Candy Cranks

The specs are:
♥ Frame and Forks: Giant Omunium
♥ Color: Rie’s special flower (hand painted by Circles kyutai works)
♥ Chainring: Candy Cranks
♥ Crank Set: Sugino RD-2
♥ Wheel: HED 3
♥ Stem: DEDA Newton
♥ Handle: FSA Riser
♥ Seat: SanMarco Regal
♥ Seatpost: Miche SuperType
♥ Tire: Panaracer pacella BL
♥ Pedal MKS Touring Premium
♥ Clip: Brooks
♥ Strap: Brooks

Thanks Meg! Viva Candy Cranks! can’t wait to see this chainring on my bikkkke!

Circles did great job! The frame is all hand painted by Shinya (owner of Circles), I asked him very complicated flower patterns. Shinyadid amazing job on hand paintwork and matching all parts to be dressed up. He shows his excellent taste in customized bike from his experience of learning and working at fashion industry for many years.

This is my 1st new customized bike♥ My 1st bike is very old NISHIKI from San Diego and I didn’t expect that I was going to be a pedal freak until I met Circles bike shop in Nagoya. Cirlces helps to define what cycling is and leading the way in showing people how to have fun on two wheels and find on your way to open up of new world. Shinya said that “You can do anything on your bike.” That’s true. So I do my Coffee bike there.

So, my next target is to win and be on the podium at the Bang King track race coming up in August this summer!

This is my dream…★   Yukki (Miss January: Love Wheels Nagoya Calendar)

More pics of my new bike HERE.

I met my best friend Nikon sometimes around 2008, I started shooting the photos of girls on bikes just for fun as my self satisfaction, didn’t know about flickr and any bike websites. One day, I was in a street Keirin race event “Bank-King” sponsored by Circles in Nagoya, I met Yohei, the photographer/editor of a magazine, he said “where can I find your photos you’ve taken?” and I was like “NO WHERE!” then he told me about flickr and I started meeting many people who is fascinating to me all over the world. The bikes and photos unite people and they inspire me a lot. 

So, now I’m able to share of my photos through websites like Candy Cranks, Flickr and anywhere. And yeah, I’m going to be bold to say, I’m in a magazine! It’s COG, yay! I would say COG is more like photographic collection, not like magazine, all photos are very artistic and high quality. I wrote the article about the back stage of Love Wheels Nagoya Calendar and some of my photos are in a page of  the all girl’s alleycat race, THE NADESHIKO CUP (CMWC Tokyo.) It reminds me the greatest time of CMWC 2009 in Tokyo.

Check out the newest issue vol.8 of COG.
Featured stories are Women’s Keirin History/ les six jours de Grenoble/ Empire/ Alex Singer/ Street Gallery, Toronto/ Ed Wonka LaForte/ Christina Peck/ Las Vegas/ 700 CMX Evolution/ CMWC Tokyo/ Los Angeles/ more…

Many thanks to my friend Yohei and all editor of the wonderful magazine COG!

TASTE ME♥

On May 2nd and 3rd, we had the Love Wheels Nagoya Calendar Girls Ride to Kyoto city from Nagoya. It’s only 45 minutes on the Bullet train, but we rode 180km for 15 hours in one day. We got started pretty early 5:00am, expected to get into trouble in case. We’ve got road bike, MTB, single-speed, city-bike and I was the only one got on a fixed gear bike!:D We all girls were not experts in long distance ride and had no idea what awaited us…

We got a special guest to join this ride, Jess from Candy Cranks author in Tokyo! We were getting pumped at Japanese bar for the long distance ride next day.

Started 5:00am. We got 8 girls, 2 body gurards and 3 Circles crew (supported us until their bike shop opens at noon.)

Thanks Kinu (Miss April) and KAz (Miss February) for organizing the Kyoto ride!

KAz made this cog with acrylic resin for everyone as a good-luck charm for the riding.

Crossing the Kiso River.

Going up the hills.

eeeeeeep! hurts my ***** so bad!! Circles crew adjusted my saddle lower.

Got flat…  Miss April just learned how to repair the tire at Circles yesterday, so she DID IT!!

Accident again… Miss February tried hard to fix it.

Hurts my foot…

Got lost… (searching the route on the i-phone & map)

Jess on the GPS.

26 km more to Kyoto city…

Arrived guest house at 9:00pm

Kampaaaaaai★ This is the greatest time at the long ride:)

I am so HAPPY that we all made it 180 km riding with no injury!! One of the girls were almost retired. There were so many dramas we made. It was great to see the Love Wheel Nagoya Calendar Girls are patient and tough.

This is the longest riding in one day.  I am glad that I made it with my fixed gear so I feel like I can go anywhere I want from now on, but I still have sore my legs now…

More pics HERE

FSCX (Free Style Cyclo Xross) is held in March sponsored by Circles in Nagoya. I feel like spring has come here.

We’re getting more girl riders challenging the race this year, yaaay!:D These girls are not real racers, thats amazing to see them getting sloppy, riding on ditches, steep slopes, deep mud and carring their bike with pretty muddy faces. It was pouring rain the night before race, some places got very muddy and slippy, we all could expect some funny things would happen in this race.

Go girls!

Skip Skip Skip♪

Woohooo!

Go! SURLY Big Dummy!!! (photo from 2009 FSCX)

Ohhhhh… Poor HUNTER.

*Crankee’s BBQ SURLY*

*CharRie’s Bike Café*

awwwwwww～!

Muddy Muddy…

SAL knows what we want. This is how the cyclo-cross race goes. Nothing like the good clean fun of free style cyclo-cross.

I had a great time. It was one of the greatest event in Nagoya. We’re now planning for next girls project coming up in May.  See ya.

More pics HERE.

Nagoya girls organized the NUTS! monthly alley cat race this time.  We made check point easier than usual for any girls can win and hid some funny & weird questions related to LOVE. (e.g. What would you say when you propose to your partner? / What’s the name of love hotel in your sight?)

Last check point: You must put make-up on lipstick & cheeks and make kiss-mark with your name on it.

THE BICYCLE made by dude’s kisses…xoxoxoxoxo

*The Best Kissers*

The cafe was covered by hand made cookies and COG chocolate.

After the race, NUTS! girls wore mama’s aprons themed like a sweet home and had chocolate party at local cafe in Nagoya.  KAz (Miss February: Love Wheels Calendar) is very crazy for chocolate, she just wanted to play with chocolate and bicycle together. This is it.

Chocolate track stand contest: Each girl took turns for hanging a chocolate bar for a guy on track stand to eat it all.

DJ mama: My 1st time DJ

Everybody had a good smile with pink cheeks.

Wanna taste me? ;p

More photos HERE. 

Calvin from Fixie Pixie did a short interview with me. I got to be the first girl he interviewed on his site. So go check it out here!

I am loving this SAG bag, but my Japanese sources tell me they have to be ordered and won’t be available till August!! I guess good things are worth waiting for. Thanks Shino

Via Prolly

How adorable are these Japanese made Kaostem’s. Rie, Shino, Jess, you guys know where they’re available from?
Via Prolls

Arrow is one of my favourite bike shops in Tokyo. Arrow bikes are single speed with a coaster brake, not  fixed gear. All bikes look very nice! Kids bikes are available aslo.

http://www.geocities.jp/arrow_koenji/

*Happy Valentine’s Day everybody*

I always wished to make people happy with my hand brewed coffee on bike. My dream has come true on Valentine’s Day!

Charinco (Bicycle) + Rie = CharRie’s

HAHA… I’ve been studying hand brewed coffee techniques at a local café and tought it would be cool to serve to my friends and customers at Circles which is my favorite bike shop in Nagoya and has a big influence on my life. The owner of Circles let me use a little space for setting up my bike café as a Valentine’s special event.  I always make miracles at Circles so I did it! I sold out 100 cups of coffee at the 1st day, yaaaaay!

Rum Ball & Gateau Chocolat made by Izumi & Rie

*Thank you for coming*

￥300 with chocolate treats (￥200 for a Refill)

Hand made milk caps.

Wrapping cube sugar.

CharRie's bike café totally matching the colors with Circles.

Circles offered me to do this every Sunday starting on March 7th *Thank You*.  I have a crazy friend “Crankee“, he invented his BBQ SURLY, we will put our bike kitchen toghether next time!

 I have a confidence with my coffee, it is actually soo GOOD!! Please stop by Circles in Nagoya and say hello to my coffee bike when you ever get a chance to visit Japan.

Thanks a lot to Circles and everyone who stopped by and had my coffee, to all my great friends who supported to put me up and had awesome happy time together.

*Have a happy coffee*

More pics → HERE!