3 Weeks into Japan

I used my artistic skills of a 9 year old to illustrate the above map to show how far we have come from arriving in Osaka on the 11th September. All of the scenery has been spectacular, but the area of the north coast adjoining the Sea of Japan particularly so.

It's not all been plain sailing though. We have had our share of rain, causing us to have to camp in an abandoned camp site whilst the rain and the wind passed through. Fortunately we were able to camp directly beside what used to be a covered barbecue and had a dry area to store panniers and be able to cook.

One soggy tent

This was taken by an Australian couple who had taken the train
out to the beach that day.

Yesterday in particular though was an absolute soaker. We started in relatively light rain, and initially it seemed quite pleasant. As it does though, it gradually got worse until you realised that it was pelting it down. This was bad enough, but Japanese roads seem to have an odd camber meaning that there is a constant puddle directly along the part of the road you are cycling on. Fortunately we had booked a hotel and arrived at reception completely dripping. The receptionist seemed entirely unfazed as I pulled off my cycling gloves and then wiped my soaking hands on the only dry tissue that I possessed. Even then it was all I could do to stop drips of water falling onto his pristine reservation form that I needed to sign.

In the hotel room, every available surface for hanging damp clothes got used, including, I am ashamed to say, the TV. Should any Japanese businessman wonder why the device exploded when he went to turn it on, I apologise in advance.

A common part of cycling are the "Wavy flag" men. There are very few temporary traffic lights to be seen, and virtually any kind of roadside work seems to require at least two of these men to either show a red or a white flag. In addition, there are the "trampoline"men. These gents jobs are to hold a large screen that looks like the aforementioned device against any area that is being streamed or mown to make sure that cars and cyclists don't get adorned with grass or what not. The worst episode of all this happened to be on one of the worst gradients of a ride. One man waved us through, but of course all we could do was chug slowly up the hill before we came across the second man and the large queue of cars that had built up. All was taken in good humour, and most of the car's drivers grinning at us as we puffed past.

But all this has its rewards.........

The reward for wet weather is some fantastic views

This was taken on a large bit of reclaimed land by Lake Nagawi.
The wind was causing the unharvested rice to ripple, and just for a
moment there was a rather English feel to the view.

One lesson that we hopefully have learnt is that on a rest day, do exactly that! Sian had seen that we were close to what a youtube video had called "Japans most terrifying bridge", the Eshima Ohahashi bridge. So off we went on a 50km round trip that included cycling over this bridge. It's all about camera angles and really wasn't that bad!

Our slightly more mundane view of the Eshima Ohahashi Bridge

I think I've already mentioned that one of the joys of cycle touring is randomly coming across stuff. These pictures we took at a little farmers market that was on in a town, including a stage that featured a power ranger having a fight with two shallots, and a very brave but sadly out of tune girl singing a song. The food was the main feature, and this gent was making takoyaki - a little round pancake with a bit of squid at the centre, and a Taiyaki- a fish shaped pancake with bean curd at the centre. I promise you it tasted far better than my description and we went back for seconds.

And just to finish with, google translate is not infallible. We had read about Japanese pears, and came across one at 128Yen ( about 80p) so decided to buy it. Well, something got lost in translation and £2.60 later we were the proud owners. It was delightful however.