Date

2022-11-18, Friday

Distance

96.12 km (2265.34 km in total)

The roadside station was closed by the time we arrived last night. We found a discreet space in the back of the building to put our tent. Since the walls helped to block the wind, we slept well despite coldness. This roadside station not only offer heated toilet, hot water, roofed shelter, but also breakfast in the Japanese style. The first station we have been to that serves its users so well!

On our way to Sendai, we ran into a local cyclist Hisaki Ohba who was conducting a short tour around the area. It’s always a big event when touring cyclists run into each other, more so in Japan because there are so very few of us right now.

It started raining when we entered the boundary of the city of Sendai. Without further ado, we went straight away to the park Mizu-no-mori (水の森公園) where we planned on camping. Usually camping there requires reservation and arrival before 4:30pm, but obviously we skipped all of these steps, as we were not sure when we could arrive and the office had already been closed by the time we showed up. At around 10 pm, a guardian found that the required plaque was not hinged outside of our tent, and came to wake us up. After much confusion, we were asked to fill out a form with our personal information, then told that we were good to stay — or at least we thought so until the next morning …