Kazo sits on the flat floor of the Kanto Plain, in northern Saitama, about seventy kilometres from the centre of Tokyo, and the land here is so level that the horizon is a ruler. It is a town of seventy thousand people with rice fields, vegetable plots and factories, and next to it flows the Tone River, the largest river in Japan by drainage area, which for centuries was a danger and a highway at once. The Tone was moved eastward in the seventeenth century to protect Edo from floods, and its broad embankments are now popular for cycling and fishing.
Kazo has one great spectacle. Every spring, huge carp streamers, koinobori, are strung across the river, some as long as a hundred metres, and they billow in the wind like enormous coloured sleeves. Children's Day, in early May, is the occasion, and the sight of the fish flying above the water is a lovely one. Not far to the north is the Watarase retarding basin, a large wetland of reeds that is protected under the Ramsar convention and home to herons, harriers and many other birds.
The riding here is flat and easy, with long straight roads through farmland and the occasional levee track, so it will not thrill you with corners. What it does give is space, a feeling of being on a plain with the horizon at all points and, on a clear winter morning, a line of snowy mountains far to the north-west: Tanzawa is nowhere near, but Akagi and Nikko's peaks stand on the skyline. Wind can be strong in winter, a dry cold gale coming off the mountains, and in summer the heat and humidity are heavy.
Fuel is plentiful in Kazo, with stations at all the major crossings, and roadside stations sell fresh vegetables and cheap lunches. If you are travelling on the long link through the plain toward the mountains, this is a good place to eat and refill before the road begins to rise. Stay out of the city's rush hours, and give yourself time.