Great weather, great roads, great people

What a stark contrast to yesterday. When I left Iwamizawa the sun was out in full force, there was hardly any wind and also hardly any traffic. I put on some music, dressed appropriately to stay at a comfortable temperature and started my journey towards Asahikawa.

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The road was not bad at all today. Route 12 provided some nice views of rice fields and mountains in the distance. Somehow the grass level got less and now there's more rice fields again. Oh well, all the better. Add in some bridges, wide roads with plenty of room for cyclists and today's ride was pretty damn good. Only exception to this was an hour-long period before lunch when clouds appeared briefly and the wind really picked up. That slowed and cooled me down a fair bit, but after lunch things returned back to brilliant again.

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I thought I saw an old friend this morning! The Chinese dude I met 4 years ago while cycling around Japan, who was traveling around in a self-built camper van. I saw a camper van that looked exactly like his go past me, and since it's self-built, there's really not many like it. I waved and shouted at it but he just drove on, too fast for me to catch up. I don't have his contact information either so I guess we'll never know if it was him. Oh well.

After lunch I hopped back onto route 12, which followed the majestic river into the city. Soon a tunnel appeared, and a smaller road that went off to the side that looked like it went around. I went on to the smaller road and suddenly found myself face to face with four gaijins! It turns out they were English teachers living in Asahikawa for many a decade. It was very good to talk to people in real life, in English, for a while. They were all very familiar with the territory and provided me with some great wisdom on cycling routes. It turns out I chose the most boring way to get north, as either coast would have been more scenic. Oh well, I had good reason to avoid coastlines after many a day in Honshu and the south of Hokkaido, but I'm planning to head to the coast again before reaching Wakkanai.

They also instilled new confidence in me about camping. Hokkaido is quite empty, and apparently nobody really minds if you camp near a riverside somewhere. It's information I kind of already knew, since I've done plenty of riverside camping in Honshu on previous trips, but hearing it from someone else gave me a good confidence boost. Thanks for the extra push, guys.

The remainder of the road into Asahikawa followed the river, but split off from the car road and became a dedicated cycling path. It was an excellent route with excellent weather: quite possibly the best cycling experience I've had in Hokkaido. I must seek out more of these roads.

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On that note, I've decided not to push too hard to get to Wakkanai in 3 days. I've got time to make detours, and with my newfound confidence in camping I should be able to do some more discovering along the way. Hopefully the weather will hold up..

Mini thoughts:

  • My shoe is disintegrating.
  • There is no end to civilization in Japan, not even in Hokkaido. The thin layer holds up right until the end.
  • My philosophies about touring cycling appear to be quite unique. I've never met anyone why cycle tours like I do.
  • Don't expect today to be like yesterday. Expect it to be like tomorrow.

Posted in Spirit of Japan 2

Into the heart of Hokkaido

This morning began my half day cycle to Iwamizawa, and it began in a fashion that is becoming typical for the Hokkaido phase of this trip: miserably.

The sky was covered in dark clouds and it was cold. I'm tempted to call it the first genuinely cold day of the trip. I had set up an easy route with some secondary roads as alternatives along the way. I marked the secondary roads because I thought that it would  be sunny so it would be nice to do a more casual/scenic route. The secondary roads did turn out to be useful, but not for that reason.

Since it was anything but sunny, I initially started out on the main roads to make some good progress, but I soon had to vacate the area because the trucks and the wind were very much not in my favor. With massive crosswinds it was difficult to keep a narrow driving line, and the roads themselves weren't really wide enough to allow cars to pass if I claimed half of the car lane. To make matters worse, in Hokkaido, dump trucks are not the only trucks that are assholes. The really massive trucks appear to have zero patience for cyclists on this island, and they pass you by way too close for comfort and at ridiculous speed differences. The massive gusts of wind they generate are just plain dangerous, so I could no longer uphold my "never lose your place on the road" rule today. I guess there have to be exceptions to every rule..

Side note: I wonder if there's a war going on between truckers and cyclists. I can imagine racing cyclists to be.. well, assholes, especially towards trucks, and I guess both sides are battling for the same turf: the slow lane. I'm not sure I like being caught up in that. Some trucks really cut me off aggressively or pass me by at breakneck speeds that any sane person could see would be dangerous to the cyclist. So either truckers are really fucking dumb, or they really hate cyclists.

Back on topic: the secondary roads were decent, yet not very scenic. The world I witnessed today was flat, grassy and full of farms. Add to that the cold and the clouds, and even a couple of canals, and it's as if I'm cycling in Holland. As I headed further north, away from the largest city but on the narrow stretch of civilization that connects to the second-largest city, I noticed a lot of European architecture. Newly built farms and houses often look quite similar to those in the Netherlands or the UK. Fuck that. If I wanted to cycle in the Netherlands, I would have cycled at home. Give me back my Japan!

With the sky getting even darker and some drops of rain appearing, I finally reached a road that was wide enough to make progress on, and was in the perfect direction to take full advantage of the tail wind. I sped up to 35kph, decreasing the speed difference with the trucks that were passing me, and managed to make great progress for half an hour or so. Then the road changed direction and narrowed, and I had to go on to the sidewalk and seriously lean in against the wind to avoid falling down.

It really was one of those days where the only traveler's luck you'd get is bad luck. During a break stop I suddenly noticed that my rear reflector has disappeared. I guess it must have broken off when I parked it somewhere. Later, after going over some bumps, my saddle came loose and starting shaking about, so I had to stop, reposition the saddle and tighten it again. Everything is showing signs of wear. The gears that were perfectly adjusted only a week ago are already getting out of sync again, though I'm managing to keep them adjusted this time. My winter gloves are slowly unraveling, with my right hand's index finger bit completely gone. It's quite handy actually for controlling my phone while cycling.

I arrived in Iwamizawa in the early afternoon. After cycling around for half an hour and confirming that there was absolutely nothing of interest here, I checked into my hotel and started planning. Because I've decided to go north via Asahikawa I get to stay in the thin layer of civilization for 2 more days. But already I feel that I'm moving from outpost to outpost. The cities are small here, and it only takes you 5 minutes to cycle out of their sphere of influence and back into the 'wild'. The contrast between the cities, which are still so typical Japanese, and the countryside, which changes completely every day, is fascinating. In Honshu the cities tend to be centered around the train station, but in Hokkaido the core of the city seems to be the major road that's running through it.

Nayoro is the last frontier before I reach the north. In what will surely be a terrible day, I have to cycle 120 kilometers through the mountains and to the seaside, after which it's likely that I'll camp out at a lake and be freezing cold. From there it's only 90 kilometers to Soya Misaki, the northernmost point of Japan, and Wakkanai, from where I'll be starting my return journey.

Speaking of which, I think I have a decent strategy on how to get back to Atsugi. My mind has been restless about the return trip for a long time, and every strategy I thought of just didn't feel quite right. But today I thought of a plan that feels very right. I'll let it grow in my head for a few days to see if it's viable.

With the right plan comes clarity.

Posted in Spirit of Japan 2

Noboribetsu and the coastal road to Chitose

Right, now that I've destroyed by traveler's credibility by writing a post about how pre-booking business hotels takes the spirit out of traveling: I pre-booked a business hotel today! Yesterday I planned to do about 80 kilometers, and booked a hotel for that distance. Then after booking it I realized that Noboribetsu, the famous onsen town, lies on the way, and I wanted to see the valley of hell. There's a tourist road that does exactly that and also goes past the crater lake Kuttara. It was at least a 20 km detour though, but I decided to wake up early and do it anyway. I guess a pre-booked hotel does give you the peace of mind you need to be okay with arriving at your destination late.

Noboribetsu was slightly less than 20 kilometers from Muroran so I arrived there quite early. I cycled up a little and then found a conbini that would take most of my luggage. Since the trip around the valley of hell and crater lake is circular, I could leave the luggage there and make the hard climbs a little easier. Lesson learned: the medium climbs become a lot easier, the hard climbs are only a little bit easier. Still, I could feel the difference easily.

The valley of hell was, in typical Japanese tourist spot fashion, full of Chinese people, shouting loudly at each other. How stereotypical. Fortunately I arrived early so there weren't too many tourists yet. It really is quite an incredible sight to see, the valley of hell. Or rather: to smell. It was a very pungent smell of sulfur, yet quite clearly not that of fart. It just smelled strongly like onsen, really. It was amazing to see the water actually bubble up and boil at certain places.

The crater lake turned out to be rather uninteresting. There was absolutely nothing there except for one odd mountain hut right at the edge of the lake, which seemed semi-abandoned. I quickly cycled on, and up an expected hill, and went back to the conbini to fetch my luggage and have breakfast.

It was already around 11 by then and I had hardly made any progress towards Chitose, my day's destination. The main road was utterly boring. There was really nothing vaguely interesting at the road sides or even in the distance, and the road was as straight as you can imagine a road in Japan to be. It was completely flat, two lanes in each direction and a wide area on the side that was perfect for cycling. The wind was pushing me in the right direction, and with every passing truck I received a fresh draft of wind and a few kph's extra, so I decided to push myself a little to make up for my little detour.I managed to do a cruising speed of 35-37kph near-continuously for over an hour, so after taking into account traffic lights and that time the stupid truck passed me so closely my hat blew away, I ended up with an average speed of over 30kph. I'm quite proud of myself ^_^. That's another personal achievement unlocked during this trip.

I tried to do some actual truck drafting by sticking with a big truck after it left the traffic light, but despite my best efforts I just couldn't keep up with the acceleration, even with creative gear use and standing on the pedals. Oh well, 35kph is fast enough.

The road started to become less desolate over time, and eventually I rolled into Tomakomai, spotted a Sukiya and had lunch. After lunch I was kind of fed with the road, so I zigzagged around a little at lower speed, but always ended up coming back to the main road. I tried cycling on the sidewalk, I really tried. But it's just impossible. The bumps are horrendous. I can cycle at a relaxed pace between 15-20kph, but I have to go down to <10kph every time there's a side street or elevated bit or bump or something else that makes you slow down. It's just really frustrating and a lot easier to pop back onto the main road and do 25kph constantly instead. Cycle paths are a thing Japan really doesn't get right at all. They could really use some help from the Netherlands.

Despite the tough last couple of days, I felt completely comfortable in the saddle today. Sure, there's minor annoyances, such as back ache and minor butthurt every time I hit a bump, but it's all easily tolerable. Today I realized that none of these pains are going to prevent me from cycling, and neither will my muscles or my stamina. I'm fit enough to be on the bike as much as I want to be, and that's a really powerful feeling. A sense of freedom and at the same time a sense of coming home.

I guess things are going a bit too easy lately. The weather's good, the accommodation is pre-booked, the roads are flat and the wind is in the right direction. I found a kaiten sushi place fairly easily tonight and my conbini total was exactly 777 yen. Food is affordable, accommodation is affordable even in the semi-worst case, and I am loving Japan as a country to travel in. I'm back in proper civilization now that I'm in the area around Sapporo and heading to Asahikawa, I might as well take advantage of it while I still can. The route is clear. Wakkanai is near. Have no fear!

Posted in Spirit of Japan 2

An open mind

I'm not sure what I'm trying to write. There's probably no point to this post. Maybe it's advice to myself.

Let's start with traveler's luck: it's that glorious moment when either you've not planned properly or your plans just didn't work out, and yet something happens that magically makes everything alright again. The best example I've got of this is on my very first cycling trip in Japan: we finished our cycling day quite late, couldn't find a camp site and then decided to go to a hilltop onsen instead since we were there anyway. The place also happened to have a restaurant so we had dinner there too. After dinner it was already pitch black outside, and we asked the owner if he knew any place nearby where we could camp. And the owner just let us stay right there, next to his restaurant/hotel, to put up a tent right there. The next morning we woke up with the most beautiful view of the tiny islands scattered around the area.

Another great example was when I reached the southernmost point of Kyushu. There happened to be a free-of-charge camp site right there next to a lovely bay. Due to pure serendipity I happened to arrive there just as two other traveler's arrived too: one by car, one on foot. We hit it off great and traveled around together for the next few days.

It's not always good, of course. In my case I often/sometimes run into trouble when not pre-booking a place to stay. I'd say for those times that you can't magically find a nearby hotel or camp site, it's 50/50: either you end up staying in a bad location (overpriced hotel or unsafe/noisy/dangerous tenting) or you end up being rescued by a local who either shows you the perfect spot him/herself or points you in the right direction.

It takes the right mindset to forget the bad days and remember the good ones, and to push your luck more in the future. It depends on your personality too, and might be difficult to change. You have to be somewhat in your comfort zone to give luck a chance. If not in your comfort zone, then at least you should have made some hypotheses about how far out of your comfort zone you are going to be if everything turns to shit, and if you're going to be ok with that.

In my case, my comfort zone has two edges: safety/security (which is a non-issue in Japan not even worth discussing), and cold. I've had some really cold nights in a tent in the past, mostly due to a crappy sleeping bag, and I've also been freezing cold from cycling in cold weather and working up too much of a sweat. It's nice to be (somewhat) prepared for the cold, but in Hokkaido the worst-case scenario is that you can't find a camp site or hotel and will have to sleep somewhere in the middle of nowhere, out in the open. Then you'd better hope it doesn't rain..

Modern technology enables you to eliminate luck from the equation entirely. Thanks to portable internet devices you can have internet all over the country you're traveling in. You can pre-book hotels on the fly, you can map search anything you want. There's no need to ask locals, no need to leave things to the last minute, everything can go as smooth as you want it to go. My advice: don't do it. Don't rely on technology. If possible, don't even bring the internet with you if you can avoid it. If you have it then the temptation to use it is just too easy.

I myself am a terrible example of this; during my current trip I've only done unplanned camping once, and it was a disaster. Every other time I pre-searched camp site locations before setting off, knowing how far they'd be. Most of the time on the days that I didn't have a hotel pre-booked or an endpoint for the day decided, I ended up in hotels rather than camping. It's difficult to take a chance when you have a certain positive (or at least neutral) outcome available to you. You can't swing the traveler's luck roulette wheel if you're staying in business hotels every night. Try a camp site or a youth hostel. Talk to people. Go on adventures.

Perhaps I'm being too careful. Perhaps I'm just acting my age according to my already un-adventurous personality. Perhaps after I've reached Wakkanai I'll feel re-entitled to a new adventure. All in all, this post is an assessment of a trip that is not yet finished. The moments that will be remembered and the moments that will be forgotten are not all accounted for yet.

Posted in Spirit of Japan 2 , Thoughts

Muroran

Yet another weird name appears. Well, weird to those familiar with Japanese names. Muroran, it appears, is derived from an Ainu word, hence the unfamiliarity. Before delving into Muroran's oddness, let's recap the day.

I was expecting it to still be raining when I woke up, but fortunately it was only slightly cloudy/foggy and even reasonably warm! I set off maybe a half hour later than usual. I'm trying to maximize my 'warm daylight' time. So far I've been getting up as early as possible to give myself a safety margin in case I can't find a place to sleep or am delayed for whatever reason. But now I kind of know what I'm capable of, even when mountains hit, and since the temperatures are dropping as I go further north, it's time to lose a bit of that margin in favor of higher temperatures.

My expectation for most of the day was yet another long, straight, boring road along the coast with nothing of interest along the way. For the first hour or so that turned out to be quite true. The road was very wide, with a cycling area easily wide enough to let trucks pass at full speed. Which led me to an astounding thought: trucks are my friends now! With no traffic around me in the open plain of the road and its surroundings I topped out at around 23-24kph as a stable speed. Whenever a truck would pass, its wake would push me along very nicely and easily up to 27kph for a minute or so. If several trucks passed in sequence I could easily go faster (at the same level of exertion). A new discovery. I should write this stuff down.

Fortunately this truck drafting didn't last long because the road turned into something more interesting: a mountain road! I hadn't seen one of those in a while, and was also still slightly cold so was actually looking forward to climbing a bit. It was a good road to climb. Never too steep, very much surrounded by nature with no human intervention anywhere. There were some narrow tunnels, but not enough traffic to make it an issue. And the best part: the downhills were smooth, wide and windless! I really enjoyed the downhills today. It hasn't been often on this trip that I could go down a mountain at speed without having to worry about road conditions, traffic, wind or falling off. Excellent.

This type of road continued for a while until I reached Date, after which things became a bit more humanish. More buildings, more things and a really cool bridge that I was unfortunately not allowed to cycle because wind. I cycled on and reached Muroran around 3PM. Just the right time to find a hotel and do some laundry. Finding a hotel turned out to be a near-problem, as 3 out of the 4 hotels that I marked were fully booked. Not quite what I expected on a random Thursday in Hokkaido. Fortunately the fourth one had a room left.

After laundry I headed out for a walk around town. The town is.. peculiar. It shares that same feeling of all the other towns in Hokkaido: the typical Japanese amenities (chain hotels, restaurants, shops) are kind-of there, but are very few. It's hard to tell if that's because they're only just up-and-coming or if they used to be there and are now all shut down because everyone moved away. Muroran definitely has that abandoned feel to it, despite being an active town with lots of people around. It's an odd contradiction. It's like the town is getting ready to disappear but the people living in it haven't realized it yet. Someone else wrote a more detailed blogpost about Muroran detailing the odd feeling that this place gives you.

There's more. The heavy industry areas look fascinating on Google Maps but seem hard to reach since they're blocked off by train routes. The buildings look massive and impressive from the street. Bigger than anything else around. Also of interest are the odd people warehouses; a Russian-like architecture of disinterest. I wonder how these got here; did the Russians actually build them in some distant past, or did the Japanese when this was just a mining town? As the aforementioned blogpost confirms, Google is of no help and the English-language web can only guess at the reason.

I managed to control myself enough to walk past the only 'default' restuarants available, the KFC. But as I walked on I realized that I had precious little choice left. Suddenly I noticed a picture of an unagi don (eel on rice) and walked in to a random restaurant. It turned out to be one of those really local places, run by old people on the side cause they have nothing better to do. I always find these places kind of awkward because I always end up being the only one there. The wife took meticulous care to provide with a nice cup of tea, a pair of chopsticks and a wet hand towel. By the time the menu finally came out and I saw the prices it was just too awkward to walk out of there without eating anything. That said, they really only had two choices. So I ended up paying 2200 yen for some eel because I felt too awkward to walk out without ordering anything. I played with my phone the whole time in silent protest.

That kind of underlines what I don't like about these towns: they don't offer you the choice of an anonymous meal. If you go to KFC or any chain restaurant, or even one of those local places that actually has customers, you can just eat and be left alone or even leave if you don't like things, and it's all fine. The local places are nice if you're in the mood to start a conversation. I had a great time at a local fish shop in Yudanaka, where I was the only customer and had a good chat with the owner about tourism and the history of the city. But if the owner is not talkative then you just sit there feeling awkward for half an hour. Side note: the soba place I visited for lunch was also a local shop and was bloody brilliant. Curry soba is a thing, and it is awesome. Also, the soba place actually had customers and the owner didn't try to rip you off. So there. I should've just gone for that KFC..

I'm doing a good pace lately. I can do 80 kilometers easily with some mild ahead-planning to sort out potential hotels or camp sites, saving me time at the end of day that I would otherwise spend searching for places where I don't get kicked out of. I made an exception today and reserved a hotel in Chitose. Tomorrow is going to be sunny and nice, and the area I'm heading into is quite built-up so no chance of camping. Also, it's a Friday, so without a reservation I might end up having to sleep in a park somewhere. After Chitose I'm hoping to head north without passing through Sapporo. I've seen Sapporo twice now, and it's not worth the detour to visit a third time. I think I can be in Wakkanai before the end of May. Awesome! :D

Posted in Spirit of Japan 2

Tra la la la Oshamanbe! Cha cha cha!

Seriously, what a ridiculous name for a place. The only odder place around is called Kutchan, which I'm sure all you Dutch speaking people will appreciate. I somehow made it to the onsen town of Oshamanbe today despite heavy rain. I was originally planning to stay at a place called Yakumo, but it was so utterly depressing that I cycled on despite the rain. The business hotel that Google Maps said existed, didn't. The only other hotel I found, the 'royal' hotel, was rather closed down. What a shit place.

Hotel boo Hotel boo

The rain got worse and worse today. It was just cloudy in the morning when I set off from Hakodate. It was dark, desolate but surprisingly not that miserable thanks to my neck warmer and winter gloves. With them on I was able to cycle very comfortably without wearing a coat. I did finally put my coat on after passing through the tunnel that connects Hakodate to the inland bay thing on the east coast. By then it had gotten a bit colder so the downhill and subsequent flat road were quite comfortable as well.

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I found a roadside restaurant, one of the few ones that wasn't totally deserted and abandoned, and managed to eat a decent lunch, although I was surrounded by smokers. There was pretty much no separation between the smoking area and the non-smoking area. It was quite disgusting and kind of took my appetite away. I hope that's not a sign of things to come for Hokkaido restaurants.

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All hell (slowly) broke loose after lunch. It had started raining, and it would only get worse. I reached Yakumo without too much difficulty, but after cycling around pretty much the entire town and deciding there was nothing even remotely of interest there, I decided to cycle through to the next town. In the rain. The 30 kilometers to Oshamanbe were utterly depressing and miserable. With the sole exception of one tiny town bit including a post office and a local store, there was nothing, absolutely nothing in-between. No vending machines. No convenience stores. Not even a place to stop at the side of the road because there was a massive ditch at the road side. Nothing to do but keep pedalling on until you reach your destination.

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At this point I had given up on proper heat management techniques and just kept my coat on all the time. Today I tried to take it easy and not work up a sweat while wearing my coat, but I completely gave up on that for the last stretch since the rain cycling was just wearing me out, and all I wanted was to reach a hotel as quickly as possible. Oh well. Sprint to the finish, I guess.

I'm not sure what to do tomorrow. Take the easy way and spend an extra day to get to Sapporo via the coastal road, or take a chance and two mountain days, which might be interesting and different after all that seaside. The mountain stage to Sapporo does seem to climb a lot though. Hmm...

 

Posted in Spirit of Japan 2

Impressions: Olympus PEN E-PL5

Perhaps the title is not entirely representative of this post, since this is my first micro four-thirds camera. I used to always take my compact camera, a Canon S90 and later the S110, with me wherever I went. For more serious trips I would take my Canon 50D and later the 450D and at least a mid-range zoom and ultrawide lens. For my current trip I had planned to travel light and just take the S110, but I had a chance to get an E-PL5, so I took that instead.

Therein lies my first and biggest mistake, as I've come to realize during this trip: even the smallest mirrorless interchangeable lens camera is not a replacement for a compact camera. Micro four thirds is a replacement for big and bulky DSLRs but it can never get as small as a tiny compact camera. I could slip my S110 in my bicycle's frame pouch or in the top zipper of a pannier for easy access. You could never do that with the PL5, unless you were using a very thin prime, which would make it was less effective than a compact.

That said, I'm very impressed with the PL5's technical abilities. It's miles and miles better than my Canon 450D, especially in low light. The menus are quite easy to use and nothing about the interaction feels cheap, except for one thing: the entire camera locks up while it's processing the photo you just took. I'm not sure if it's the noise reduction or just writing the massive jpegs to card, but the camera is basically unusable for a few seconds after each shot, so you can't quickly change ISO, exposure compensation or even press the play button to review the shot you just took. The one thing I miss from my S90/S110 is the ability to zoom in on a photo via a lever instead of via push buttons, but it makes perfect sense that there's no levers on the PL5, since the zooming is controlled on the lens.

Speaking of lenses: the kit lens, a 14-42mm zoom, is not too bad, but not brilliant either. I often find myself wishing for more range at the zoomy end, and this thing has a serious habit of popping up lens flares whenever there's street lights or other bright points of light in/near the image.

I wanted to get an ultrawide for this camera and eventually narrowed down the choice to either the Panasonic 7-14mm and the Olympus 9-18mm. The Olympus is pretty much made for the camera: it offers a similar collapsible design as the kit lens and is extremely small and light. The Panasonic has way better specs and a better range, but it's also larger, heavier and features a ridiculous bulbous front that would be difficult to pack and stow away. It just didn't seem in the spirit of micro four thirds, so I went for the Olympus 9-19mm instead. I have not been disappointed, but I haven't been overwhelmed either. It's a simple lens that does a good job. Nothing more, nothing less.

The PL5 is a really good camera, and micro four thirds is a really good format that will only get better as technology improves. I really have no need for my old Canon DSLR and lenses anymore, so will probably be selling those. I got into micro four thirds because of a desire to move away from my Canon S110, which I was just horribly disappointed by. Canon has not innovated at all in the S series ever since the S90 came out. Image quality has hardly improved and usability has even decreased with their shitty implementation of a touch screen and removal of the GPS module. Bad moves all around by Canon, and it doesn't look like they'll improve any time soon. That said, micro four thirds is not the answer to my issue with Canon's compact cameras. I still want to get a better compact camera, eventually. But I can wait and play with my PL5 until something comes out that really catches my eye.

Bottom line: if you love using a DSLR but are not a pro, just get rid of it and get a micro four thirds camera. But don't throw away your compact camera just yet.

Posted in Photography , Spirit of Japan 2

Hokkaido

It's warm again! Well, slightly. A farmer decided to make a lot of noise on his field this morning at 5AM, which just happened to be right next to the camp site, and my tent. I somehow managed to get a bit more sleep in and finally woke up at 6:30 ish to a beautiful blue sky with not a cloud in sight. The sun was already heating up the inside of my tent nicely, but for some reason my tent had decided to condensate lots and lots of water on the sides, and stuff started dripping down as I moved around. I had to let things dry out in the sun as I packed things up. Fortunately things were reasonably dry by the time I was done.

Yesterday I was very happy about myself for not having any butt ache from the saddle, even after 100km. Well, turns out that's because they arrived a day later. Today was quite painful :S.

I really should point out how fucking cold it is to cycle. This is seriously no fucking joke. If you think it's nice and warm outside, and even work up a minor sweat being out in the sun playing with your tent, you're still going to freeze your fucking nipples off if you start cycling. It's way, way colder on a bike than it is when you're stationary. I used to think of the sun as my enemy, burning my face off whenever it was out in full power, but now I'm starting to miss it. I'm going to need a lot of sun where I'm going.

So naturally, as I started cycling, the wind picked up, clouds appeared and I froze my nipples off. At least for a while. Then it got better. The road to Aomori city was surprisingly flat and empty. After the cold bit passed it was quite fun, and even the mini mountain stage wasn't too challenging, and offered a human fuel station at the toughest bit. Speaking of fuel stations, there's tons of electric car recharging points in Japan, even in the middle of nowhere. Quite well done. As I refueled myself, some random guy showed up and gave me a tiny energy drink bottle. It was quite rancid. I drank a bit of it, tried to dilute the rest of it with water but even that turned horrible, so I ended up throwing about half of it away :S. I didn't need energy anyway, I was heading downhill towards the ferry.

I did of course just miss the ferry by half an hour, as I always do, so I had to wait 4 hours for the next one. I decided to reward myself for finishing the Japanese mainland and sought out a Sukiya. But no! Not again! It was under construction.. This is the second time this has happened. It must be some kind of curse. This is where Aomori proved its shittiness, as there was nothing else around. The roads were bumpy and painful to cycle on, the smaller roads formed a maze that didn't quite match my gps data so I had to resort to following an old lady who turned out to be going in a useful direction. Eventually I found a McDonalds...

After lunch I headed back to the ferry port, again cycling blindly due to lack of major roads and crappy gps data. I made it well in time and had a break in front of the ferry building. It was just at that moment that another touring cyclist arrived. My first someone-like-me encounter! It was a young Japanese dude on a very sporty looking bike, carrying about as much luggage as me but without front panniers. He said he also came from Kanagawa and was also heading to Wakkanai, but that he would take a later ferry than me. Maybe we'll meet again in Wakkanai, traveler.

A lot of things go through my mind when I'm cycling. Music tends to help me focus on the road at hand, but even then my mind eventually starts to wander. I've noticed myself talking to myself more as the days pass, and I tend to grunt random words at situations, like "Come on sun, you can do it!" when I'm cold, or "Fuck you, asshole" when I'm passed by a dump truck. "Thank you, wind" also pops up sometimes when it pushes me up a difficult hill. But mostly my time is spent on delusions and/or fantasies. I imagine in great detail what would happen if somebody suddenly stopped their car and started punching me, or how a conversation with a police officer about cycling would go. Or various scenarios on how I'm going to get back to Atsugi and Narita after I've reached Wakkanai. It's quite free-flow and not unpleasant.

Everything went according to plan in Hakodate. The ferry arrived during sunset times, Google Maps was right about Sukiya for once and the cheapest hotel on my list was easy to find and had a room available (and is actually quite nice). Then I went out to shoot some nice photos, found the perfect peace and quiet spot to relax and enjoy the scenery and even found a conveniently placed conbini on the way back to the hotel. All is well. Tomorrow, I rest.

Posted in Spirit of Japan 2

Aomori Route 101

Today was a good ride. A perfect example of a day that could have ended up a lot worse. but the dark clouds disappeared, the wind was pushing me along instead of blowing in my face, and the camp site I had pre-marked on my offline map appeared at just the right time of the day, just when I was starting to feel tired.

There are many ways to feel uncomfortable on a bicycle. Cold. Wind. Saddle. Rain. Sweat. Today, for most of the day, it was cold. Cold enough for me to want to wear a thin coat over my usual cycle shirt and base layer, to break the wind a little and keep me warm. The problem with that is that it does keep me warm, but it also makes me sweat a lot more, which means I'll cool down like crazy whenever I take a break. It also makes everything smell bad. Fortunately the sun heated things up later in the day and I was able to take it off. The sun also cures smells, seriously.

Most of my day was spent on route 101 around the north-western coast of the Japanese mainland. There's no other options, no alternate routes to take, and not much along the way. It's never completely desolate, that's pretty much impossible in Japan. There's always tiny fishing villages, beaches and beach toilets, roadside 'stations' full of vending machines, souvenir shops and so on. Not many convenience stores though. Route 101 has a good rhythm. The ups and downs, the nature-then-fishing-town-then-nature-again rhythm is good too. It's never too difficult and almost always scenic.

After the cold and uncomfortable ride in the morning, the clouds slowly started to disappear in the afternoon, and it finally started to heat up a little. The wind picked up a lot, which is normally a bad thing, but this time it was pushing me exactly in the right direction and I was able to make great progress. It wasn't too long after lunch that I was able to take the inland road that would take me towards the camp site. Around 4PM my tent was set up and I was done.

The place I'm staying at is a bit peculiar. As expected it's way too bloody cold for any sane person to consider camping, so I'm here alone again. But the camp site is part of a much larger park full of sports fields, a restaurant and an amphitheater that you're not allowed to enter. Quite scenic though. The restaurant is a lucky break, because it was getting a bit too cold for blogpost typing outside.

Tomorrow I'll reach Aomori, which is only 50 kilometers from here. I'm hoping to take a ferry on the same day and reach Hakodate, where I plan to spend a break day. I need to make a plan for Hokkaido: decide which route to take, try to optimize warmer and less windy areas if that's at all possible, buy some new cycling gloves cause my old ones are really worn out, and possibly some winter cycle wear too. I would really like some clothes that are more comfortable/less sweaty in the cold while still providing warmth. Hakodate is a fairly big city, hopefully it'll have something useful for me.

Hokkaido! Soon!

Posted in Spirit of Japan 2

Dark days are also days

I almost stayed in Akita today but frustration made me go out and cycle in the rain. It was a great reminder about how much I do not like to cycle in the rain. Cycling in the rain sucks. Don't do it. You get all kinds of crap in your chain and on your bags and it ruins your bike.

2014-05-17 13.51.10PSsml

Today was a strange day, really. As is usual on cloudy days, I was very unmotivated in the morning. It didn't help much that there was quite a bit of rain and strong winds as well. My way of dealing with adversity is very simple: pop in some ear buds and listen to Eurobeat while cycling. Eurobeat is incredibly dumb but also incredibly effective. It helps me to keep my mind in that active state, rather than a 'give up' state. If the effect is not strong enough, just turn the volume up. I needed quite a lot of volume today, but it was super effective. When I finally came out of my Eurobeat-induced trance I could see the end of the dark rain clouds, and the rain had stopped. Eurobeat converts physical energy into mental energy.

Before setting off I marked several camp sites on my offline map, and the last conbini I would encounter before civilization ends. I sort of assumed that I wouldn't encounter much things today and that there wouldn't be much of anything anywhere, but I was quite wrong. All the areas I cycled through today were fairly built up and I even encountered a respectable city on the way. I didn't even get as far as the desolate coastal road that I was expecting to do today. Instead, I traveled across a massive plane of utter flatness, with insanely strong winds. No sudden gusts this time, just a constant wind blowing me right in the face. It slowed my progress down to a crawl, from 25kph to 16kph. It also made me sweat like crazy because of the effort required to go forward, and at the same time chilled me down a lot by supercooling my sweat. Just.. fuck you, weather. At least it stopped raining after an hour or so and the rest of the day was dry, so I got that going for me, which is nice.

When lunch time came around things started to become a bit more desolate, so I decided to not take any chances and have a quick conbini lunch on the assumption that there wouldn't be much else later in the day. But less than a kilometer after my crappy conbini bento I crossed a major road that was full of shops and things, including a Sukiya! Gaaaaaah... What a failure. I could've had a very nice lunch instead..

As I neared the actual desolate mountain road that I was expecting to cycle on today, some friendly dark rain clouds appeared to great me. They were just hanging out around the mountains, unable to go further, so they decided to let it all out right there. In all honesty, I could have cycled further. I could have done another 30km to reach the first camp site and I could have put up my tent in the rain, after which I'd have to hide in it because I'd be in the middle of nowhere and there's nothing to do. Then I could have tried to go to sleep despite the massive winds that would be tugging on my tent. But then I noticed a hotel on the side of the road and I thought: "yes".

It's a lovely hotel too. A bit over my normal budget, but who cares really. It has an authentic onsen bath which was absolutely lovely, and although I told them I didn't want any meals, when I came out of the onsen the receptionist ran up to me, told me to wait 3 minutes, and then came back with a plate of rice and a bowl of soup. So nice! This hotel is great.

I am not happy with my current mindset. Despite having cycled 80 kilometers today, I still feel like a failure because I'm not camping, because I spent money on a hotel and because I could have cycled on longer and/or in the rain. I don't know why I feel the need to punish myself so much on a trip that is supposed to be for fun. Mental defect? I also think I'm punishing myself because I'm away from my girlfriend for a long time, which is not a nice thing to do to her, so I feel like I should punish myself for that. At least I'm aware of it now, so I can assign it the appropriate weight. Nothing is stopping me from enjoying this trip, except for myself.

Tomorrow will be sunny again.

Posted in Spirit of Japan 2