Hokkaido, Japan

[RonS]

 I am finally getting around to writing up a description of my last tour, to Hokkaido Japan. Better late than never.

  On August 30 I arrived in Memambetsu, after a 20 hour layover in Tokyo (where it was 38°!). Memambetsu is where I ended the Hokkaido portion of my tour in 2023. Luckily for me, it has an airport which connects to Tokyo so I was able to fly in and pick up right where I left off last time. I then travelled mostly along the coast in a clockwise direction, arriving in Sapporo 26 days later, where I departed to return home.

I'll get into the nuts and bolts of the tour in future posts. This time I'll just give a few highlights and some pics.

The weather gods smiled on me (mostly) this trip. I avoided riding in the pouring rain until the very last day. There were some good overnight storms, including one that dumped 75 mm of rain in 12 hours, with 70 km/h winds (I was inside for that one). Temps we're mostly in the low to mid 20s, and overnights in the teens, right in my riding and sleeping sweet spot. There was one night where I, for the first time in three trips to Japan, had to don a long sleeved top.

A few random stats:

Distance ridden; 1429km, with 8830m elevation gain. Longest day 101km, not by planning. I had to detour 10km after being sent by Google down a road that had a long term construction project. So much for “live traffic updates”. Most days were around 50-70km. I like taking my time.

Days that didn’t end with a trip to the onsen (hot spring spa): 1, because my guidebook was out of date, and it had closed down. The campground had plenty of water, though. Nothing like a hot soak after a day in the saddle.

Omiyage (gifts) received from random strangers: 10, ranging from a can of coffee someone handed me from their car window while I had stopped to take a photo, to having my dinner paid for by a young man who wanted to practice his English and hear about my trip.

Soft serve ice cream cones consumed (Hokkaido is famous for it) 13 

And some photos

1 Memambetsu airport is small, but it has a bike reassembly station, covered, and with loaner tools, provided you get there early enough. I didn’t. While I was reassembling the bike, an employee came by and (very nicely) asked how long I was going to be because ”the airport closes in 15 minutes.”

2 Nobody does cute like the Japanese. After seeing this overhead road sign, you won't know where you're going, but you'll have a smile on your face.

3 Yup, that's a  CDN $47 watermelon. I didn't buy it, but I did buy a personal sized one for $18 and it was delicious.

4 The first of my 13 ice creams. Bamboo flavour. It was actually quite good. The craziest flavour I came across was carrot, and I was going to try it, but it was the last day of a long weekend, and they were sold out!

[Andre Jute]

Love you, Ron. I've been wondering where the report/photos of your next tour of Japan were.

The signs are a scream. The bike assembly station, in English! And the paraglider is priceless! He couldn't be funnier if he carried his bike in his left hand and could only make right hand turns because that was the only hand he had left to operate the parachute!*

*Come to think of it, there were once parachute commandos who jumped with their bicycles, but in Europe, not Japan.

[RonS]

*Come to think of it, there were once parachute commandos who jumped with their bicycles, but in Europe, not Japan.

The Shimano Bicycle Museum in Sakai, near Osaka, had one of these on display when I visited in 2023!

 I'm glad I had done more training than usual for this trip (still not enough), because the first three days involved passes of 550, 400, and 500 metres to start the day. Definitely no Scottish Bealach na bà or Rainy Pass in Washington state, but still a lot of work for an old guy on a heavy bike.

 After the first day, I also had to adjust my route plan. When I arrived at the first evening’s campsite, I got talking with Sangjin, a retired gentleman from Korea just about my age, who was also on a Japanese cycling trip. When we got discussing our routes, I told him I was headed over to the Shiretoko Peninsula. He had come from that area and told me that had been his plan as well, but the road over the past was closed to bicycles due to recent bear attacks. Unless I could ride my bike uphill faster than a bear can run, it was “strongly suggested” to stay away. Even people in cars were told not to stop, and the viewpoint at the pass had been closed. Time for a Plan B. There was another highway that avoided the bear danger, and would put me back on my planned route. It did knock three days of riding off the itinerary, so as the trip progressed, I added some more riding to the back end.

Here are some photos from week 1:

1  My “dog house” accomodation. There was a good storm brewing when I arrived at the campground in Shari on the afternoon of day 2. I noticed these dog house like tents on wheels while I was walking up to the office. Inquiring as to how much they were I was told ¥1600 (C$15). Sure beats pitching the tent in the howling wind and packing it up soaking wet in the morning. The price even included a ticket to the local onsen a 200m walk down the road.

2  Cape Nosappu, the easternmost point in Japan, AKA “where Japan’s day starts”. On this day, 05 September, it started at 0444hr. I had pitched the tent where the photo was taken from, and waking up that early wasn't a problem, as the cars started arriving at 0400 in anticipation of the sunrise.

3  The main industry of the eastern and southern coasts of Hokkaido is Kombu kelp harvesting, and I passed through at peak season. Every available patch of ground along the shore is covered with gravel for kelp drying..The kombu from this area is prized by chefs throughout Japan.

4 I never tired of the open Hokkaido landscape and the roads that would sometimes be arrow straight for 10 km.

[John Saxby]

Great stuff, Ron!  Good move on The Matter of Bears -- glad you met the Korean cyclist...

Wonderful photos, as always.

No cycling here right now: Winter, she has arrived.  10-15 cms of snow on Sunday, some of it later melted.  -11 this morning, windchill of -18.

Bikes are all in my basement workshop, awaiting their winter service.

Time to get my skates sharpened 

Cheers,  John

[Andre Jute]

I love the juxtaposition of the first two photographs, of the somewhat ragged tarpaper doghouse accommodation with the sublime image of the lighthouse at Cape Nosappu against the sun's rays just rising on the horizon over open water.

[RonS]

I love the juxtaposition of the first two photographs, of the somewhat ragged tarpaper doghouse accommodation with the sublime image of the lighthouse at Cape Nosappu against the sun's rays just rising on the horizon over open water.

Keep that up, and I may begin to fancy myself “a photographer”.

When it comes to cycling, Hokkaido has something for everybody, mountains, rugged coast, and the Tokachi plain, Hokkaido’s main crop growing region. I tried to get some of each on this trip. (Light on the mountains, though) Here are some photos from the southeast area of the island.

1  it wasn't all asphalt riding. I used mainly Komoot for route planning and it found a gravel road/path at least once a day, just to keep things interesting. Some of them turned out to be hike-a-bike ordeals, but that’s for another post.

2  I passed this slope stabilization project, and just wondered at the scale of it. If you enlarge the picture and look at the bottom third,  you will see the workers, and on the left side of the project is the staircase that they had to ascend. Who wants to count the steps?

3  They clearly get a lot of rain here, not to mention some of the heaviest snowfalls on earth. It's just so green.

4  Get off the runway! Don't worry it's just a dike, arrow straight for 10 km. Every kilometre was marked on the ground. I'm guessing for whatever maintenance observations they do from the air. These dikes were great riding as most of them were beautifully surfaced and had virtually no traffic. The only vehicles I saw appeared to be for maintenance, or farmers.

[Andre Jute]

There used to be a British watercolorist, name now escapes me, who used even in old age to go to Japan every year to paint and teach, who taught, and practised, this simple gem: Give the sky the upper two thirds or three quarters of the painting's height, and  viewers will be emotionally satisfied.

[PH]

fantastic report and photos Ron. I've never been but it looks a great country to explore. 

[PH]

Give the sky the upper two thirds or three quarters of the painting's height, and  viewers will be emotionally satisfied.

That's quite similar to the two thirds rule of photography, that is the horizon should be at a third or two, depending on which side of it the story is.

[RonS]

No cycling here right now: Winter, she has arrived.  10-15 cms of snow on Sunday, some of it later melted.  -11 this morning, windchill of -18.

Bikes are all in my basement workshop, awaiting their winter service.

 John, I was going to make a crack about how “There’s no bad weather, just bad clothing”, or my favourite Dutch expression “You're not made of sugar”, but I just finished watching an episode of Not Just Bikes called “Why Canadians can't bike in the winter, but Finnish people can”. I think I can understand why the bikes are in the basement awaiting more favourable cycling conditions. For those unfamiliar, Not Just Bikes is a great YouTube channel about cycling culture and urban planning.

 All four pictures in today's installment are from a particularly spectacular 30km stretch of coastline between Hiroo and Cape Erimo. The road is squeezed between the water and nearly sheer cliffs. A lot of the ride was through avalanche sheds, covered but open on the water side, allowing a great view, and 12km of tunnels, the longest of which was 59m short of 5km, (most tunnels in Japan have the length shown at the entrance) with 2 more at 2km each.

 Here's a little story about my previous evening in Hiroo. After my daily ritual of a scrub and soak at the local sento (public bath, like an onsen only with tap water instead of mineral water), I checked Google for a nearby restaurant. It showed a taishoku (set meal; rice, soup, pickles, main, for one set price) place right around the corner, although it showed “busier than normal”. Hiroo is not a large town, so I thought busier than normal probably still isn't too bad, so off I went. I arrived to a totally empty parking lot, but I did see movement inside so I thought I'd check it out. Going through the door I was met by the proprietors, a husband and wife, 80 years if they were a day.  “Aitemasu ka?” (Are you open?) The wife apologetically says that they are closed and leads me out the door. Then she sees the bike. “Oh my! You've been riding a bicycle? Surely you can't go away hungry!" (Actually, I had no idea what she was saying. She was speaking far too quickly for me to understand, but that's what I'm going to say she said). She then ushered me back inside, and opened the restaurant just for me! It was one of the trip’s highlights.

[Andre Jute]

Give the sky the upper two thirds or three quarters of the painting's height, and  viewers will be emotionally satisfied.

That's quite similar to the two thirds rule of photography, that is the horizon should be at a third or two, depending on which side of it the story is.

True. But it doesn't always work even in the fine arts, and in tourist photos I want to see what attracted the photographer's interest at maximum possible size.

[Andre Jute]

That "avalanche shed" photo is amazing as a composition, architecturally and as a mystery to be solved.

Architecturally the avalanche shed is "merely" a regular repetition of massive pillars with a featureless wall and roof enclosing a floor and an emptiness, but there is a certain brutal charm in such spectacular simplicity, and of course there are the shadows to define the shapes and provide movement, hinting in the momentary snapshot at the passage of time. But then there is the inversion of shadows across the roof, which raises questions.

The mystery: Surely the sun can't be so much lower than this covered road. What, to the left, is so reflective that it lights up the inner wall and the ceiling of the avalanche shed?* It's the sea, of course, of which the tiniest sliver is seen at the far left of the photo, used by the architect as a player in the spectacle.

You've outdone yourself, Ron.

* Yes, I know, Ron provides the answer. I read it before I enlarged the photograph.