Green. Tender fresh green, only just awakened. Small leaves on a branch, the buds could have jumped yesterday. The tree stands in front of an Orthodox chapel, a few hundred meters away from our hostel in Vladivostok. A flight over the ice fields of the Ochotsk sea is behind us, a season jump. The world is colorful again, the colors intensively after the pale winter months. We cycle through the city to the port, wait for the departure of the ferry to Japan. It's warm, we are sitting on a bench and picnic. In two days we will be in Japan. Good food, cycling days during which we don't need to worry about a warm place to stay, about mile and daily stages. Taking each day as it comes, set up the tent when we are tired. A supermarket at every intersection. Probably we will have enough of it soon. But for now it's just what we want.

We've forgotten how green the world can be. Now it's a juicy, summery dark green. Now it smells. Of freshly mown grass, of summer. Since we left Siberia three days ago, the temperature has risen more than thirty degrees. A strange feeling to sweat again. From north to south, we cycle through the island of Honshu. It's another Japan as we have experienced four years ago. Rural, quiet. The farmers are planting rice in the fields. Mechanical, with small, high-tech planters. Then we ride through the mountains, along narrow streets, far away from all traffic. Buddhist shrines, half forgotten under mighty trees. Well maintained gardens. We spend undemanding days in Japan, but that's just what we were looking for after the harsh Siberian winter.

We are camping on the beach beside a road house. Around the corner we bought two microwave menus and now we are looking with a horde of Japanese the sunset. So orange, so tacky. Someone has placed a sculpture with a hole in the upper part at the shore. Eventually, the sun shines through the hole before sinking into the sea. Everyone is waiting for it. Someone plays harmonica. A Japanese cyclist is camping next to us. His name is Hiroshi and he's doing a bike tour over the island. If we like, we can visit him, he says. He lives in Fukuoka. There we will leave Japan in two weeks with the speedboat towards South Korea. We write down his address. When the sun is gone, a rainbow lamp begins to shine onto the sculpture. Some teenagers are jumping in front of it and snap pictures with their smartphones.

The clouds hang low in Fukuoka, it's gray. Slowly the monsoon finds its way north. But we can't complain. These are the only two days of rain during our stay in Japan. We meet Hiroshi, spend a nice evening together. He has worked as a teacher until he god enough from the conditions of his work. Caring the class from the morning at eight to the evening at six o'clock. Then still preparing the lessons for the next day. On weekends mandatory sports competitions were held. When the students skip school, he had to go personally to their home, to motivate them again for the classroom. There was no time left for himself. Giving up the job in Japan is a huge loss of image. Burnout is a non-issue. In a few weeks he wants to go to Europe for cycle touring. Aki, his girlfriend, cooks us a delicious dinner. She's a hair stylist and the next day she gives Brigitte in her characterful saloon a Japanese haircut.

A wax yellow sky. Smog from Korea and China, that reaches the coastal towns in Japan in the summer months. We board the speedboat to Busan. Mega cities are awaiting us.

A little shriller than Japan, but not as loud as China. The traffic is a bit ruthless, the people a little more lively and swashbuckling, the city images a little less neat. A dash of red chili on everything. Korea, with its own unique style. Much is rather functional than aesthetic and everyone knows where Switzerland is. "It's my dreamland," confides the family man, when we help him putting up the tent. "Oh, Switzerland, I've been there last February," says the petrol station attendant, while he pulls out his smartphone and shows us a movie of the “Höhematte” in the snow. "Zurich, Lucerne, Interlaken, next time I go back for hiking. It's a wonderful country!" We are riding on a wave of sympathy. The mere mention of Switzerland puts a smile on the face of our counterpart, a knowing nod and other advantages of our country are enumerated. “Even the litter bins are beautiful there - sometimes it's almost to much you know ..."

We cover 600 km almost exclusively on bike paths. Along rivers and through national parks we are guided avoiding the traffic. Near of Seoul the bike paths are then widened to four lanes, with food stalls, public toilets and water points, at the weekends filled to capacity by the locals. We like it, because it's perfect for watching Koreans and so we camp at our last day in Korea, along with hundreds of weekenders on the narrow grass strip between the highway and the bike path. Oh yeah, Korea rocks! Siberia – once upon a time ...

Rusty and run down is the ferry, which leaves in Incheon for China. The beige dirt track on the map at the entrance shows clearly our route through the Yellow Sea. Traced by thousands of fingers it speaks unmistakable about the poor condition of the ship. We have crept away in the music lounge, in the hope that at least we find a good ship pianist, when everything is reminiscent of the Novecento steamboat in its last days. But there's just blaring a hopelessly overtightened Tom & Jerry on the TV, and then in the late evening hours relieved by an even louder and terribly wrong karaoke singer. The ship-grandpa cuts no ice with it and chugs blithely through the night without drowning.

White and blue. Cirrus clouds on the horizon. Slowly the landscape becomes wider, the air clearer. A week with strong head winds and long cycling days through a completely over-exploited agricultural zone is behind us. We have crossed cities that looked as if cargo planes have dropped a few high-rise buildings, which are now waiting to be inhabited. The old Royal Palace in Shenyang, a lone witness of the past, surrounded by an explosion of concrete. Here, the China of tomorrow is growing. Inner Mongolia recorded the strongest economic growth of the whole of China in recent years. The driving force is the coal mining. The price: Destroyed pasture land, water shortage and social tensions. Black.