Hokkaido, Japan

[RonS]

  Well spotted, Ian. I believe I adjusted the eccentric on the evening after the photo you were probably looking at was taken.
 I am running a 38 x 17 combo right now, but before my daughter moved back to Canada from the UK I ordered a Thorn 43T chainring and 19T cog and had it sent to her to bring back. It's in my toolbox now and I'll probably throw it on before the next tour.

A few more photos from the ride.

1  One of the consequences of rural depopulation.The rail line between Sapporo and the southeast coast of Hokkaido closed down a few years ago.

2&3  Curse you, Komoot. This is my third cycle tour in Japan and I'm still waiting for a mapping program that doesn't send me on an adventure almost daily. After about 10 km riding in a beautiful valley with no traffic, my GPS instructed me to "turn left here". I thought “this does not look too promising” as it went past a farm, heading into the woods. A check of the map showed that the only other option was 10 km right  back where I had come from, so off I went. After about half a kilometre the dirt road turned into a dirt path and pitched upward. It still would've been rideable if not for the 70mm of rain that had fallen overnight, making it very soft. After a few hundred metres though the path pitched up again and basically looked like a dry stream bed. Luckily for me, it only lasted for maybe 500m then began to improve. My fun for the day.

4 Sunset from camp.

[Andre Jute]

4 Sunset from camp.

Japan, a land formed by volcanoes. Well done, Ron!

[in4]

Love the photos Ron. Thanks for sharing. Certainly inspires me for my next tour. 
Re abandoned/closed train lines. Although driven by immediate economic necessity seems quite sad to see them consigned to history.
There’s a comedy duo from yesteryear named Flanders & Swann, some may know them.
Amongst their most well known songs ( Armadillo, Have a Madeira M’Dear etc) is The Slow Train; a bit of a nostalgic ode to many branch line closures under the so called Beeching Report springs readily to mind. Anyway here it is. Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/U6OHD2uCpfU?si=WP93Ga4SxbAbkzE7

[RonS]

Thanks for that Ian. Near the end of the video there is an old coal fired steam locomotive in front of what looks to me to be the cooling tower for a nuclear power plant. Would they have existed at the same time?

And that list of songs brought me back to my childhood. There was an American folk trio in the early 1960s called the Limeliters. I was but a pup then, but they were popular with my older siblings. One of the songs I remember was a rendition of Madeira, M’Dear.

Since we’re on the subject of abandoned rail lines, the pictures for today are from my last day on the road, along the Shiroishi cycling road, created from a rail line decommissioned in 1973, near Sapporo.  (I’ll jump back in time with more photos later) It’s a 20 km cycle and pedestrian path between the suburb of Kitahiroshima and the heart of Sapporo. One of the great things about it is that, despite going being in a city of nearly two million people, there are almost no road crossing. It goes over or under every major road, and I think I had only three stop signs, crossing minor streets. It's apparently very well used on the weekends and before and after school, but, on the drizzly midweek morning that I rode it I was almost by myself. It was cycling bliss.

[Andre Jute]

I love the tunnel art, especially in the Sapporo cycle path tunnel; so much superior to the brutalist Stakhanovite "art" in the Moscow underground train stations, which is of the same scale.

Who knows, the other decorated tunnel with the small square panels in Ron's set may be equally good or better, but their small individual scale is not conducive to judging on a photograph. You'd probably want to be in that particular tunnel for a few hours to take it all in.

A great pleasure touring vicariously with you, Ron.

[RonS]

Andre, the two tunnel pictures are actually opposite walls of the same tunnel. One wall is tiles made from children's art, and on the other side, they let the grown-ups play.

Jumping back in time from the cycling road, here are some pics from my last week on tour.

1 and 2   Japan has done an incredible amount of flood mitigation work along many of the rivers. A bonus for cyclists is that a huge majority of the rivers have paths on the dikes. This one went for about 20km along the Chubetsu River, near Asahikawa. (The path along the Tone River near Tokyo spans 230 car free km!)

3  Cycle art along the bike path. This particular path wasn't too well-maintained and right after this part, it became impassible. Luckily, a little bushwhacking brought me up to the top of the dike, where there was a smooth path.

4  There is a famous animation studio in Tokyo called Studio Ghibli. One of their more famous movies is “My Neighbour Totoro”. (Adapted for stage and currently at the Gillian Lynne Theatre in London. Go see it if you're there. It's great) A character in the movie is a bus that is a live cat. Someone near the town of Fukagawa took an old bus, decorated with characters from the movie, and put it on an empty lot. Great fun. Totoro is the happy grey marshmallow just above the  bike’s saddle.  I highly recommend you give My Neighbour Totoro a look. The animation is absolutely stunning. Another one by the same studio worth watching is Spirited Away.

[RonS]

I'll close this one out with some ordinary looking shots (other than the rare bird), but there's a little story to go with each one. Hope you enjoyed riding along.

1  The Hokkaido red crested crane is one of the worlds rarest cranes. I felt so fortunate to have seen them on five different occasions.

2  Not the best picture, as I quickly grabbed it before this young fellow disappeared behind the building. I had met him at the campground the evening previous. In the morning, I asked him where his destination was for the day. "Obihiro" was his answer. I was also planning to be in Obihiro, however, my plan was to be there three days hence, as it was 200 km from our current location! I can't even imagine riding 200 km strapped to a 15+ kilogram backpack. Ouch!

3  Although not enshrined in law, it is generally accepted in Japan that as long as you're not bothering anyone, you can pretty much camp anywhere. When I couldn't find a commercial or municipally run campsite, I would just look for a city park, or if inclement weather was forecast for the overnight even a store awning. This was the first time I had come across a city park with a band shell. It turned out to work quite well as it kept the morning dew off the tent. The phone camera artificially brightens the scene. It was actually quite dark.

3  This ordinary photo of an ordinary delivery van exemplifies one of the reasons I keep returning to Japan. If you are unable to expand the picture on your screen to see what this van is carrying, I'll explain it. There's a case of Dewar’s whiskey, a case of José Cuervo tequila, a case of sake, quite a few beer kegs, and some other cases that I couldn't make out. Yes, this is a truckload of booze. It was parked on the side of the street in Sapporo, a city of 1.9 million. It was wide open. The vehicle engine was running. The driver was nowhere in sight, probably in one of the nearby restaurants dropping off his cargo. Why?  Because he knew that when he returned, everything would be just as he had left it.