camping

"I want to be able to stand in my tent" that single thought drove everything for the next week. As soon as I spotted this tent on Amazon it also combined with "this is going to look ridiculous."

I present to you the newest member of the family: The DoD One Pole Tent (L). It is a massive 3 meter tall tent, 4.6 meters across for 8 people... And I'm using it as a solo motorcycle camper haha. It takes up 80% of the space of the motorcycle bag, so my inflatable mattress went strapped on top of it.

This one was a challenge. As soon as I arrived at Lotus Camp Village (https://maps.app.goo.gl/s22nVTitFifS78j46) it started raining. I knew the risk, it was a 20% rain chance forecast and I was wearing my raincoat, but now not only do I have to figure out how to set up this tent solo for the first time, but also do it in the rain without getting the inner tent wet. I did watch a youtube video of someone setting this up so I had some idea. It was a lot of work and I managed to keep the inside mostly dry. The picture is from the next morning because the rain would just.not.stop... But..but...I wanna look at a fire =( I kept checking my phone, the time the rain would stop kept creeping back, further and further beyond sunset... So I started my buzz inside the tent. Hey! At least I can walk around!! Holy shit this tent is so spacious, it's everything I wanted!

This is the view from the inside, with my raincoat and a sock to absorb water at the entrance.

Around 8pm I had to pee and I noticed... the rain is weak enough, surely I can get a fire going.

There we go, my dear fire. Oh and you notice it's on a fire sheet now to protect the ground a bit more. Thanks to the canopy entrance, I can also stay mostly dry and sit and drink my worries away. There was also more alcohol in a vending machine on site, so....yeah lol. Day is saved - time to eat! I promised to level up food again so I googled what to eat when camping and found "hobo meals" so sure enough I prepped sausages, potatoes and some veggies in aluminum foil and when the first bundle burned down cooked it for 30 minutes on it. Absolutely delicious! I'm proper camping now, innit? Went through two more bundles of wood again too.

When it was time to finally sleep, I enjoyed every second of standing when taking off my pants to go to sleep. This camp also features the first appearance of new gear that will become the absolute VIP of camping in Japan: A portable large battery fan with swivel and LED lights. Japan is humid and this fan on first stage is extremely silent and I can run it all night without issues. It made me sleep like a baby. And I grinned every time I had to use the toilet and was able to stand up to put on my pants =D

Thankfully the rain did stop and the morning packdown was dry, although the flysheet was not able to dry and I noticed a lot of condensation under the tent. I didn't even consider condensation but yeah...thats nature lol. How the FUCK am I gonna dry this tent later? Problem for future me. Mental note: get ground sheets for my three tents.

The setdown experience was...interesting. I had completely forgotten how the tent was folded up so I kind of just halved it until I felt it fit the bag. It was definitely bulkier than before and I had a tough time squeezing everything back into the bike bag, but managed somehow.

It was at this stage I had been "activated". I wanted to actively camp every single week, every opportunity. Now I had a bunch of gear and tents that I can mix and match depending on how I feel, how much effort I want to do vs how much I wanna carry. I was excited to the point of vibrating, chasing the next camp, the next combo, browsing amazon for gear in my dreams. There was just one problem...it's about to be September and the forecasts look...horrible...

Due to the rain there are not many bonus pics this time, but here is a butterfly I saw the next morning and more fire pics: