This is the final installment of the 10-part series, carefully compiled by Circles, chronicling my bicycle journey from its beginning to the present day. The series is titled “The Sound of Travel.”
I started my bicycle journey at age 22, and now I am 43. This series has chronicled my nearly 20-year journey by bicycle. As someone who has always kept moving forward, one thing after another, I had never traced my own path so carefully before—looking back through my records, wondering when things had happened, and searching my hard drive for photos from my travels. This has truly been a wonderful opportunity.
I have continued this series even while worrying about whether anyone was actually reading it, wondering how it had grown so long. Now, let’s begin the final installment.
Looking back now, there were days during the pandemic when I found myself momentarily checking my own memory, wondering, “Wait, was that really real?”
During that time, I really did feel like I had hit a wall. For nearly 20 years, I had lived my life believing that I could always go somewhere or meet someone whenever my heart moved me, but then came days when I could do neither.
And the society during the pandemic became one where the opposite of what I had always valued—people connecting and helping one another—became the norm: “Don’t interact with others; stay inside.”
I wondered what to do. My greatest strength, my ability to be mobile, had been sealed away. The many lectures I had given at schools had completely stopped. Of course, I also had concerns about my livelihood, but even more than that, I spent a great deal of time agonizing over what role I could play in this pandemic.
In fact, just before the pandemic, I had been serving free coffee in the heart of Hong Kong, where pro-democracy protests were ongoing. There, young people were standing up, wanting to build their own society and preserve the freedom they had enjoyed for the next generation.
Deeply moved by their resolve, I went out wanting local people to drink my coffee, but it soon became a major movement and a social phenomenon. I had started serving free coffee in Hong Kong all by myself. Before I knew it, young people had gathered, formed a team, and begun to support me. Before I knew it, hundreds of people had gathered around me, and we began to share our thoughts and feelings.
It was the moment I truly engraved in my heart that “a single cup of coffee has the power to connect the world.” And it was the potential of a society where everyone takes responsibility for themselves. A personal thought had, before I knew it, become a shared one. What was needed there was a straightforward conviction, and action.
At that time, I truly believed that I wanted to see what the possibilities of free coffee could bring.
I wanted to travel the world by bicycle, serving free coffee on the streets, and connect the world.
In a world where everything is divided, lines are drawn, and it has become commonplace to deny others to satisfy one’s own desire for approval, I wanted to prove that a single cup of coffee—and the “mental space” it creates—could connect one person’s heart to another’s.
I had just returned to Japan from Hong Kong, determined that a new kind of life-defining challenge had begun. Then the pandemic hit and lockdowns were imposed. Perhaps that is why it was all the more shocking. (The world I had seen through free coffee in Hong Kong had truly become something that would sustain me throughout my life, but I cannot fully describe it here, so I will have to do so at another time.)
But if the pandemic had never come, I would surely still be serving free coffee somewhere in the world, devoting my life to letting as many people as possible see the world I wished for. I probably wouldn’t have gotten married, and I never would have had children.
“Even if I cannot meet the people I want to see, I can still deliver my heartfelt coffee to them.” I announced this on social media, and I began shipping as many drip coffee packs as I could make myself roast and pack, both in Japan and abroad. I also sent batches of drip coffee packs to hospitals that were struggling during the pandemic.
Even so, I felt restless. While tidying up my house, wondering what I could do, I found a food stall cart in the agricultural warehouse. My parents told me that a friend had left it with them to use at festivals. It had been there for years, and when I asked if I could use it, they readily agreed.
All right, let’s do it. Free coffee. If I cannot go anywhere, I will create a place here where everyone can gather. Once I made up my mind, all that was left was to do it. I set up the food stall in my backyard, arranged seating, and created a place for free coffee where anyone could gather. This was the beginning of Nishikawa Free Coffee Shop.
The pandemic lockdowns had just been lifted, and everyone was still feeling anxious about interacting with others.
Anyone is welcome.
Outdoors. Under the open sky. And since I live in the countryside, there is no risk of overcrowding.
A place where anyone can gather, where everyone can come in peace, where people can connect through a cup of coffee, and where their hearts can find rest. I decided to share these days with everyone on social media.
In a world where everyone’s heart may be hardened and cold,
I wanted to create a peaceful place at Nishikawa Free Coffee Shop—a warm, relaxed space that would make people feel as though they were momentarily adrift, and wonder, “Does a place like this really exist in the midst of this pandemic?” I wanted to create such a place and have people watch over it.
My new challenge had begun.
An elderly neighbor began coming every day to make the place her own.
People I met through this space began bringing new companions with them. Sometimes many people would come, and sometimes no one would come at all. But I decided that we would use this place to build the kind of world we wanted to see. And so I continued. Even during the pandemic, I decided that this would be a once-in-a-lifetime summer for the children, and I even planned a mountain bike journey. Although my heart was pounding, we finished it safely.
Before I knew it, my hometown and home—a place I had only returned to for holidays when I had nothing else to do during my travels—had become a place for many companions to gather and think together about what interesting thing they would do next. Although I lived in Kumamoto for two years before 2026, the pandemic shifted my life from one centered on travel to one centered on daily life, with travel as an occasional addition.
I got married. I had children. And I began to devote myself more and more to daily life and raising them.
I began to interact with my own family and the people in my community.
Doing so made me realize so many things. Ah, because I had spent so much time traveling, I had been able to adjust my interactions with people to maintain just the right distance. Because my family had looked after our home, I had been able to travel with peace of mind. And the village, its events, and its festivals had been preserved by all the households helping one another.
And above all, having children of my own and raising them had changed my view of the world so completely that I could no longer remember how I had seen it before. Now, when I am not traveling, I spend every day carrying my children on my back while hanging out the laundry or cooking. Yesterday, at the request of a 92-year-old neighbor, I mowed her grass and plowed her rice fields with a tractor. Today, while my wife looks after our three children, I am writing this draft at McDonald’s.
The “me” who wanted to see the world and started bicycle journeys for my own sake.
The “me” who traveled the world, changed my style of travel, and had a family and children.
“I want the world to be this way.”
The vision of the world I imagined then may not have changed much even now.
I can no longer ride my bicycle around the world as I once did.
But now, while raising my children and living in the same place, I can see a world that was invisible to me back then.
Just as life has been passed down.
There are so many things in this world that have continued only because someone has protected them.
That is why I wonder what I can do for my own children, and for the children who will one day take flight into this world.
Instead of leaving behind only problems that will become a burden to the next generation, what can I do to create a world where the children of the next generation can dream to their heart’s content and take flight?
This is by no means something that can be left to someone in government, or to large corporations or influential people alone.
It is about today.
About how we live, with what thoughts, what expressions, and in what manner.
That is what I believe.
Even on windless days, a bicycle carries the wind.
Travel shows me parts of myself and the world I never knew.
I am fortunate that I can travel and live my life with a bicycle.
Because the years spent bicycle touring have always shown me that I, and the world, might be able to change.
From now on, I will continue to live today with hope in my heart, even as I struggle with myself, argue with my family, and take children from across the country on journeys.
When you feel like stopping.
Get on a bicycle.
Go on a journey.
Surely, surely, you will hear a sound.
The world may be beyond help.
But still, let us live together.
(The End)
Although it was only supposed to be a two-part series, I am truly grateful to Mr. Tanaka, the representative of Circles, for accepting my selfish request to write ten installments. And thank you to everyone who has followed this series until the end. Let us meet again under the open sky of travel.
Masanori Nishikawa