Woody: Just arrived at next stop, very wet cold day, found a fellow Japanese cyclist going our way. Asked him if he knew of anywhere to stay.
He kindly called the Reyokan (B&B) he was staying and got us both booked in. Big wooden house in the middle of woods. Baggaz: Next to flooded lake near Abashiri. I went to fill my water bottles at the washing up point - one of the few areas of the campsite that wasn't underwater. Maro San was there, the man camped next to us outside the park office. He was washing an onion that he'd found floating in the lake - he seemed quite delighted. He was about 50 and looked quite weathered, wearing a blue buff on his head. We brewed up some coffee and shared it, and some biscuits, with Maro san, sitting in a concrete shelter next to the park office to protect us from the drizzle. An older man came along pointing at our tents and then at the shelter, suggesting that we move our tents in there. Maro could have done that with his Mont-bell geodesic one but not us with our tunnel ones. Something to think about for future lightweight tent purchases. We packed up the last of our stuff and headed off. Stopping for sushi wedges at Hot Chef as has become a bit of a habit. Once again starting the day with a volcano climb in the rain. This was a long one and lasted at least 2 hours - climbing up into the clouds. Where of course we couldn't see any view. I started to get quite cold even while going uphill towards the top, unusual for here, but it had only been 15deg down at the lake so must have been less than 10 at 3000' feet. I put up my jacket hood and the descent started. I was glad of my disk brakes on the steep wet roads. Stuart was saying how his arms ache after squeezing his calipers for 30 mins. As usual, dropping rapidly, one notices sudden increases in temperature as we passed through the thermoclines. But I was still cold when we got to the bottom soaked to the skin. We carried on our route looking for somewhere to warm up and get some coffee but the only place we found was a hotel that didn't start serving for another 4 hours. Further down the road we saw a place that looked a bit like a cafe. It wasn't - it was a council office or something. It was shut anyway but it did have a wide verandah and a bench so we stopped and brewed up some coffee on Stuart's gas stove. While we sat drinking it and warming up a bit a Japanese cyclist appeared - a man in his mid 50s wearing a rucksack and poncho. Looking equally wet. We said hello and offered him some biscuits. He was wide-eyed at the idea that we might be camping and we said we'd rather not if we could avoid it. He was staying at a Ryokan, a B&B type of set up. He phoned, they had space so we set off in convoy - him leading the way along the rain-battered back lanes for a few miles until we turned down a gravel track and found the place -'the trout' in English, as the guy who was part of the couple that owns it is in to fly fishing, as well as cycling. It was a beautiful cedar house that they'd bought as a kit from the USA - it had come over in 3 containers. Hokkaido isn't short of trees so their friends may have found this slightly odd. Maybe they're the wrong sort of trees. It was a comfortable stay - on beds but with thin, futon style mattresses. For ¥6500 each we had dinner, bed and breakfast. A real feast in the evening. We sat around afterwards looking at maps with the other 2 people staying there - the man with the poncho and another man who was car touring about the place in his little white sports car. He lived in Tokyo and had got the ferry from NE Honchu to Otaru, Hokkaido (where we'd stayed in the riderhaus). He was a car insurance salesman. I asked if he'd got a good deal but he said he hadn't really as the company expected him to buy their insurance.
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The road was a bit more interesting now; not just a pancake flat beach-side drag. There were some ups and downs and bends and villages to make life more interesting. Since we hit the coast north of Sapporo there's been a particular character to the villages. Very practical and work oriented. Corrugated iron-roofed houses and sheds, rusted from the sea spray. Accelerating their ageing. The sea usually freezes here and they can get 1m if snow. 'Fun' probably doesn't come into it. There were no cafés, bars, restaurants, just harbours, houses and fish processing sheds.
Little use was made of the land - no crops or animals. It was clear that the people looked to the sea for their livelihood. A sign told us we were in a national park. Easy to make a park when no one wants to do anything with the land anyway. The rain had stopped by the time we got to our planned campsite (kyampu-jo in Romanji). It was on a small headland with an impressive glass 'observatory' at the end looking out to sea. The woman at the registration desk told us the set up and we paid our ¥400 fee each and went to look for a pitching spot. But then the rain started again. Our stuff was still wet from the previous night so we decided to rent a cabin instead. A lovely sea green wooden hut which was empty other than a carpeted platform. It seemed like paradise to us though. Well worth the ¥2200 (£16) upgrade fee. Much cheaper than the more basic huts at applecross. We laid out our stuff and I hung up a fishing line to dry things on. X We cooked food on the stoves as usual, except this time we were cooking under shelter. Rice with beef or veg. And nibbles of fish with nuts and dried octopus tentacles. Then, as usual, we went to the onsen. Onsens are community bathing centres.
They're often part of a community centre which could have meeting rooms, a cafe, lounge area. They're often in hotels but non guests are welcome to use them and the price of one in a hotel is about the same as one in a community centre. ¥4-500 Tb continued.... but post any questions and we will try to answer. Baggaz I was a bit despondent when we left camp this morning. My sleeping bag was wet after the rain and I'd not slept well due to the 'will my tent be blown down' angst. We'd passed the most northerly point of Japan but still had more than half the journey to do and most of the hills, and it was still raining.
For breakfast we'd had some pig muscle and onion dumplings (I thought they'd be veg or sweet) which weren't entirely cooked. At least they were prepared out of the rain on the concert stage in the middle of the campsite. As we rode south east along the coast the scenery was very monotonous. 10km straights along a back road with the grey-brown sand beach to our left and a broad stretch of bamboo and knot-weed until the low hills on the horizon. My left knee started to hurt and I imagined parasite larvae hatching out of the pig meat and starting to burrow through my gut mucous. There was a strong side wind and a rook took off from an electricity post and tacked along beside us wondering if we might be of use. We were still cycling in drizzle when we stopped for lunch at 11.30. I took some ibuprofen and we went into the Hot Chef we'd parked outside. Hot Chefs are part of the Seicomart convenience store chain. Some have seats. This one did. You choose a meal; I had noodles, rice, salmon and pickles and then they microwave it for you. It's not quality cooking but it's great if you're hungry. I had it with a sushi wedge, a chocolate pastry and 3 coffees. Woody had a curry. I zoned out a bit and looked at maps. I didn't want to leave. My knee stopped aching, the rain stopped and the world seemed a better place. We headed out to hit the road again, only to catch up with the rain 20 minutes later. Safe arrival at camping site next to a lake near Abashiri, but a long day covering 89 miles It's the lake to the south west of Abashiri and it is a sort of campsite except that most of it is underwater due to the lake having become bigger than the space allotted to it. So we pitched our tent across the road outside what looks like a park office. It was shut. There was some grass and a Japanese bike tourist had pitched his tent there. Just about to head off. Today we'll get to the most northerly point of Japan. Wakkanai is the town in the bay just next to that headland. We've heard there's a bike shop there which is good as we both need some brake pads. If we can't get disk pads then I'll have to get a third set of brakes fitted - front v brakes probably.
............................................................................................................................................ We have now arrived safely at the place where we are. Today we passed the most northerly point in Japan and the half way point on our escapade. As we left camp this am I was feeling a bit anxious as my brake pads were very worn and a). Being an eejit I hadn't brought any spares and b). I thought it unlikely that any bike shop up here would have any. We rode out of town in the beautiful sunshine, about 20degrees at 7am and headed north with a gentle trailing breeze which picked up as the morning developed. The roads here are straight and long. 10km without as much as a kink. We stopped at waikaido and asked for directions to the jitenshaya (bike shop) from a woman who was waiting a pelican crossing. She missed her turn twice while she explained and then wrote the name of the place in kanji. We followed the directions that the woman had given us and found the place right on the Main Street. I went inside and shouted conichiwa and sunimassem a few times and an older woman appeared who shouted to someone in the back office something along the lines of 'you've got customers'. A man aged about 60 appeared in grey trousers and a greyed white singlet. 'Shoes' we said and pointed at our brakes. He made much more encouraging noises than the guy in the last place and then sprang into action. He pulled a trolley with his tools out on to the pavement and started dismantling Woody's brakes; fitting new pads within a few minutes and giving the callipers a bit of a service. Then he turned to mine. It was a bit of a struggle for him to get the pads out but Woody pulled on something and out they came, and were fine! Basically the same as before we'd left. I checked the back pair and they were fine too. Great result. Although part of me had been looking forward to having a little third brake on the front. Having achieved pad confidence we went off looking for food. Wakkanai felt like a small city with some multi-storey buildings and an industrious atmosphere. Much more so than some of the small harbour towns we've passed through. I saw a shop with a Russian flag outside and writing in Cyrillic. We stopped and I went inside to ask if he knew of any Russian cafés. I didn't know the words though and asked for a russky ramenya (noodle house). He told us where to head. Before leaving we looked around his shop - all sorts of stuff, some of it with a vague Russian theme. They had 4litre of whisky for £50! In a plastic bottle. We bought biscuits and chocolates. The Ramenya was easy to find and we had a massive lunch. I had seafood with rice along with seaweed and ramen in stock. Woody had a platter of stuff with sweet and sour chicken being the centrepiece. Then we went to find somewhere for a sleep, as it was 32deg and too hot to cycle at that time of day, and found a small park where we crashed out on picnic benches for an hour. But we had to move on. Between there and here we saw: Deer - quite big but with pale spotty backs - Sitka maybe? Foxes - with bigger ears than in the uk. A Dutch guy who'd cycled to Japan via Iran and Malaysia. Lots of japanese bike tourists including a woman who'd cycled from Osaka on a pink sit up and beg bike with panniers held on with old inner tubes. Impressive stuff! After arriving here we got camp set up, cooked food - prawns, noodles, spring onions, peppers along with mugs of Chilean Sauvignon blanc. It was a bit mosquitoey. Then we went to find the onsen in the hotel. It was a good one - with soap, shampoo, conditioner and a particularly hot main tub. I annoyed an older man by accidentally spraying him when I was washing my armpits. We sat in the sauna and watched live baseball on the TV. Toilets!
There is a great variety of toilets in Japan, at least in our experience. Ranging from the very elaborate to very basic. At the elaborate end of the gamut one benefits from a heated seat and choice of bottom washes - standard or 'woman' (at least I think that's what the symbol said). One can choose the pressure of the wash too, although not the temperature, at least not that we've experienced. The flush mechanism can be linked in with a small sink on top of the cistern so that when you flush the toilet, the tap runs for you to wash your hands. A good idea except that there's often no soap, or sometimes no dryer, even though the toilet itself might be quite elaborate. Mid range toilets are much like ones in the UK. Then we have the 'traditional' variety - ie squatting. These are generally arranged so that you face the direction you came in and the pipe work of the cistern acts as a handrail. So different from the Indian style where you face the door. Most of these have been ceramic but one campsite - at Toya lake just had the hole opening up to a mound of droppings. Definitely not somewhere to take your young toddler - they'd fit down the hole far too easily. Otaru station toilets had a choice of western and squat ceramics. The only available cubicle when I visited was the squat one. I guess that smartphone toilet time is so much less risky on a western arrangement. We've not found any musical toilets yet but I'm hopeful. Last night in the tent I was reading for a bit before sleeping - a bit of the Japanese grammar book on verbs and then The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Murakami Haruki - recommended. I put the iPad down, lay back on my mat and a frog fell on my face. It was only a small one - just a cm or so, but I could have done without it. It landed just above my right eye and then hopped off again. I quickly evicted it once I'd found my torch so I could find it. Today we saw a dead snake on the side of the road. It was bluish gray and about 60cm long. It would be nice to keep the inner part of the tent open to help with ventilation but I don't want a snake crawling in to keep warm. Baggaz This morning I woke up just before 6. S said he'd been awake since about 2. There were 2 other people in the room other than us - lying on their futons in their clothes. While I thought about getting up 2 others came in and crashed out; a man who was about 60 and then another of about 25. They were still dozing when we finally left at about 8.30
But first we'd gone out to look for breakfast. Most places were shut, it was just before 7. But we found a small backstreet market with some cafés and had fish (mine was like kipper) which the owner heated up on a gas ring. That was served with bean curd soup, rice, pickled radish, another pickle and a small glass of cold black coffee. We had to go to Burger King at the station to get a hot coffee. mmmmmmmm Baggaz: Arrived safely at the place we are now. A camp ground on some high ground above paddy fields. It was hard to find and didn't seem much like a camp site. More of a Shinto meeting area or something.
It's a lovely spot other than the mosquitoes. We have repellent but they always find the gaps and can extend their probosces through socks. I can see the plough through the trees. When we arrived and unpacked little frogs came to see us and hopped over our stuff. Now I can hear their larger relatives croaking from the ornamental pond over to my right. We've just had a fine meal of udon noodles, squid, chilli paste, beansprouts and little yellow mushrooms. It's 8pm and it's bedtime! Today we're heading north, through Sapporo and up the valley of the river that runs through it. There's a campsite near the headwaters of the river that we'll try and get to to stay tonight. A typhoon's currently passing northwards along the east coast of the island which is why it's a bit damp here this morning. But the weather forecast (which I was watching while in the sauna at the onsen last night) said that it should become merely showery by 9am and then be dry and sunny from 11ish. Here's hoping! Baggaz Day 1: 6pm
Just arrived at camp spot. Next to Caldera Lake. It's basically the municipal camp site for the village. Raining almost the entire day and had a 3000' climb. 78 miles today. A warm 25 degree or so and good asphalt! Baggaz x |