We recently sat down with our friend in Japan, Atsushi Hibiya (@effectokyo), for a quick chat about his riding crew Monokusa Racing.
Who are Monokusa Racing? Tell us about the team.
There’s about 20 of us all up. We’re just a group of friends united by a love of riding and a shared mindset. We like to think of ourselves as ‘gentleman’, with the common denominator being that we’re all quiet but passionate people. And that we’re all cyclists of course.
First things first, where does the name come from?
Monokusa comes from an old Japanese story about Monokusa Taro. Essentially Monokusa means lazy and the story is about a young man called Taro, who was famously lazy and unambitious but eventually makes something of himself and gets the girl in the end. It’s a lazy success story! There’s even a little monument to him in a park in Niimura, Nagano where the story originates.