In 1964 the world's best oarsmen raced on a straight, two-kilometre channel dug beside the Arakawa at Toda, a few minutes from this finish. The Toda rowing course was built for the Tokyo Olympics and is still busy with university crews, whose coaches cycle along the bank shouting through megaphones at dawn. Next door, crowds gather to bet on the motorboat races at the Toda kyōtei stadium, one of the few forms of legal gambling in Japan.
This is the low, flat land where Saitama meets Tokyo, between Toda, Wakō and Shimotoda, crossed by the great embankments of the Arakawa and the expressways that carry the weekend traffic home. It is not beautiful, but the river gives it space: the floodplain is a broad green belt of baseball pitches, golf driving ranges, reed beds and cycle paths, and on a clear winter day Mount Fuji appears on the western horizon, framed between the apartment blocks.
The last kilometres after the Bandai Azuma Skyline are rarely relaxing. The Gaikan ring road and the Shuto expressways jam up on Sunday evenings as the whole of Kantō returns at once, and the surface streets are a grid of signals, trucks and scooters. Keep your gaps generous; drivers here are polite but tired.
Practicalities are simple. Petrol stations and konbini line the arterial roads, family restaurants stay open late, and the station areas have counters serving gyōza and beer to salarymen. If it is early enough, a slow walk along the rowing course, with the eights gliding past in the evening light, is a strangely calming way to step off the bike.