I am taking a break today. The rain is very heavy and not stopping until mid-day tomorrow. I contemplated about cycling 36km's south to the cape, but decided against it. I'll be relaxing in the hotel room today.
Spirit of Japan
I suck at camping
I get the feeling that I'm not feeling what I'm supposed to be feeling. More on that later.
As said in my previous post, I could stop anywhere, so I did. I didn't quite make it all the way to the southernmost point of the peninsula, I'm still about 25km's away from it. I commenced my 'usual' strategy of starting to look for a place to set up my tent around 16:00. It took me over 20 minutes to even find a place that would remotely be worth considering for a place to stay for the night. This is doubly annoying for me because this place is the opposite of what I thought it would be. When I went cycling to the southernmost point of the Shikoku island there was one (narrow) road, to the left of it the ocean, and to the right of it a mountain. No place to sleep anywhere. This road though, is wide, and has a bloody McDonalds and KFC and a huge shopping center next to a fairly large town! How can I get in the camping mood when it's like that?!
Anyway, I finally ventured into a weird street that eventually dead-ended at a luxury hotel. I turned around and on that some road going back I encountered an old man at the side of the road, unloading timber from one of his cars to one of his other cars(?!). I asked him if he knew of a good place to camp or put up a tent in the area, and he told me there was no such thing, but I could stay here. Right here, where he was unloading his stuff, at a small 'parking' area at the side of the road. He also told me that putting up a tent is too much trouble and I could stay in one of his abandoned cars that he had parked there. This place by the way is really small, maybe 10 meters long by 2 meters wide. Several cars were parked there, including a huge truck filled with wood and covered with dust and twigs and rocks, as the area was next to a cliff, and most of the cars looked like they hadn't been moved for at least 10 years. I thanked the guy for his kindness and told him I might be back later.
I went back to the national road, intending to cycle further, but not even 500 meters ahead there was a long tunnel and another uphill climb. At this point it was already getting dark so I decided to cycle back to see if I could find a better place to stay. I chose to follow a road near to the ocean and ended up at an awesome beach. Exploring the area for a suitable place to camp meant that I had to pass a horde of middle school girls who were playing at the stairs leading to the beach. As I passed them I got the usual 'HARRO!!!' that all Japanese children say to foreigners. I answered in Japanese: "I can understand Japanese, you know", which got me a lot of giggles.
The place I found near the beach was perfect. It was hidden from view, located under a bridge, with a beautiful view of the beach and cliffs in the distance. All I had to do was wait for the sun to set and people to disappear, and I could set up my tent. I then got on my bicycle to find a restaurant for dinner, cycled 500 meters, found a business hotel, checked in, and that's where I am now. This ends my 'I suck at camping' tale. Because of the horrible uphill in the morning and the long anti-sun afternoon break I only managed to do 80km today.
(Warning! Boring rant starts here)
I'm getting used to this lifestyle, so I'm finding more time to think along the way. One thing that pops up in my mind several times a day, usually during a tough uphill section, is: "Why the hell am I doing this?". I swear a lot in my mind on the uphill sections. This is just a mild example. My original purpose, conjured up while in the warm confines of my cozy little room in front of my big lcd screen, was to decide whether or not to stay in Japan or go back to Holland. I had hoped that, by pushing myself to my limits, I would get some interesting new perspective on life, and the 'right' decision would magically become clear. This is (perhaps obvious to an observer) absolutely not true. First of all, no matter how I try to see it, this trip is not a challenge. It's certainly a heavy physical effort, but I am doing nothing new. I am going to places that I know how to handle, talking to people in a language that I understand, doing things that I've already done several times before. There is no mysterious new thing for me in this trip, 99% of it I know beforehand. My other reasoning was that this trip would give me some time to think over my situation, carefully consider every option I have and then decide what to do. This is also bullshit. Due to the physical exertion every day from 6AM to 5PM I am dead at the end of the day, and I don't even want to think. This is getting easier the past few days (hence this blogpost), but still, my mind is preoccupied with daily life all the time. I always have something to do: break down the tent, pack my bags, cycle up a hill, look for a sleeping place, set up the tent again, find a place to eat, make dinner myself, etc. etc. Not a single free moment to think, except for those days that I find a business hotel or youth hostel, because in that case I save some energy by not having to put up my tent, inflate my sleeping mat, roll out my sleeping bag, prepare my warm sleeping clothes, etc. etc.
In other words: double fail! 1. This trip is not the challenge I had hoped for. 2. This trip does not provide me with a new unique perspective on my situation nor enough time to think about why I went on this trip in the first place. Now that I know this, I am becoming less motivated to continue. I'm not sure any more what I'm supposed to be doing every day. On the one hand I want to enjoy the scenery and the sights and take my time, but the uncertainty of the weather and the uncertainty of finding a place to stay every night are making this difficult. On the other hand I want to cycle as fast as I can to the finish line so I can end this trip and do something else instead. I haven't had a really bad day yet, where I wasn't able to find a place to stay. Maybe I should aim for a day like that, it might make things interesting again.
Anyway, I'm too stubborn to give up something I've already started, so I'm definitely seeing this through to the end, even if the end is meaningless. Tomorrow is supposed to be rain again, unfortunately. Perhaps the weather is bringing me down, perhaps it's the fact that everything is so much more... normal? difficult? gloomy? than I expected it to be. I remember the first trip I did with Kamil, cycling from Nagasaki to Kagoshima and then taking the ferry to a random island near Okinawa that turned out to become our favorite place. The weather was great all the time except for one day, and we always got lucky in finding a place to stay. We always ended near on onsen, river, or ocean, but always with a beautiful view, onsen or restaurant nearby. Oh well, I should stop ranting, have to get up early tomorrow. Cycling in the rain again...
Tropical paradise!
The weather is awesome today! I woke up around 7AM, packed my stuff and fixed my bicycle's brakes. The cyclocomp started working again without me having to do anything, but the brakes still don't work very well, even after tightening the cable. I did actually wear out the blocks on the downhill. They're a bit unresponsive, but they should still work fine for a couple hundred kilometers. If it gets too bad I have replacement blocks with me so it should be no problem.
View from the hotel
Departing from Owase I turned back to route 42 and continued my voyage south, expecting an easy ride along the ocean (Owase is situated next to the ocean). I was very wrong. What I thought would be an easy ride turned out to be at least as difficult as the climb towards the Fuji five lakes. At least this time the climb was shorter, but I climbed about 300-400 meters according to my altimeter. In return though, the view around me was absolutely stunning, with lots of beautiful natural areas, mountains, hills, waterfalls, forests etc. For the first few kilometers I was able to enjoy it. After that the road got too steep and I could only focus on suffering myself uphill.
Some scenery
Nice waterfall
The uphill was indeed horrible, also because the weather was great. Climbing up while bathing in the hot spring sun is not exactly easy, and it got worse because I forgot to fill up my water bottles and there wasn't a vending machine in sight. The first 10 kilometers took over an hour, and I had no water. Finally though, I reached the top: a 2 kilometer long tunnel. After that the road started to go downhill, and I enjoyed myself more than I did so far on this trip. High speed, beautiful scenery, great weather. 3 good!
Finally reached the ocean!
Nice beach!
Nice ocean!
I'm at a small seaside restaurant right now, taking a break for 2 hours to avoid the afternoon sun. If I stay in the sun too much my face will burn up again, so I'll start cycling again a bit later. I'm planning to camp tonight, so I don't have any particular goal for today. I can stop anywhere.
More later!
Focus
Today was perhaps one of the worst of all possible situations: heavy rainfall all day long, lots of tiring uphill climbs and dangerous rainy downhills, and finally a big national road with lots of fast traffic and nothing interesting to see along the way. Not that I could see anything interesting anyway, as it was a bit foggy and the rain limited the visibility a lot. Despite all that, I quite enjoyed myself today.
The morning started out quite messy. I knew that if I tried to just wander my way down south I would get stuck on a peninsula with no way out but to backtrack, so I tried to get back to route 42, which will take me all the way around the Kii peninsula. Trying to get there was tough though, as there are twenty different roads, some of which are tiny and have horrible uphill climbs, whereas others are completely flat and follow a river. I finally settled on road 13, which I didn't manage to find until after I asked for help at the tourist office. They were very kind to me and gave me a huge map and a towel, which was very useful, as the rain already completely soaked me after only 1 hour of cycling. Road 13 and the first part of road 42 were fresh countryside roads. The sound of frogs was incredibly loud, so I will name road 13 hereby Frogroad.
After turning onto road 42 I got a nice rhythm going. I guess I'm getting more fit, because despite the many uphills and downhills I was able to go on for 2-3 hours between breaks, making great progress. The slopes were tough, but I enjoyed it more now that the uphill is taking less effort for me. Yay legs. I lost a lot of time on the downhills because of the rain, which forced me to slow down a lot because I was afraid of slipping and falling. It turns out my brakes were only about 50% effective in the rain, so I squeezed them a lot harder today. As a result, at the end of day both my front and rear brakes are near useless, and I have to readjust them tomorrow. I think nothing's broken, but I definitely need to look at it before I continue. I wonder if I can get a disc brake installed when I get to Kyoto...
Still, today felt good. I was afraid my iPod would get wet so I didn't listen to music all day. I thought that would bore me, but instead it left my mind free to think about all kinds of things while on the road. Normally I'd be too preoccupied with suffering, but it's getting better recently.
People are more kind to me in the rain. I stopped at a roadside restaurant for lunch and took about 10 minutes to take off most of my wet clothes before entering the shop. When entering the old lady (yet another old lady I made friends with! Where are the young ladies??) provided me with a small heater for my feet, which were all shriveled up from the water. I had another curry udon, which I am starting to believe is the greatest meal ever created. It's easy to eat because it's noodles, it's very warm and soupy, and yet it's also curry. Brilliant. Upon leaving the restaurant a random guest came up to me and gave me a towel, and the old lady owner gave me some candy. So nice.
Shoes, socks and gloves were all soaking wet, of course. I entertained random passers-by with my water-jesus act, where I create flows of water by squeezing my hands. (my gloves were not waterproof)
When I first entered route 42 I had already done 40+kms. Every x kilometers a road sign would pop up saying "Owase x km". I have never heard of Owase, nor have I thought of going there, but apparently it's my destination for today, and that's where I am now. I'm in a business hotel, not too expensive, but I could have saved money by spending more time looking for the youth hostel. I asked three locals if there was a youth hostel, and they all told me that there is one, but they didn't know where. Rather than spending more time in the pouring rain I decided to be lazy and go for the crappy business hotel instead. After I cycled 100+ km's can I call myself tired instead of lazy? Hm.
Anyway, this place is more awesome than I expected. It's not a hotel room, it's actually a regular apartment. It has a kitchen, living room and bedroom, all Japanese style. The best part of it is that there's a washing machine in front of the room, so I finally had an opportunity to wash my clothes! And now that my cold is over I can actually smell the difference! :D
Tomorrow I have to fix stuff: bicycle computer stopped working today, front and rear brakes need fixing. The weather's supposed to be good so I think I can camp.
Lastly, a minor rant about truck drivers. Some truck drivers are bloody brilliant: they overtake in a very wide line, don't go too fast so they don't spray water all over you (well, me), yet still manage to overtake quite quickly and without trouble. Then there's the asshole truck driver type, who overtakes at very high speed with only centimeters to spare. I tend to insult these people in English even though I know they cannot hear it. This satisifies me. As for car drivers, there's only two types of drivers: normal drivers and ridiculously careful drivers. The careful drivers fail to overtake about 3 or 4 times at areas where it would be easily possible to overtake me, and then when they do finally overtake, they don't leave enough distance between me and them, and they go really really slowly, creating a dangerous situation for the drivers on the other side of the road.
Ok, enough ranting, time to go to bed!
Some photos
Fuji in the morning
Fuji and Shinkansen
The strawberry road
Uphill climbs are sometimes worth it
Egg vending machine!
Different type of egg vending machine
Children playing while the sun sets
Coast area at Omaezaki
Omaezaki lighthouse
About 10 cats around here. How many in this photo?
Stupid gate thingie near Hamamatsu
Another interesting road..
Spot the sleeping person. He didn't wake up for at least 3 hours.
Nice boat.
Zenbu zigzag ztreet
Frogrock
After getting off the ferry I initially went the wrong way. Can't go south cause I'll get stuck on a peninsula. Have to go north now, to Ise. Before going north I had an awesome lunch at a sushi place near the harbor. Every plate was 105 yen! And it was good stuff too. Not excellent, but good. I quite enjoyed myself.
Going north I soon reached Futami, suddenly spotted a sign that said 'youth hostel' and followed it until I reached a mountain. After a nasty walk up the hill I found that the youth hostel is located next to a temple, which is a pretty awesome place for a youth hostel. Since it was cheap too (only 2500 yen) I decided to stay there for tonight and take it easy. There might be rain tonight, and tomorrow will be a tough day. Besides that, I saw my face again for the first time in 2 days, and I'm completely red, despite the sunscreen. Any more sun and I'll explode.
The path to my hostel.
I wanted to do laundry around here, but alas, no coin laundry in sight, and people tell me it doesn't exist. So instead I went tourist-mode and went to frogrock, which is about 500m from the hostel. It's supposedly quite a famous site. This website has some more info about it. All I saw was a rock that looked like a frog, and a bunch of old Japanese people who walked funny. Tourism sucks. Definitely not going to Ise jingu. There is zero value in doing things that are already documented online. After all, there's no physical effort involved in watching, so what's the point?
It's just a rock, dude. Stop it.
I just checked the weather report again, and it definitely looks like rain. Great... Well, at least I won't get as much sunburn then. Tomorrow is a rough day: I'm following the route 42 all the way down deep into Mie-ken. I'm not sure if I can reach the 'bottom', but I'll give it a try. Depending on the weather and the road I might just follow the main road all the time, getting some momentum going so I can reach Kyoto quickly. I could use a break, and I could definitely use some clean clothes.
On a BOAT
I'm on the ferry now towards Mie-ken. Thanks to my haphazard plan I had an awkward moment when I had to ask a guy which ferry to take, as I didn't really know where I was going. Turns out I'm going to a place called Touba. (or Toba, not sure).
My camping place at the beach was well chosen. I felt no wind at all, and I was still quite warm in the morning, mostly thanks to the dry bag around my sleeping bag's feet area, I think. Despite being in the middle of nowhere I heard some guy yelling out occasionally all through the night. When I woke up in the morning I found out why: his car was stuck in the mud and he couldn't get out. It was a gangster-type car that I guess the guy must have borrowed from his Yakuza daddy. He and his three friends were standing next to the car freezing their asses off as a tow truck was just towing the car out of the mud. It tore half his rear bumper off too. Daddy must be happy about that. Towtruckguy made a point of shouting the price of all this especially loud so that all the laughing bystander ojiisan's could hear it: "ICHIMANYONSENHACHIJUUEN!" --> 14080 yen. Ouch.
I guess I wasted a lot of time taking the scenic route yesterday, because I was still 50 kilometers away from the ferry port. The road leading there was Japan national road 42. If there is ever a road to understanding it must be road number 42. It was incredibly hilly, going up and down all the time, but I think I'm getting stronger, cause I didn't have a lot of difficulty. My legs are fine, my arms still hurt a bit, but now my back is starting to hurt. Depending on the day of the week different body parts hurt.
Road 42 was great though. I smelled so many things! As it turned out the cold that was bothering me for 4 months is finally gone, and I can smell things again ^_^. Road 42 smells like ocean, flowers and melons. There were lots of melon farms all around the area, and even some melon tabehoudai (all-you-can-eat) restaurants. Which were all closed.
I wish I could remember more but I'm starting to forget things. It's starting to get normal now, so I'm not paying so much attention to details. Besides that, the constant uphill/downhill roads tire me out so I tend to only concentrate on the road.
I'll be arriving in Mie-ken in 30 minutes. Let's see if I can find a sleeping place there tonight. I could really use a bath..
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Spirit of Japan
Smeagol will show the way
"Long ways to get yet. Smeagol will show the way." - it's stuck in my head now: whenever I see a road sign I hear Smeagol's voice calling out to me. That's what you get when you put a geek on a bicycle, I guess.
I am here right now:
(Wordpress took very long to upload this photo. I've decreased the size but I think the connection here is pretty bad.)
I'm not exactly sure where 'here' is. I'm still on my way to the ferry at the south tip of Nagoya, but I decided to rest early today because of my lack of sleep. I'm at a beach in the middle of nowhere, only a very crappy sandy road leading to here that I couldn't cycle because the sand was too thick. Today was Sunday so there were a lot of people at the beach, but they've all gone home and now I'm the only one left. This time my tent is parked in a wind-free area, with the 'chimney' bit pointed away from the wind direction. Tonight should be warmer than yesterday. Other preparations for tonight include an extra sweater, warm socks and a dry bag to wrap around the bottom bit of my sleeping bag to keep the heat in. There was a toilet building near here, which is why I chose to stay here, but upon closer inspection the toilets are just holes in the ground and there's no running water or electricity.
It's pretty much a worst-case situation. Well, an on-average worst-case situation. No conbini's anywhere near here, no restaurants either, and the nearest vending machine is supposedly on the top of the next hill, although I didn't check. I've got two bottles of water and a food bag with bread, chocolate cream and a bag of peanuts, which made up my dinner. But at least it's not raining!
Sometimes I regret a bit about how I'm doing this trip. I know I've consciously chosen this way (haphazard, random routes, scenic routes etc.), but the consequences are that I'll sometimes be in the middle of nowhere for the night, and it will take longer for me to reach my goal. Also, I think I'm too stubborn. When I find a sleeping place I always want to keep looking for a better one, telling myself that I'll go back if I can't find a better one. But whenever the next place is crappier than the previous one, I don't want to go back. Instead I go further and find an even crappier place. That's how I ended up here, in the middle of nowhere on a road that isn't even meant for bicycles >_<;
Today has been quite uneventful actually. Been following the Pacicifc OCean CYclcecincg Road something or other, which is very challenging and not very useful. There's a national road right next to it that goes straight, whereas the cycling road keeps going up and down into the dunes to the seaside and back, zigzagging, crossing car roads and whatnot. What's worse, at every intersection there's poles in the road to prevent cars from entering the cycling path. The space between those poles is just about my bicycle's width plus one centimeter. This quite annoyed me in the beginning, but later it was quite fun to see how fast I could go between those poles without hitting them. (22kph :D)
Been reading a book called 'The Zahir' by Paulo Coelho. I just started reading it after arriving at this beach camp site. So far it seems quite interesting.
Hopefully tomorrow I'll reach the ferry and make my way into Mie-ken. Should be quite a different scene from today, or at least I hope that, because today was quite boring. The coast line looked way too much like Holland...
Good night.
Oh, I almost forgot. Had my bicycle's chain assembly looked at in Hamamatsu, but the owner said he couldn't help me. Since yesterday the chain releaser thingie that makes it so that you don't have to pedal when you go downhill flips up sometimes when I stop pedaling. It's not a big deal, but I wonder if one day it may block the chain somehow (and the wheel), causing me to crash in some horrible way. The owner said it was definitely messed up, but he didn't have the parts to fix it. Guess I'll have to get it fixed when I get to Kyoto... The front sprocket could use changing too. Chain still skipping sometimes. Argh.
I hate mornings
I really hate mornings. I'm getting up early every day so I can cycle more during daylight, which means getting up at 6AM, packing up and leaving at 7AM. That's what I did today. Thanks to the early wakeup I already did 60ks before lunch, but it just doesn't feel like fun until at least two hours have passed. The first hour I'm not woken up at all, and the second hour I'm ready to go but I still have to get into it. It's also still very cold. The cold was one reason that I didn't get a lot of sleep last night. I went to bed early but I kept on waking up because of the cold. Another reason that I didn't get a lot of sleep is that the place I chose was more popular than I imagined, and several people walked by before I went to bed. This made me a bit paranoid because I was not supposed to sleep there, so I jumped at every noise and poked my head out of my tent to see if anybody was there. As a result I slept late because of the noise and woke up early because of the cold.
I was hoping I would start to like mornings more now that I have to wake up early every day. I've always been an evening person. It seems that won't change.
Camping again tonight!
