Date

2022-10-17, Monday

Distance

91.36 km (336.16 km in total)

Right now the sunrise in Japan is close to 6 am. At 4 pm the sun is setting and by 5:30 pm it becomes completely dark. We try as much as possible to get up early around 5:30 am but packing stuff really takes time. No matter how we try, the earliest time we start our daily cycle is 6:30 am. As the day gets shorter and shorter, we will have bigger and bigger chance to have to bike in the dark, which should be avoided.

This morning in the park a group of elderly men playing gatebal asked what we were doing and where we came. This is the second interaction we have with random locals. I lament at that my Japanese is not good enough to carry the conversation forward. I would very much like to know what the main industry is in this town, what people do outside of works, what they think about their hometown, etc. Alas!

I have been experiencing right knee pain since yesterday. A knee supporter was purchased in the hope to palliate my pain.

We started our day by strolling around the area through secondary country roads. There was no shoulder but no traffic either. The ride feels like what I have always imagined for Hokkaido: tranquil and leisurely. However, the GPS led us to take unpaved roads that were horrible to cycle through, thus we choose to stay on a bigger road, National Road 40. As a city child, I grew up being used to biking alongside cars. It’s been almost a week that I came to Japan; I find myself often preferring to bike on the road despite the heavier traffic because the sidewalk’s condition is not always very good. Sometimes it’s too narrow, often there are a lot of cracks and bumps that make the ride not so smooth (and my eyeglasses jumping up and down), and sometimes there can be one-metre tall dense vegetation growing in between the fissures. Overall, the road tends to offer a more pleasant cycling experience.

Japan is very clean. Everywhere. The government really make tremendous effort at preventing birds from attacking the garbage. Household garbage needs to be deposited in a close metal bin near the sidewalk, and there is virtually no garbage bin in the public space. Most of government-ran facilities ask visitors to bring garbage back. From the local’s point of view, this may cause little trouble, but for foreign visitors such as us, this is utterly inconvenient. We sometime have to bike 20 km with our garbage to discard it at a convenience store.

On the roadside, every now and then we can see a statues of bodhisattva (a person on the way towards enlightenment / Buddhahood; more or less equivalent to a saint in Christianity) to whom people pray for road safety. Some of them even got dressed up and were offered food, drink, and money — very kawaii.

Today the rain kept going on and off; there was storm alarm in the area. After cooking the lunch in Tsukumo Suigo Park in Shibetsu, the rain became steadier and heavier. Our waterproof gears kept us dry and warm. Rainy weather is perfect for something spicy — so we made Shin Ramyun! (Most Japanese instant noodles are miso or soy sauce-based, but today we wanted heat.) We added canned venison and cheese to make a deeply satisfying meal.

The roadside station in the ‘sheep town’ Shibetsu deserves a special mention: it offers free charging that no other station offers. I was so grateful that I bought a locally made souvenir as a gift for my younger sister.

Today is our first time biking after the sunset as we tried to reach hotel located in a small town called Bifuka. The experience would have been more pleasant had there not been a huge hill of 7-8% of incline for 2 km. Luckily, there was not many traffic; we were able to stop by the roadside whenever we needed a rest. Thankfully to my friend who oversaw that the rain wouldn't let up and that we would need to charge everything and dry our gear — we had a warm and dry place to spend the night.

We appeared to be the only visitors who arrived at this traditional Japanese inn by bike, and perhaps one of the rarest foreigners they have ever received. This hotel seems to welcome mostly Japanese people on a business trip, so people don’t speak very much English here.

Japanese like to compartment things. Our hotel is built in the traditional Japanese style furnished with tatami and separated by doors into a living room, a bedroom, a toilet and a bathroom. Open space doesn’t seem to be a common Japanese style. The dinner, also in the Japanese style, is exquisitely arranged into many plates. I wonder why they should like to keep food in so many compartments — aren’t there many dishes to wash? People here are really obsessed with cleanness. We must switch to indoor slippers when entering the dinning room. The staff would put your shoes beautifully lined up in the right orientation if you leave them in disorder.

On a side note, this afternoon I accidentally collided with my friend and fell from my bike. Although nothing appears wrong at the moment, this will have consequence in days to come ……