip. So I now travel with a PC on my back.

The Internet is really convenient. Before the Internet, I had to send a letter, for example, to the central post office in Katmandu, Nepal as poste restante. The letter returned to me in Japan half a year later. My friend couldn't go to the post office. Now we have the Internet and this kind of thing never happens. Emails reach our friends without fail and in addition on the spot. By telephone sometimes you can't give your message if your friend is not at home, but email surely can leave the message. You can communicate wherever you are in the world. We now live in a very serviceable world.

The Internet not only sends emails. We haven't had any means to publish our writing except mass media. However, nowadays even a nameless person like mi can send a message to the world in the Web site. I have had around 20 people who saw my Web page and sent me emails, not only from Japan, but from foreign countries. One of them was David, an Australian motorcycle traveler. During the motorcycle trip across Russia he met a man with the nickname of Taki-san who was a leader of a group of Japanese motorcyclists. Later his address book, together with the bike, was stolen. Finding my Web page, David sent me an email to ask me who Taki-san was.

He wrote that Taki-san is a famous Japanese motorcyclist who had written 38 books. I thought there was no other man but Mr. Takashi Kasori. I immediately found out his Web site and emailed him.

Most of my friends, except my Japanese motorcycle friends, probably don't know of Mr. Kasori. To tell the truth, I didn't know about motorcycles either, because I never drove a car before and took a motorcycle license at the age of past forty. After I began to ride a motorcycle, I read the books on motorcycle as many as possible. I often went to some big bookshops and bought most books about motorcycles. I also found lots of books in secondhand booksellers. However, I was not satisfied yet. I found more books in the database of the National Diet Library, where all the books published in Japan are registered, and ordered them all. Needless to say, I also read not a few of the books written by Mr. Kasori, but not as many as 38. Then I noticed I had already read one of his books before I began riding. The title of the book I read when young was, although I don't remember well, something like "The desert with scorched sands". Mr. Kasori didn't go to a university after graduating senior high, but crossed the Sahara from south to north on a Suzuki "Hustler". It was the first great success as a Japanese. As I was not a motorcycle rider then, I don't remember his motorcycle trip well, but I was deeply impressed by the determined young man who crossed the desert at the risk of his life. I thought he was a tremendous man.

Thereafter he made motorcycle travels to many places of the world. The travels brought him 38 books. Recently, already several years ago though, I read his book again. He was visiting hot springs all around Japan. I remember he visited 2000 places in all mostly by motorcycle. Mr. Kasori is about two years older than I. I also like hot springs and I rode to some hot spring, if not the rainy weather, every weekend during about ten years. I visited quite a few hot springs of Japan, except Hokkaidou, the northernmost large island in Japan. In the days when I read his book on hot spring tours, which was a period of several years before my retirement, I had an uneasy feeling of myself who couldn't take a motorcycle trip to a foreign country because of my work or some other reasons. And that time I was a little disappointed at Mr. Kasori. I imagined that thinking of his age of fifties he had at last given up another overseas adventure trip in spite of the fact that a successful man like him could go anytime even on business. He appeared to be enjoying easy trips to hot spring resorts in Japan. Later, 40 years behind Mr. Kasori, I myself left on a limitless motorcycle trip to realize the long-term dream from my younger days. And, on the 1st of March of this year, when I was in San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica, I received an email from the Australian rider David that he met a person similar to Mr. Kasori in Russia.

I sent an email to Mr. Kasori to ask if he knew David. I received an immediate reply from him. The person whom David only remembered the nickname of Taki-san was, as I imagined, Mr. Kasori. He was still adventurous and rode in Russia. I only expected to receive an answer from a person who is in charge of the Web site because Mr. Kasori was supposed to be a super-busy man. But the reply was seemingly from himself. Later he has sent me as many as 6 emails in 4 weeks. He sent one of them to me yesterday as well. It is to my honor as he is my adoring motorcycle rider. Without the Internet, this sort of thing never happens.

Most Japanese people still have a bad image of motorcycling, imagining a group of wild riders. Motorcycling doesn't have a good reputation yet in Japan and the people often recognize it as a dangerous toy for bad kids. Most of the young people quit riding a motorcycle and switch to a car at the age of twenty. However, traveling in the US or in Canada, I saw that a lot of people older than I take their time to enjoy a motorcycle trip. They know motorcycles are a better means of traveling than cars. A motorcycle culture for adults exists in it. Their society also accepts the motorcycle culture as a wonderful thing. I myself rode around North American Continent this time. I always received a respectable look from the people I met. Mr. Kasori had felt it by himself since he was much younger and gave the message about the motorcycle culture for adults to the Japanese Society. Motorcycle racers receive the spotlight of public attention, but motorcycle travelers, even Mr. Kasori, usually don't. Nevertheless, the grandeur of a motorcycle trip might be more than a motorcycle race. In addition, motorcycle racers require a special talent, however, motorcycle travelers, even a poor rider like me, can have a safe trip only if much attention is paid. Moreover, we can learn various things from the nature of the land we visit and the people we meet. Mr. Kasori can use mass media. I want to massage about this to as many people as possible by my Web site.

(2) Panama, the last country of my trip around North America

The Pan-American Highway that goes through the mountains in Guatemala repeats going up and down the mountains from El Salvador to Costa Rica, however, in Panama it runs in the lowlands along the Pacific from west to east. The latitude around here is the same as the southern tip of India. It is naturally hot then. The Pan-American Highway is the sole trunk road in Panama and some branch roads extend towards the mountains in the north. As I got tired of the hot weather during this journey, I have kept moving towards Panama City in the east, visiting cool mountain villages in the end of these branch roads to escape the heat along the Highway. To move from a village to another I had to go back to the Highway each time. The Pan-American Highway had lots of potholes in Costa Rica, but in Panama the road condition became good. Especially in the east near the capital the road has four lanes and traffic signs with a speed limit of 100km/h. The Highway finally became a road worth calling it a highway. It had been so long since I had ridden fast in Mexico.

In most of the towns from Mexico to Nicaragua there was an old church adjacent to a central plaza in a town center and the narrow roads constructed in the colonial age crisscrossed the town. Because of this, they had one-way traffic. In Costa Rica, however, the towns gradually became modern. Entering Panama, in David, the third largest city near the border, although it has a population of only 71,000, more roads had cross traffic. As there was no traffic light, I was really scared when crossing the streets. My feet injured by the heavy bike are not fully recovered yet and I can't run fast.

I had an expectation that things are less expensive in Panama than Costa Rica. It's true the food at restaurants is cheaper. The currency of this country is the US dollar as in El Salvador. Supper with beer is around $3. However, hotels are on the contrary more expensive than in Costa Rica. I have paid more than $10 after David. I have never paid this much since Guatemala. Hotels can be expensive in this country because most small towns don't have any hotels and even in larger towns there are only a few hotels. As a result my travel expense has risen up to $25 a day. I became worried about the charges of the hotels in South America. I took out the guidebook of South America packed in the bottom of the bag and checked them. In Ecuador budget hotels charge about $3. Hotels are also inexpensive in Peru and Bolivia. However, $10 is necessary for other countries. Probably the hotels between El Salvador and Costa Rica were too cheap.

What attracted my eyes in Panama was a large number of Chinese residents. There are, not only one, but some quite large supermarkets even in a small town of this country. Most of the owners are Chinese. As well as Chinese restaurants where Panamanian waiters or waitresses are not employed, the people in the places have a deadpan expression and never smile to the customers. Although I am well accustomed to the same straight face of the Japanese, I feel something uncomfortable after having met the attendants of Latin America, who always smile and try to be friendly, for nearly a year and five months. Concerning a supermarket, I had not been allowed to take the rucksack inside and been obliged to leave it at the entrance, probably since El Salvador. I am not sure about Mexico and Guatemala where there weren't supermarkets near the hotels I stayed, but anyway I believe it meant the prevention against shoplifting. It worried me, on the contrary, that an attendant would steal away my PC often put in the rucksack. This system disappeared in Panama. Panama might have better social order.

David was the only "city" between the Costa Rican border and the capital of Panama. In David a series of modern shops and large supermarkets is found like in a big city of Japan. I saw three of large one-dollar shops near my hotel. I hadn't seen a one-dollar shop since Tijuana, a border town between Mexico and the US. I was happy to find a large chocolate for one dollar and bought it. I ate chocolate after the US. There were big bookstores as well. I wanted to know about the war in Iraq that broke out just before my entering Panama. TV kept sending the news all day long, but I didn't understand the Spanish. So I visited the bookstores to find an English version of "Newsweek" or "Time". Unfortunately there wasn't. However, this small town is so abundant with things that I thought I could find a thing like that. There was also a movie theater. In addition it was a big theater. It had four rooms to show four different movies at the same time. During this trip I went to see the movie only three times before, in Canada, Honduras and Costa Rica. There were certainly movie theaters in some other places in Central America, however, the movie was shown mostly at night on weekends. It was usually dangerous to go out in the night. So I didn't have an opportunity. But the theater in David showed from the afternoon. I felt like being back to the consumerized civilization after a long time. As I mentioned above, things are still cheap in Panama except hotels. A pack of the cheapest cigarettes costs less than a dollar and a 720ml bottle of rum less than four dollars. A small bottle of beer at a bar is 50 cents. The restaurants don't charge much either, but there is a problem. Smoking is not allowed in most restaurants of Panama. This is very hard to me. Especially, smoking after meal is inevitable to me. There will be no problem if there are some food stands. But there is not in Panama. I had to look for a restaurant where smoking is allowed.

Boquete was a pleasant village, where it was warm like spring and the sky was clear every day. The hotels were occupied because of the orchid festival that would last four days from the following day of my arrival. However, I found a room for $10 at a hotel. Boquete is a village in the valley where a river flows through. Various sorts of flowers were in full bloom. Besides, unlike in Cerro Punta, there were supermarkets, restaurants, bars and in addition Internet cafes in the neighborhood of the hotel. Being delighted with the comfort of the mountain village, I decided to visit another village Santa Fe further in the east. That day, however, it was a little late to visit Santa Fe and I stayed at a hotel in a town along the Pan-American Highway. The hotel charged $10 as well, however, the large parking lot with a roof attracted me. As I could park my bike close to the room after a long time, I laid myself on my back and looked at the bottom of the gearbox that still had a slight leakage of the engine oil. The leakage was not very serious. I thought I would be able to stop it if I gave another coating with sealing chemical. But it was hot. I didn't do the job. Across from the hotel there was a convenient store, where some newspapers were sold. One of them was four days old, however, had detailed articles about the war in Iraq. I bought a Spanish paper for the first time. I don't understand the Spanish spoken by TV, but I understand most even without dictionary when printed. I also read the article on the guerrillas in Colombia that I was worried about. It was the news that around 300 guerrillas stopped fighting and gave their arms to the government. I hoped Colombia would be a little safer. On the last page of the newspaper with 52 pages, it was written that a German woman motorcycle racer of 26 would ride a 250cc Honda in the race at Suzuka, Japan on April 6. She looked as beautiful as a fashion model in the photo, however, she rides at the speed of more than 300 km/h. I wish I could understand spoken Spanish on TV as soon as possible, but I don't think it possible for years to come if I continue this way of traveling.

After repairing the bike, I talked with the young couple who told me the way. The man is from Argentina and the woman from Belgium. They are married. They have been staying in this hotel for about a month. They will live in this inconvenient, poorly-supplied village. I said to the woman, "It is never easy even to go shopping. Probably you need an enduro bike". She answered she would buy a horse. That is a really good idea. Horses can go on a muddy road in the rainy season. There are unique people in the world. In Panama the Pan-American Highway comes closer to the sea for the first time at a small town San Carlos about 100km before Panama City. I heard lobsters would be cheap around here. I have not eaten a lobster since Florida, USA. Along the Pan-American Highway there was ideally a Chinese restaurant on the ground floor of the sole hotel in San Carlos. I asked the price of a plate of lobster. They answered $8.25. Very cheap! It was quite hot in San Carlos. Nevertheless, I decided to stay in a 11-dollar room. The room upstairs I stayed was, however, on the corner of the hotel building and cool with light breeze from both the large window with glass louver facing the sea and the balcony facing the road. I don't remember staying in a hotel with a balcony during this journey except those $200 rooms in Cancun and the other hotel in the island in its south in Mexico. While the lobster I ate in Florida was not only expensive, but had less meat in its inside, the one in San Carlos had enough meat like that of Japan. I felt like being rich with the lobster and the cool balcony.

Panama City is my last destination in North America. After starting the journey from California in June, 2001, I rode around North American Continent. It took nearly two years to come here. My BMW-R1100R has traveled 45,000km. It is the distance longer than the circumference of the equator. During the period, the things that would change the world happened. When I was near Washington D.C., two jetliners with terrorists fell in New York and Washington D.C., although I am not sure if it really happened or not. It was reported that another jetliner fell several ten kilometers away from my hotel. As a result, the USA intruded into Afghanistan and Iraq with impossible excuses and by great force, and destroyed the regimes of the two countries. But, I was riding to the south then. The journey seemed to be long, but at the same time, short. The Pan-American Highway once ends in the border between Panama and Colombia. There is no other road. Not a few Panamanians told me that there is a ferry connecting the two countries, but the result of my investigation was "no". As I planed, I will fly with the bike to Bogota, the capital of Colombia. In San Carlos I did the repairs to stop the leakage of the engine oil for the second time by myself. That was the fifth repair including the welding or coating at workshops. The leakage has almost stopped at last. I don't have to worry about a possible oil stain by my bike on the floor of the airplane any more. I will be in South America soon. I would say this travel begins from South America.

(3) The Internet situation in North America

I took a PC with me for this trip abroad for the first time. I had never accessed the Internet in my previous trips. The previous trips were short, usually for about a month, but this trip would be longer. So I carried a PC this time. The PC enabled me to lessen the load of my luggage because I copied dictionaries, encyclopedia, books, maps, music and so on into the computer disk. As I also copy the video that I took during the trip into the disk, I don't have to carry roles of used films. Above all, the best thing of a PC is its accessibility to the Internet. E-mail has made it possible that we can communicate with our friends wherever we are traveling in the world, and Web pages give us the information necessary for our travel. The Internet is really handy. Before leaving Japan, I changed the provider that I had used for some years to AOL, because AOL has its own network in the world and so the company doesn't ask a surcharge in the areas under the network. Internet access was in fact free of charge in the US, Canada and Mexico. Among others, there were lots of access points in the US and I didn't have to pay for the accesses from any large cities. There were also not a few points in Canada. Mexico had also access points in major cities. In addition, even the cheap hotels mostly had a telephone in the room in the US and Canada and fortunately the local calls, even for hours, were free. However, there were a few telephone lines in those cheap hotels. As a long call for the Internet would occupy the line and hinder the telephone calls by other guests, I always cut the line immediately after I finished e-mails. But anyway, the expense I paid in the US and Canada was only the fixed charge of US$18 a month. The expense for the Internet was less than the days when I stayed in Japan because I didn't have to pay for the telephone.

The situation was changed in Mexico. The rooms of cheap hotels didn't have a telephone. I had to go to the reception for a telephone. I asked them for a 5-minnute call, but my request was often rejected by the reason that there was only one line in the hotel. So I stayed in quite an expensive hotel only for telephone whenever I had to send e-mails after entering Mexico. However, I was not confident even if I found a telephone in the room or at the reception. Most of the telephones of Mexico don't have a telephone jack, but have a fixed telephone cable. I am not a bold man to take a telephone apart. I passed the hotel like this. But only once there was a hotel where the room had a telephone plugboard, which was a fixed type without jacks though, unfixed to the wall. I have a universal adapter for telephone jacks. It has a clip as the ultimate means. But I couldn't make it. Being disappointed, I was walking on the street. I saw a public telephone house. I didn't notice before, but there were quite a few of them. They charge a little more, but this kind of place can be used. After that I stopped looking for an expensive hotel with telephones. However, there were some problems for the public telephone houses. Some houses didn't allow me to connect my computer. Even when allowed, sometimes the telephone didn't have a jack to connect a cable from the modem, or the house didn't have a socket to supply electricity to my computer whose battery was dead then.

So, I thought. There are a lot of Internet cafes in Mexico and its southern countries. Is it possible to connect my PC in those cafes? On the 12th of December in 2001 to access the Internet I tried to connect my computer with the LAN of a cafe in Tehuantepec, a town in the South Mexico, on the way to Yucatan. I couldn't make it there. But I made it around a month later, on Jan. 11, in Merida in the Yucatan Peninsula. Two months had passed since I entered Mexico on Nov. 11, 2001. I didn't have to pay much for the telephone at public telephone houses any more as I found out the way to connect my PC at Internet cafes. But, not all problems were solved at once. The LAN cable was able to be connected without fail at any Internet cafe where LAN cables are laid. However, there were some cafes that didn't allow a connection. Even if it was allowed, I often couldn't connect my PC with the Internet depending on the way of the LAN configuration of the cafe because of my shallow knowledge of LAN system. So I had to move to another cafe. It often happened that I gave up in the end. Even when I was successful in connecting, there was still a problem. Although I paid US$18 a month to ALO, I didn't know how to access the mailer for the AOL members and I used the one open to the public. I had to copy and paste the e-mails that I had already written, and I had to do the same thing for the newly received e-mails. The job used to be finished in a few minutes by automatic mailing when connected by telephone till then, but the same job by LAN took an hour if I had lots of e-mails. As I found a use of cybercafes, I became to be free from the telephones of hotels and pubic telephone houses, although it took more time for e-mailing. In addition, the charge for the Internet became much lower. I had to pay 60 cents a minute for the telephones of hotels. The telephones in Central America were amazingly expensive for travelers. Nevertheless, I often used the expensive telephone when it was available because the job of copying and pasting in a cybercafe was time-consuming. In those days I cut the telephone line as soon as I finished e-mailing.

Another problem was brought about in Mexico and Guatemala. AOL requires a surcharge for the Internet access in most countries of Central and South America, except Argentina and Brazil, where the provider doesn't have its own networks. I didn't remember this and in El Salvador I found that I had paid the surcharge. More than $400 a month had been paid by my bank. The surcharge was around 20 cents a minute. I was not happy about this surcharge in addition to the expensive telephone fee. The Internet made me blue.

On entering Honduras from El Salvador, I met Taichiro, a Japanese, and later I stayed for 5 months in total in Santa Barbara where he lives. I told Taichiro about my problems of the Internet. He taught me that the use of Japan Yahoo would solve one of the problems for cybercafes though the access to Yahoo by telephone is impossible. I immediately became a member of Yahoo. To do so, I had to input the name of the server of Yahoo. Then I thought I could directly access the server of AOL if I knew its name. I went back to my hotel and read the user's manual of AOL for the first time. The name of the server was not written, but I found the description of the connection from LAN. I discovered the way to have direct access to the mailer for the AOL members. All the problems were solved. The manual should have bee read. In this way, I have accessed the Internet always at cybercafes since Honduras. The charge at cybercafes is sometimes about $3.5, but usually $0.8 to $1.6. It is cheaper than the access I made by a local call in Japan. Free access to AOL in South America is possible only in Argentina and Brazil. I imagine South America will have as many Internet cafes as in Central America. I thought about making a cancellation of AOL and using only free-of-charge Yahoo. But, considering the emergent occasion in a place that doesn't have any cafes or the situation in Europe where cafes will be scarce, I have been paying $18 every month to AOL for the last one year. Even in Europe, AOL doesn't have a wide network, but has only in England, Germany, France, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria and Ireland. Will I have to pay that expensive surcharge again in other countries as I did in Guatemala and El Salvador?

Although the Internet is very convenient, there are some problems to be solved. The one problem is about communication lines. Will Japan have to pay again for the reconstruction of Iraq to the USA? If Japan has that kind of money, isn't it possible for Japan to launch several communication satellites in order to solve this problem instead? The other problem is about a PC system of today. Even a small laptop PC is not a negligible burden for a motorcycle traveler. The load concerning computer is quite much including not only a PC, but also its subordinate articles. My PC was treated by a computer virus two times during the travel in North America. I reinstalled the PC each time. I am traveling with about 70 backup CD's for this kind of accident. Why do I have to do the silly thing like this? The reason is because we possess an operating system or data in our own computer. Some companies like present-day providers would be able to manage these software and data totally. Our PC's could be mere dumb terminals. The professional engineers of the companies would counteract hackers and viruses under 24-hour monitoring. If an attack is made in spite of this situation, those professionals can cope with it. This is never a job for ignorant users like us. Then, I won't have to reinstall my PC and carry CD'S. A disk will be unnecessary if programs and data are not required for our PC. A battery will have a longer life. By the way, a display and a keyboard will be replaced by eyeglasses. If so, we will be able to travel, enjoying the Internet with only a computer smaller than a cigarette pack and a pair of glasses. To realize this, a high-speed communication means that enables us to access the Internet from any place of the world is inevitable. I think that the development of the system like this will be most important for the recovery of Japanese economy. Let us remember that lots of people have bought a cellular phone even though they have a telephone at home. At the Internet cafes in Central America there are quite a few people who don't e-mail, but make an international phone call. Will PC's absorb telephones in the future? I expect, on the contrary, there is a possibility that the evolution of a cellular phone will kick the Microsoft's primitive PC system out and realize the system I want. But anyway, I don't care if either way will be realized. I only wish I will be free from a large amount of burden concerning computer.