Nakashibetsu, July 26th, 2007I got a late start but it was an easy overcast ride back to my friends in Nakashibetsu. I took my time stopping at anything interesting along the way. Including several temples. I don't quite understand the temples here. Apart from that one festival in Nakshibetsu I've never seen anyone at a temple. Maybe because they are always closed. You would think in two weeks I would have seen more than one that was open.
I also passed a bonsai farm but the elfin trees were guarded by some loud and ferocious looking dogs. So I kept on riding. Back at Yoko, Ayaka and Shigeo's house we had DIY sushi for dinner!
Lake Kusharo, July 24th, 2007
Abashiri, July 22-23rd, 2007
Next stop on my itinerary of
Shiretoko National Park, July 21st, 2007This whole trip to
Imagine my delight when I woke this morning to the ! Extraordinary salmonid species here I come! As I was getting ready to set off, a group of (motorcycle) ‘riders’ also staying at the ‘rider house’ invited me to go up to the park with them.
As it turns out for most of the park you can’t enter with your own vehicles. We parked the Harleys at the gift shop and got on the park bus. The bears by the side of the road made me glad (for once) that I wasn’t on my bike. They track them and some of the trails were closed but we did trek up this waterfall, which is fed by a hot spring and snowmelt and not by the rain. Well, at least not today. It was nothing less than extraordinary!
Shari, July 2oth, 2007
This morning Yoko served the ‘tangle’ alongside grilled fish and miso soup for breakfast. I tasted it and it was limp and bitter. Ive had worse untranslatable asian food. So, chewing and nodding an approval, I put some more on my plate. Yoko tried it too and started laughting. It had gone bad. I couldn’t imagine how unopened pickled vegetables would go bad in this cold weather but there it was being tossed into the garbage by someone who's obviously had some better tangle.
After breakfast Shigeo read me the weather report for Rausu, it didn’t look good. The weather on that side of the peninsula is always bad he told me by pointing to the map and indicating with a thumbs up and thumbs down. I took his suggestion and rode inland to
To distract myself from the deafning slaps of rain on my helmet, I played 'How many famous Japanese can you name?' I suck at this game. I could only come up with three and a half. (a half because Alberto Fujimori isn't really Japanese) The others were Yoko Ono, Midori Ito and Haruki Murakami. How many can you name?
Nakashibetsu, July 19th 2007As I pedaled out of camp with the mist surrendering to the morning sun, my foot slipped off the pedal and hit the pavement. I looked down and to my surprise the pedal was still attached to my shoe and not the bike! No problem I thought, I’ll just screw it back on. There. Good as new. Unfortunately, I only got another 50 meters before another downstroke sent my foot flying off the bike. It took another 3 tries before I was able to convince myself that this was beyond my mechanic sensitivities.
So I rode with one foot to the next driveway, pulled in and pointed to my problem. This solicited some guttural oohs and ahhs and a telephone call. I was invited to wait inside but then I’d have to take off my shoes…and not 5 minutes later a pickup truck pulled up. He looked at my bike, looked in his tool box, shook his head then loaded my bike and I in his truck with the urgency of a paramedic. We sped off to a gas station in the next town, there was no bike shop but the mechanics had an old bike in back and offered me a ‘pedaru normal.’ I was back on the road in no time.
High on my good luck, I decided to take my new chunky plastic ‘Hello Kitty’ pedal on a 26km detour to see the ‘mysterious’ Lake Mashu. When I finally got there, fingers shaking and face dripping, I discovered why it is so mysterious. You can only see it on clear days. I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to convince myself that there was no way I could have known it would be this cold. It was a tough sell.
I should probably mention that I can’t read (or speak) Japanese. However over the past week I've learned to recoginize the first two characters for the word ‘campground.’ Coming into Nakashibetsu I spotted them on a log cabin with friendly flower pots on the stoop. The sun was getting low and not to sound repetitive, I was cold. It took me a while to pry my shoelaces undone with numb fingers before entering. But it paid off. Turned out it was a restaurant. The ladies Yoko and Ayaka decided after a cup of tea and about a half hour of comic communication between my phrasebook and her cell phone translator, that it was too cold to camp and I would stay at their house and go with them to some sort of festival at the local temple that evening. The street leading up to the temple was filled with the usual religious festival trimmings, cotton candy, corn dogs, kimonos and ring toss!
Akan National Park, July 17th, 2007Today I’d planned to go to Ashoro. But I was there by noon so I continued uphill all afternoon to
Ikeda, July 16th, 2007
Tomamu, Hokkaido, July 15th, 2007This morning the sun started shining as I cycled out of the Ecopark Family Campground. After about 12k and a snack stop at a graveyard-a banana and a soy joy bar from the 7/11- I had to take off my sweatshirt. Thats right!
The heat wave was short lived however as I continued to climb into the mountains. I had had the brilliant idea that with a typhoon headed for Japan, I'd have better weather inland. Well guess what? It's not any warmer at higher altitudes. When I put my sweater back on I discovered that I'd lost my gloves... I'm doing really well with the wardrobe this trip.
Biritori, Hokkaido, July 14th 2007
It was rough getting out of my sleeping bag this morning. Its just as cold today. But when I finally did, it was worth it, my new motorcycle gang friends had left me a bag of pears and bananas for breakfast. I hit the road around 8:30.
The roads were more of the same overcast farms interrupted by small angular houses, polite traffic, black crows, vending machines and the odd pine tree. Mid morning I spotted a building with a small red awning, I bought a can opener (for the pears) and some pre-packaged muffins.
The storeowner was very chatty. In Japanese. She even wrote her name (I think) and the date. So I wouldn’t forget her? She happily filled my water bottles. And then kept pointing to them and asking a question. Eventually I said ok just to see what she was talking about. She trotted into the back and came out with a big bowl of ice. Ice! Its 16 degrees C, and she was offering me ice. I politely refused. Or maybe it wasn’t polite, its hard to know.
Lunch was a bowl of ramen noodles with aside of typhoon on the weather report at a truck stop with a tv. Afterwards I turned on to rt. 237 and struck gold with a souvenir craft store. I bought a sweatshirt with two cartoon foxes on it. Its an impractical vanilla color but I was too warm to care!
