June 2014

Shonan

Posted on 2014-06-08 13:20 by rv

The Shonan coast, perhaps my favorite area in the whole world. Well, parts of it. The coastline gets nicer as you travel more westwards. If you head eastwards you will find more pretentious hipsters, more rich assholes and more foreigners. Those categories tend to overlap. It also gets a lot, lot busier, with constant traffic jams on the weekend and all restaurants being overcrowded. Seriously annoying. Enoshima appears to be the focal point of it all. Everything east of Enoshima is overcrowded, rich and ridiculous, everything further west is slightly more normal, for whatever 'normal' means in this context.

The rain that had been falling down constantly for the last 3 days finally stopped. The clouds won't let up, and the rain's expected to start again tomorrow, but at least the late afternoon was free of rain, so I took the opportunity to cycle my newly rebuilt bike around a bit. After taking it out of the bike bag I somehow managed to create a loop in my chain again, but somehow managed to fix it myself this time. I don't even quite know what I did, it just seems that if you spend time fiddling with it you'll eventually discover a magic solution. I'll need a few more tries before I'm able to consciously know what I need to do to fix it. Oh well, got results.

No rain, a flat road, a light bike and a well-oiled chain make for a great ride! The temperature was perfect too, although it's definitely getting more humid lately. I zigzagged a bit around Atsugi and ended up heading towards Hiratsuka and my usual spot on the beach. There were less clouds near the seaside, and even some blueness in the sky. With Oshima in the distance and some nice cloud formations I had a great moment of peace on the beach. No matter where I am in life, if I want peace I will think back to the times that I came to this beach. So many times, day or night, sun or rain, summer or winter. I feel privileged and lucky to still be able to cycle here. The feeling of peace has mostly been internalized already and has taken on a meaning of its own inside my brain, disconnected from the actual physical location. But it feels good to strengthen (recharge?) that feeling with some actual experience.

I haven't had much luck on the accommodations front. Weekly mansions are apparently now called 'flexstay' and are no cheaper than a business hotel. Business hotels get progressively more expensive the closer you get to Tokyo. Even camp sites are ridiculously expensive. I found one in Hiratsuka, but it charges 3000 yen per night for a tent spot. Hell fucking no. Staying at random parks, seasides or river banks is definitely an option, provided that 1) I'm on the move so I won't have to camp at the same spot twice, and 2) it stops raining. Given that I'm about to do PADI and that the rainy season is here, neither seems very likely. Oh well. Something will happen.

何とかなる。

Posted in Spirit of Japan 2

In the end

Posted on 2014-06-06 10:14 by rv

The Shinkansen is an amazing thing. Today was my first time riding it alone. It really is ridiculously fast and smooth. And EXPENSIVE. For some reason there were no non-reserved seat carriages, so I had to buy a reserved seat ticket. Much money was spent, but then you do get 3 hours of pure SPEED. With even more money going towards the business hotel foundation today I am strongly considering finding a camp site in Tokyo for a week or so. But the weather has turned extremely sour: it's been raining all day, muchly.

I'm sad that the cycling part of the trip is over. Well, mostly over, because I still have to get to the airport, and my preferred way would be to cycle there. Cycling means no hassle with carrying luggage into a train or entrusting a third party to potentially break it in transport, while costing you money. But I'm glad that I stopped when I did. The next week would have been terribly depressing if I still had to cycle back, and taking a break week wouldn't have made sense either. I can pretend all I want that it's always spring, but eventually the rainy season will start and the cycling season will end.

The question of whether I regret stopping has popped up in my head. I like to roll it around in my mind because I know that I regret nothing. When you're traveling alone you can follow your whims and do whatever feels right at the moment. There is no hesitation needed and no awkward feelings about the choice you made, unless you already know that you made the wrong one. In this case there was no hesitation in my mind and no insecurity after making the decision. Everything still makes sense. I can see the path through this part of my life extremely clearly, and I can see many potentially good paths happening in the aftermath, when I get back to the UK. It's easy to lose sight of where you're going if you're focused on your job all day every day. A very cute girl once said: "adaptation is part of travel". I'd like to contribute to that with: "traveling creates perspective".

That very same girl also said "You'd better do PADI so we can go diving together, or else don't bother to come back!". So I'll be in the Tokyo area a little longer, studying the PADI book and hopefully discovering cheap places to stay in this ultra-urban area. The final stage of the trip has now begun :D.

Posted in Spirit of Japan 2

Looking for freedom in all the wrong places

Posted on 2014-06-05 12:46 by rv

Today, I quit. And it was good.

Sleeping on the ferry was good and yet bad. Good because I had the entire sleeping hall to myself, and the standard ferry pillow was quite nice. Bad because I didn't get enough sleep since the ferry arrived quite early. I was quite groggy when I passed reception and they told me to wait until all the vehicles had left the ferry. ALL the vehicles! I waited for 45 minutes before I was finally allowed to take my bike out. I was quite annoyed.

Setting off from Hachinohe the weather was near perfect: sun, warmth, blue skies and not much wind. As my annoyance over the ferry faded away I gradually began to realize that I was free. I've already achieved my goal, I've received permission from my wonderful girlfriend to spend more time cycling, and I'm fit enough to go wherever I want. No stress, no goals. Just cycling to wherever I want. As long it's kinda in the right direction to get back.

I was soon punished for feeling this whimsical by a road that kept going up and down with hardly a flat stretch anywhere, and soon the wind picked up and forced me to abandon my newly bought hat, which keeps flapping up at every gust of wind. Perhaps the flipside of the whole freedom/no stress/no goals thing is that my tolerance for bad things goes down. Why face the wind and the hills if you've got no purpose? I don't know if it was mental or physical or both, but I had a pretty hard time today. Pretty hard, but not nearly hard enough to make me give up.

Honshu is just so.. normal. It all feels so beautifully familiar compared to Hokkaido. No more long roads with empty plains and fields of grass: we're back to short stretches of windy roads, rocks everywhere and rice. And don't forget the vending machines, there's so many vending machines, it's like being in cycling heaven. The difference between Hokkaido and Honshu is like the difference between driving a Tesla and driving any petrol-powered car. Anyway, now that I'm back in Honshu, everything just felt so cozy. I knew I wouldn't have to worry about a place to stay any more: I passed at least 5 campsites today, and the mobile wifi thingie has coverage in Honshu so it's fairly easy to discover nearby hotels and camp sites.

After a tough but scenic cycle I arrived in Kuji a bit after lunch time, slightly worn out and with sand my eyes because the wind kept getting stronger and it was rather sandy in the area. I didn't pass a single conbini since leaving Hachinohe, and even Kuji was pretty much a dead town where everything was closed. I found one decent-looking restaurant and had lunch there.

During lunch I checked the weather report, and it wasn't looking good. I already knew that rain was coming, but decided to wait until lunch time to make a decision on how to proceed, because I didn't know when the rain would get close to me. It had gotten quite close already, but what was way worse: the forecast predicts a full week of rain all over the area in Japan I would be cycling through.. My level of enjoyment of rainy day cycling is pretty much zero, so that didn't please me at all. I was planning to take an early stop for the day and then hopefully cycle on the next day after the rain had passed, but it looks like even if I took an extra break day, it wouldn't make much of a difference. The most logical next step my mind came up with was to simply call it quits.

So that's what I did. Having decided that I would cycle no further for the day, I inquired at some hotels for their room rate, but nothing really cheap came out of that. I also asked them if they could accept my bike bag and panniers to be sent to Atsugi, where I would pick it up later. But the kuroneko pick-up points all said that there was a size limit and they weren't sure if my bike bag would be over-sized, and I would have to go the main kuroneko office, which was several kilometers out of town. I didn't really like that, so I went to nearby post office instead. They also said they had a weight limit, but the price was way lower than the one kuroneko quoted, so with that I was convinced to bag the bike today.

That said, I first had to take care of a shitty tiny problem: one of the screws in my rear rack got stuck and won't turn any more, so I went to a nearby bike shop to ask for help. The bike-shop-old-man was very friendly and had it out in no time. He even hammered on the screw in such a manner that I can still use it. Magic. Then he asked for a picture of me and my bike in front of his shop. Apparently a lot of touring cyclists go through Kuji on their way north or south, and he's been taking photos with many of them. Nice one, bike-shop-old-man!

With that done, he told me to go the kuroneko main office just to be on the safe side. It would be a shame if I bagged the bike at the post office but it was too large for them to accept. So I cycled down to the kuroneko office instead, where the people were very friendly and gave me tons of bubble wrap to wrap around my bike's sensitive parts. Bagging the bike turned out to only take 35 minutes, including reorganizing of luggage. The kuroneko people asked me if it was okay to stack stuff on top of the bike, and I had to very firmly tell them that no, that was not possible, and it should be transported standing up. Once they understood that they were very forthcoming and showed me how they would transport it, in its own little cubicle. Excellent. What's not excellent was the price, which turned out way higher than the initial quote I had received. They kindly waited until after I fully bagged the bike to tell me that, so I wasn't about to say no any more..

With the bike out of the way, I put on my silly hat, backpack and Apple-shoulder-bag-which-is-now-my-clothes-bag, and walked back towards the station. It was a good walk, and I felt extremely free, perhaps more free than I felt in the morning after coming off the ferry. It's a strange thing, freedom. You can never quite grasp it. I made it back to the station with just enough time to catch the next train, which is a big thing in Kuji because there's only a train every 2 hours or so. The train was mostly populated by noisy school children, who kept being noisy all the way back, occasionally commenting on the strange gaijin sitting in the train with them. The train followed the exact same path that I'd cycled today, undoing my progress and rewinding my time.

The train ride took a good 2 hours, during which my knees hurt like hell because of the cramped seats. My knees never hurt during cycling, but they always start to hurt in the evening after keeping them in the same position for too long. I guess they can finally have a break now.

Arriving at Hachioji station, I realized that Hachioji station really is just the Shinkansen station, and there's not much else around here, since the real town is centered around Hon-Hachioji station. Out of the three main hotels, one was obviously overpriced, one was full and the last one only had a twin room for which they overcharged. So I wandered a bit further away from the center and came across the 'Ohshita Hotel'. Lovely. A cheapass, sleazy business hotel, but it's cheap. It also doesn't have airconditioning, which sucks. But it's only for one night. Tomorrow I'll take a Shinkansen back to Tokyo/Atsugi. The bike trip may have ended but I'll be in Japan for at least another week. Plenty of time to celebrate the (former)homecoming.

Posted in Spirit of Japan 2

Bye bye Hokkaido

Posted on 2014-06-04 11:20 by rv

I didn't really want to wake up today. The bed was nice, the ride was supposed to be short, so I figured I could lie in, but I somehow naturally got out before 8AM anyway. Today is exciting because I get try out my new really uncool hat!

So I headed out slowly, taking it easy until I got to the outskirts of Sapporo on the road that would eventually lead to Lake Shikotsu, when I spotted another touring cyclist. I caught up and we had a chat while cycling. Jack from Southampton had just begun his journey from Wakkanai and is on his way to Cape Sata, the southernmost point in Kyushu, where I ended my last trip 4 years ago. Since Jack was going the same way, we cycled onwards together and exchanged touring experiences along the way.

At some point I got a bit ahead of Jack and took a break at the roadside, when by chance I happened to examine my rear tire. SUDDENLY, SHOCK! The rubber on the tire was flattened and at many points just completely disappeared, showing the underlying threads. It's been a while since I inspected it this closely, but damn. I'll have to add this to my pre-flight checklist. I made a mental note to find a bike shop in Tomakomai before getting on the ferry.

Just before the lake we reached a junction where Jack was going to veer off to the far side of the lake, whereas I would stick to the road that heads to Tomakomai. We parted and I had a wonderful downhill bit right down to the lake, where I finally spotted some vending machines and a lovely lakeside restaurant. Good timing too, because I had all run out of drinks on this extremely hot day. Must remember to pack more tomorrow, because even my emergency water was nearly finished.

As I examined the vending machine to see what wacky drinks I would buy today, suddenly Jack appeared again.He changed his mind about his route and decided to head to Tomakomai with me. Excellent! So we had lunch together and cycled on for the rest of the day. The lakeside road was flat and offered great views, definitely one of the more scenic roads I've cycled in Hokkaido. The road down to Tomakomai was surprisingly nice in that it offered an actual separate cycling path. It was kinda long though.

In Tomakomai we parted once more at a convenience store, after I had located some bike shops nearby with my mobile wifi. It really is incredibly useful to have internet in these occassions. I cycled to the biggest shop, which was slightly further away, but they couldn't help me because my 26x.1.50 tire size is quite rare. So they pointed me to a giant big shopping mall a few kilometers away, which had a 'bicycle corner'. And indeed, the bike shop corner guy was able to help me out. He had exactly one 26x1.50 tire, and it looks a bit like it could fit on a tank. I was skeptical at first, but didn't really have much choice.

It took a bit less than an hour to fit the new tire, which I spent lounging around in Mister Donut, playing on my laptop. Yeah, that's the touring spirit.. When it was finished I took it out for a spin, and it feels really great. It's somehow more.. robust, now. I didn't get the tank vibe at all while riding, so that's great. Oddly enough, when I took the bike in it was still sunny but getting colder; when I got it back, it was completely overcast, a thick fog had appeared and temperatures had dropped from 32C at the lake to 10C at the seaside. Brrrr.

I headed to the ferry terminal, which was located right behind the shopping mall, but I had to cycle a bloody 2 kilometers the wrong way and then 2 kilometers back to get past a railway track. Shitty town this! Then, when I got there, in the middle of nowhere, full of heavy industry, in really creepy mist, it turns out I couldn't pick up my ticket yet since the counter would open three hours later. So I headed back 2 kilometers the wrong way and then 2 kilometers back again to the shopping mall, where I had dinner and am typing this blogpost right now. The mall is ridiculously generic and might as well have been in the UK. Oh well, at least it's warm and light and comfortable and not creepy and foggy and dark like the ferry terminal.

Hachinohe tomorrow! Rainy season might be coming :(

Posted in Spirit of Japan 2

Sapporo and some random thoughts

Posted on 2014-06-03 09:29 by rv

I have to admit, I've been to Sapporo two times before, and both times I didn't spent a lot of time in the city. All I did was merely hang out around the station and visit the obvious tourist spots. This time was the first time I visited Susukino and the area that the tram loops around in. Damn, what a city! It's quite huge. Susukino is stylish in some areas, sleazy in others, but always full of life. I can't say the copious amounts of bars and clubs suit me, but I find it interesting to see (from the outside) nonetheless. Myself, I'm more of a lonely 'eat your cocoichi curry and then go back to the hotel' kind of guy. For all the city-ness that Sapporo offers, I guess I'll be happy to leave it all behind and discover new camping sites along new seaside roads.

This is also the first time that I'm in Sapporo in good weather, and it does make a huge difference. Yesterday, cycling into town, seeing tons of people outside, on the grass, relaxing, cooling down, barbecueing, having fun, is just so much nicer than arriving in a cold winter town where everyone's cooped up inside. If only London could have some more sunshine days.. If there was a kickstarter for a weather control device I'd totally chip in.

Cycling observation: concentration is a powerful force. In the mornings I am energetic and fully focused. The mind hardly wanders and I notice a lot of things. After a while my mind starts to wander and I think of any random thing totally unrelated to where I'm cycling right now. The wandering usually stops after a good lunch break or if I put on some music to help me stay focused. Eventually, if it's a long, tough day, my mind no longer has the energy to wander. I'm just so tired that all I can do is focus on the road. I know it's time to stop cycling when I stop spotting potholes or rocks, but for 90% of the days I've reached a good stopping point before my mind becomes that sluggish. Not sure where I'm going with this, I guess I'm just observing that it's hard for my brain to concentrate on a single thing for 8 hours a day.

Generic observation: sometimes I do things that I know are bad and/or stupid, yet I do them anyway. For example, passing a conbini despite needing supplies and knowing that there won't be another one any time soon, yet I stubbornly cycle on instead of cycling back for a few seconds. Same thing happens for side roads: some of them obviously lead to nowhere, yet I try them anyway until the end rather than turn back at an earlier point. Vice versa, some side roads are obviously better, yet somehow I don't take them. Why? I have no idea. It's like my brain is stuck on a rail and can't change course. This effect used to be a lot worse, but the GPS and offline maps have lessened it a lot this trip. Also, it applies to food: wandering into a restaurant I know is going to be overpriced or meh, yet somehow not being able to stop myself. "Can't be arsed to exert self-control"-syndrome, I guess.

Hokkaido's heat wave is still full on, and tomorrow is going to be a crazy hot day. So naturally, instead of taking it easy and taking the straight road to the ferry, I'm going to take an indirect route and climb 600 meters to a mountain lake :D. It should be the perfect test for my new very uncool hat. The ferry leaves at 23:59, so it's not like I have anything better to do. Speaking of which, I totally failed at bike maintenance today because the heat made me lazy, and the one decent bike shop that was nearby was closed for inexplicable reasons. So I'll deal with my bike tomorrow at the ferry port. I'll have plenty of time to waste there anyway.

I can only hope that the rainy season will stay away for a couple more weeks..

Posted in Spirit of Japan 2

Bringing it home

Posted on 2014-06-02 08:38 by rv

Cycling feels odd if you've already decided your destination, your route and the amount of effort you're going to expend. It will without a doubt go different than you think. Today I always wanted to be 10 kilometers ahead of where I actually was. The stretch of tunnels that started yesterday continued until well after the camp site, and every time I thought I was done with it, another tunnel appeared. I'm glad I pushed hard yesterday, today would have been terrible if I had to do the entire stretch of tunnels in one day. I modified my rear light to be more noticeable, but had to get off the bike several times to turn it on and off. I also had to get my coat out for the long stretches of tunnel which were really really cold: all the more so because the temperature outside has been creeping up to 25-30 degrees, and it was actually bloody hot today. FINALLY.

The road went up and down a fair bit. I wasn't really bothered by it until around lunch time, when my stomach started feeling weird. I didn't actually identify the feeling as hunger, but it went away after eating a meal, so I guess it was related. After checking the stats on yesterday and today, it turns out that I did half the distance of yesterday, but the same amount of climbing. Tougher than I thought.

I'm not sure what's up with Hokkaido, but every day more and more people are trying to kill me. I've had two more near-death experiences today, this time not even near a tunnel, just out in the open road. Both were identical to yesterday's one: an oncoming car overtaking some other cars without taking cyclists into account.

The first one still scares the shit out of me because I didn't see it coming at all. It was on a steep uphill, and I was climbing, kind of zig-zagging up the hill, still fairly on the side. When I'm climbing I tend to look down in suffrage, and occasionally look up to see how much I've got left. But the next time I looked up, a car was already wheezing past me with not too much space in between.. I didn't even have a chance to avoid it. All I can say is: mother fucker, if I could identify you, I would scare the fucking shit out of you with my gaijin smash.

The second one happened on a flat road right after a downhill, and I was coming down at 30-35kph on a road where cars are allowed to do 40. Yet again, some bastard car slips out of the convoy to overtake, but this time it's far away, the road is fairly wide and I've spotted him well before he reaches me. So I scared the shit out of him by staying in the middle of my lane for as long as possible while keeping eye contact. A bicycle playing chicken with a car, that's probably not the smartest thing I've ever done. It just really pisses me off when cars don't treat me as a proper road user. So, consider this an awareness campaign.

Finally I reached the outskirts of Sapporo, and I figured it would be short ride into the center. But holy crap, Sapporo is huge. It took another 10-15 kilometers of suburban traffic light crawls in the blistering hot sun before I even came close. Finally I got annoyed and took a break in a park. When I continued cycling I happened across a giant outdoor & sports store, which was exactly what I needed. I bought an extremely uncool hat that will hopefully protect from the sun a bit better than my silly sweaty cap, and some tent pegs, because I somehow bent two of them and I was already one short. Also: bug spray. Bugs have been smashing themselves in my face en-masse today, it was just ridiculous. I couldn't cycle 5 minutes without feeling a bug smash into my cheek, nose or eye. The bug spray won't help with that, but at least I can spray it on my panniers and my clothes, because those damn bugs have been hitchhiking a lot.

The ferry is booked! Wednesday I will return to Honshu on an overnight ferry, and then proceed to cycle my way down to Tokyo. Tomorrow is a 'break' day, although I've got a bunch of shopping, bike maintenance and (goddammit) taxes to do. Probably for the best since my face is red as a lobster and could use a day away from the sun..

Posted in Spirit of Japan 2

It's all good.

Posted on 2014-06-02 08:17 by rv

The day did not quite turn out as expected, but mostly for the better. It's been a long, long day. But a great one.

I'm a manic control freak, so I've been checking the weather for various areas in Hokkaido almost every day. The main reason that I didn't choose to go north to Wakkanai via the route that I'm currently going south on, is that it consistenly had the highest wind speeds of anywhere in Hokkaido. The going south bit is a bit unexpected, and I figured I would have to endure it for a mere three days, but I definitely wasn't looking forward to another full day of bracing the winds. Yesterday really took a lot of strength out of me.

Luckily, when I woke up, the sun was shining, the world was warming up and magically there was hardly any wind! Sigh. Just when I was ready to hate Hokkaido completely, a superb day like this shows up.. As I left the ryokan the owner lady came up to me and put a bag full of lunchy goodies in my hands, all carefully wrapped so I couldn't tell what they were. So nice!

Today has been two roads, though kind of only one: the 232 later turns into the 231. It started out hilly with lots of needless ups and downs, then later started hugging the seaside a bit closer, becoming quite flat. There were some towns along the way, and to my great satisfaction they all had conbinis in them. I'm starting to reach civilization again! It's about damn time too, the north was just too boring. The closer I got to Rumoi, the better it got.

Of course a bug just had to fly right into my shirt. I wasn't sure if it exited or went past, so I had to probe my neck area with my finger since I was cycling fairly fast and didn't want to look down. As I pushed and prodded I realized that a) there was indeed some kind of bug there, b) I had disintegrated it with my prodding, and c) the damn thing stung me right in the tip of my index finger before disintegrating. Bleh! The spot was numb for the next hour or so, but I can't see any evidence that I was actually stung..

It took me the whole day yesterday to do 90 kilometers. Today I managed to do it before lunch. There was hardly any wind, and it was coming in from the side, so I wasn't taking advantage of that, but I guess my body was a lot more comfortable today not having to exert so much effort against the wind. It's excellent training, I can tell that my whole body is getting stronger, not just the leg muscles. Meanwile it's happily burning away all the fat. Maybe that explains why I'm not actually that hungry. It's either that or the gigantic lunch the ryokan lady packed for me: it turned to be two massive onigiri, two eggs, a little packet of salt and some pickles. That, combined with some conbini sides, was enough for lunch and dinner.

Since I was fairly early, I skipped the first camp site I had planned to stay at and went on 20 kilometers for the second one I had marked. It was at this point that I realized that I had planned the worst possible cycling road in the entirety of Japan, and I partly Openstreetmap for that because it's just really really crap at indicating anything useful. Google Maps is so much better for Japan, but alas does not allow me to use it in an offline way the way I want it to. Shame, because I'd totally buy a Google Map of Japan for offline use, especially if it had search functionality and/or distance calculation. Which, by the way, my offline Openstreetmap doesn't have either. Too barebone.

The road was terrible for cycling because it was full of tunnels! It started with an easy one, but then another one, and another one, and another one. I've gone through at least 10 tunnels today, most of them longer than 1 kilometer, and the longest one was 3 kilometers long. WHAT THE FUCK. What's the point of having a scenic ocean road if you're going to build fucking tunnels all along the way? Much shitness! They weren't nice tunnels either: no bicycle/pedestrian area, fairly narrow lanes and sometimes very poorly lit. Oh, and there were construction works going on in some of the tunnels, reducing them to one direction, with construction workers flagging and whistling for cars to pass or wait, so I held up a lot of cars while I passed the construction works..

And so we come to my worst moment of the day: I nearly died! To no fault of my own, I might add. My front and rear lights were turned on and clearly visible in the tunnel. My cycling strategy in tunnels is fairly straightforward: if the tunnel is wide and there's space for cars to pass me without straying into the oncoming lane, I stick to the side as much as I reasonably can and give them space to pass. If the tunnel is narrow and there's no oncomers, I also stick to the side. But if the tunnel is narrow and there's oncomers, I cycle right in the middle of the lane to make it very clear to the cars behind me that it's unsafe to pass. I also do this well in advance before they get close to me so they have to react.

But this time my near-death experience was not thanks to a car behind me: there was a row of about 4-5 cars coming towards me, still quite far away, and no cars behind me or in front of me on my lane. Since there were no cars in sight on my end, I cycled near the middle of the lane to ensure that I was clearly visible, but obviously that wasn't enough. Near the end of the convoy of cars appraoching me, one car nipped out and started overtaking the others! What the fuck! She (yes, it turned out to be a woman) should have clearly seen me as my light was on and we happened to be in a clearly lit part of the tunnel! She was approaching rapidly, and for a moment I thought/hoped that after seeing me, she would do the sensible thing: brake, and get back in lane.

BUT SHE DIDN'T DO THAT!! She just kept pushing on in my lane, and I had to get right in the gutter real fucking fast. In an instant fit of rage, I managed to get all the way to the side immediately and stopped my bicycle. I then somehow found the time to shout in anger at her while holding up my middle finger right in her face as she passed my bicycle way too close for comfort. I seriously hope she gets her driving license taken away. I couldn't do much else but fume internally and get on with cycling, so that's what I did. But goddamn, what a shit driver that was. My fuming was so strong I cycled at least 3kph faster in rage for the next 30 minutes.

Many tunnels later, as I reached my second designated camp site, it turned out to be crap. There was nothing else around, and the 'camping' area was some very small patches of grass right at the side of the main road. I was still after-fuming and full of rage energy, so I cycled on even more.

My rage stopped soon after though, when I spotted a beautiful waterfall on the road side. As I stopped to take photos another cyclist came in from the opposite direction: an old man on a Giant Great Journey! I'm not sure if he was entirely sane, though. When he approached me, he started shouting really loudly, and his volume never really went down much. Maybe he was deaf from the tunnels. He asked me "WHERE YOU FROM?! WHERE YOU GOING!?!". I answered him twice in Japanese before he realized that I could speak Japanese, and then things went slightly smoother. The guy was 66 years old! And still doing a cycling trip. I can only hope that I'm as fit as he is when I'm that age. I told him that the road ahead was crap and full of tunnels, and he said that the road behind him was the same, but that there's a really nice camp site another 20 kilometers away. Perfect.

I reached the camp site fairly late, but it did turn out to be beautiful. It's huge, has a conbini in front of it and a perfect view of the nearby mountains. Oh, and it's near the beach, which is just 1 minute away. Absolutely brilliant. If I can keep going to sleep and waking up at places like this, on days like this, I will be a happy man for the rest of my life.

My body hurts all over, but it's a familiar hurt. More of a general tired-ness, really. Yet despite that massive difference in distance and even amount climbed, my body feels better than it did yesterday. I'm not as tired. For some reason, the first thing I did with my 'free' time after finding the camp site was to cycle around town and see if there was an internet signal anywhere for my mobile wifi device. Alas, I'm still not quite back in civilization just yet. But Sapporo is 70 kilometers away. I can reach it early tomorrow, and then see if I can book a ferry for the next day. Or take a break day, which may or may not be mandatory depending on how the ferry booking goes. Oh well, it's all good.

On days like this, it's all good.

Posted in Spirit of Japan 2

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