SO LET’S RECAP QUICKLY.
I'd just arrived at New Chitose Airport and was ready to start my adventure. Carting my luggage around the Airport was hard, only because I was in unfamiliar territory. So I was disoriented, tired from not sleeping since my Adelaide departure and pumped up on adrenaline. I found the nearest exit, chucked everything off my Airport trolley and proceeded to set up my bike excitedly.
It was a relief to have my bike up and running, so much so that I just loaded it up, got on it, and rode straight out the car park. I followed the exits and got on a long road away from the Airport (as shown in the last image of the first dispatch) I then turned on google maps and got directions to Sapporo. From what I could see, I was headed in the right direction. After a few missed turns and about 20 minutes riding I approached a toll booth. I took the opportunity to use their restroom to fill up my water pack, before I went and enquired if I had to pay the toll to pass.
After some communication I thanked them and began to walk my bike past the toll office. Before I could get to the car park, a very ticked off looking man rushed out yelling and holding a helmet on his head.
It turns out they meant “no toll road” not “no toll” which are two totally different things. Here I was assuming I got a free pass for being on a bicycle, meanwhile he’s telling me it’s illegal for me to be ON the road. Fuck.
He pulled me aside and gave me a map of the area, drawing a line back to the Airport (only 20 minutes travel back, not too much of a detour…) and out the other side. He was very kind about the mistake and I apologised for misinterpreting him.
My first mistake of the trip was using google maps AFTER I had left the airport and the second was setting gmaps to driving, not walking. Turns out this would be the beginning of my “google maps adventures” as I later referred to them. Walking directions are in beta, people. I thanked him very much for his help, he gave me the map, and I got on my bike to head back from whence I came.
I arrived at New Chitose Airport again and noticed my mistake (turns out I can't read Japanese), corrected it, and began my long haul to Sapporo City. My destination was Yasube Guest House, near the middle of Sapporo City (aka Sapporo-shi). I'd hooked up my stay there entirely by chance, I was looking for places to stay in Sapporo on google and for some reason Guest House Yasube popped up frequently. It looked awesome, the Host looked friendly, interesting and very welcoming so I made contact and eventually secured a bed.
Success.
The ride from the Airport was an awesome introduction to riding in Japan. Basically it’s about “planning ahead in hindsight”. If you are aiming to travel somewhere you've never been before, you are almost guaranteed to miss your mark for turn offs etc ninety percent of the time. Also, a lot of the time the pedestrian footpaths don't connect directly and to walk to one place may require either a fence-hop or a mad dash across a highway, so be prepared to do a lot of backtracking. So, follow your route, miss your mark, reassess, reroute and try again.
Finding the guest house wasn't as hard as I had thought it might be, google maps helped me get near (maybe it felt bad for before), and I had used street view at home some days before so I recognised my surroundings before I got there. What a wonderful age we live in.
As soon as I arrived, the host recognised me from our Facebook conversations. He was extremely nice and showed me where to store my bike. I had seen his Facebook page before and knew the general layout of the place and that he had renovated it from an old house. The place was very beautiful and I complimented it as such, he had done a fantastic job of fitting so many facilities in to such a small place. He introduced himself as Kawai-chan (not Kawaii-chan, don’t make the same mistake I did people), and booked me in.
I unpacked my belongings and put them in the storage space upstairs. It felt kind of cramped, but not in a bad way. There was an air about the place that just made me feel warm and cosy. My bunk was near the ceiling, and the roof beam was low over my bed. Luckily it doesn’t interfere with sleeping, but I can imagine some people wouldn’t prefer quarters like these. I, however, don’t give a shit and loved every minute of it.
I went downstairs to see who else was there, and ran into Kawai-chan talking to the other guests. I asked for the Wi-Fi password and as to where I could get dinner. It turned out that just across the road was a well respected food joint.
I don’t quite remember the name of the establishment or what type of establishment it was. It might have been a Yakitori though. Myself and some of the other people staying at the guest house sat out the front and a small barbeque was set up for us. The chef brought out raw meats such as chicken liver, fillets, different types of fish (including just a whole fish, which you cook and then tear strips off of) and when paired with a big fucking glass of Sapporo beer it made for an excellent meal. In total, to feed four people exceptionally well, with multiple drinks on top, it came to approximately $120 Australian.
Holy. Shit. So good.
I said goodnight to my new found friends and finally hit the hay.
I slept like a log.
Guest House Yasube is fantastic value, for ¥3,000 I stayed the night and had access to all facilities, including soap and shampoo, then in the morning it was free toast until 10AM. I hung out, packing and repacking my equipment to get better balance on my bike, then set to recharging everything. Devices powered by USB are fantastic.
After finally packing my bike and getting the front panniers balanced juuuuuuust right I set off about 11:00am. Later than I'd hoped but the bed was comfy and the food was good and at the end of the day I was on a fucking holiday.
The ride out of Sapporo was pretty calm. The city had hardly any cars on the streets meaning when the footpath got crowded I could just hop a curb and keep on flowing. This set the scene for most cities I would travel through, but I wasn't to know at the time and I just set myself up for getting used to the Japanese roads and footpaths. It was pretty interesting and everything was going fine. That was until I finally exited the city and encountered my first stupid as hell hill climb.
It was unforgiving, and the 100 ish (me plus bike and stuff) kilos I was cranking up the incline made it a for real fight with gravity. Fuck gravity though, because I conquered the hill and made it to the top, only to realise that the hill was maybe only about 2ks long, with a road that doubled back on itself making my achievement all the less impressive. That was a slow 40 minutes, and not the first time I was to be humbled by a road. The view was amazing though, so I took a few pictures of Sapporo City (even though none will ever do it true justice) and headed off for Otaru.
I didn't know much about the roads of Japan, I had heard about tunnels and footpaths but I was about to experience them for real. Riding in to Sapporo from New Chitose was a calming experience, with only a few rollings hills and a blaring sun. However this day was hotter and the humidity had jumped up to 86%.
The footpath was more than adequate, though, and I thought that it would be a smooth transition between side-streets and footpaths, so that crossing the street was a breeze. I found out the hard way that this isn't the case when I went over a surprisingly (at the time) large bump as I crossed a road which made the back end of my bike launch in to the air. Descending a hill at speed on a front-heavy bike will do that.
One thing set this bump apart from the rest of my journey however, is that I had the real smart idea to lazily secure my camera in my rear pannier in the interest of convenience (read: not at all) and as the rear of the bike slammed down, the camera burst through my pannier lid and tumbled down the road beside me.
I was absolutely mortified and stopped my bike on a dime. I didn’t panic, I didn’t rush. I calmly put my bike down, and proceeded to walk bak to my camera.
First things first, does it turn on? I flicked the power switch… *Clickclick-vweet* The shutter activated and opened for live view and the auto-focus motor engaged with the lens. PHEW
Does it auto-focus correctly? I peeked through the viewfinder and focused on my bike… Yep. Looked good.
Does it take a photo? *Click-et* I checked the playback and zoomed in.
Oh yeah. All good.
Relieved, I walked back to my bike, turned and took a photo of the offending road, then proceeded to properly pack my camera in to my bag. I properly packed my camera every single time after that.
From there on I was slammed with hill after hill, each a little harder than the next. Tiny tunnels with less than a metre wide paths on one side made for slow and careful riding, eventually at one point my bags were too wide and began to scrape the walls. One bag got a hole at the top from the wall, and the other got a hole at the bottom from the railing. No biggie though, I could patch that up later, somehow.
Then all of a sudden, freedom. Beautiful coastal air greeted me as I hit the Otaru coast. I made my way to what Google Maps deemed was the centre of the City to chill for a few minutes and eat a banana.
Google Maps tends to chew up a bit of battery, GPSing the whole time, but luckily I'd purchased a solar charger with a built-in backup battery. More than enough for three charges worth, which I strapped to my front rack with bandage tape.
I finished my lunch, said “See ya!” to Otaru and proceeded up yet another hill on my way to Yoichi.
To get to Yoichi I’d be passing through Shioya, continuing my coastal trek along the path of least resistance. I was pottering along though, so I thought I’d try and make some time. That plan unravelled when I made it through the hills to Shioya.
It was beautiful.
I stopped for a few minutes just to let it all soak in, then proceeded to the shore to take some pictures. While I was snapping away, it became apparent the path I was standing on was someone’s driveway, An older man drove his tiny car up to where I was standing and I clumsily moved my heavy bike out the way and apologised for the inconvenience, then kept taking photos. The man got out of his car to watch the sunset also, then asked if I’d like a photo of myself. I accepted his offer and got a cool picture of me, Steve and the beautiful Shioya coast behind us. He wished me well and drove off, at which point I decided to do the same.
The next part of the journey was crazy, the next tunnel coming up was 500m long, and had no alternate routes that didn’t either add 14km of road or force me to walk along the beach with the tide coming in. I proceeded into the tunnel.
Traffic was picking up by this point, somewhat forcing me to take the footpath (if you could call it that) on the left hand side of the tunnel. The path in the 500m long tunnel had to be at MOST 550mm wide, and I managed to scrape my shoulder against the wall a few times. The tunnels didn’t get much better either, and as I continued on they got smaller and smaller. Luckily they also got shorter. That is, until I started heading inland to cross down to Hakodate. That wasn’t my destination yet though, I was heading down along the west coast of Hokkaido, through every tiny town. At one point I stopped at a vending machine, curious to try a Coke.
The machine looked mighty attractive from way down the road. The sun had really kicked my ass and I had it in my head that a can of soft drink would be nice to relax with. I made it to the machine and put in my ¥160 (appx AU$1.80) and grabbed the icy cold can from the bottom.
It tasted exactly like they do in Australia. Yay.
I looked around for a place to lean my bike and sit down and saw a nearby post box. While enjoying my coke, and an elderly lady approached me, I apologised for my lack of Japanese language and she asked me “Country?” in fairly decent English. I replied “Ostoraylia” in my best Japanese accent and she spoke in an amused tone. She left by ducking under a nearby roller door only to return five minutes later with some tomatoes. She presented me with the tomatoes and I offered to pay but she refused to accept my mine, saying “Present, present, present!” over and over. I thanked her as much as I could and stashed the tomatoes before waving goodbye and riding off down the coast.
The sunset was beautiful, but it was getting super dark on my first day of epic riding, I’d begun my plight to head inland, and the bugs were turned up to 11. After riding through some spider webs I freaked out and threw my bike down. It was the first and last time my Arachnophobia would get the best of me on the trip but it took me about ten minutes to calm down from the random thoughts going through my head. It as just after I calmed down that I saw a snake nearby and I thought “fuck it”.
I pulled out my phone and looked on google maps for the nearest guest house or similar. There wasn’t one, no surprises there, but I did notice I’d passed a shrine (Ōe Shrine) about 200 metres behind me. I backtracked and saw the arch and proceeded to head down the side road a little.
After finally finding the shrine I peeked around and knocked a little to see if anyone was home. To my surprise there was no response at all. I didn’t know much about the shrines in Japan, but I assumed that most of them were manned by a priest or a monk of some kind. This one seemed to be more similar to a chapel, for ceremonies etc. I consulted Facebook to see if camping outside a shrine was okay and then checked the internet. Most responses on Facebook were positive and someone suggested leaving fruits and coins on the doorstep as a thank you. I did as such, leaving a tomato and some coins (tomato is a fruit, right?) and then proceeded to set up camp.
This was the first time I had ever camped by myself entirely under my own steam. I used my little Trangia stove to cook myself some noodles and the other tomato, then drank the last of my fruit juice I had purchased in Sapporo, and went to sleep.
I had some WEIRD dreams that night, most I don't remember, but one stuck with me. I dreamt a wolf was at my tent, fucking with me and scaring me, until it’s owner came and leashed it up. Then I was in the alps and then who knows. It was weird and messed up and awesome.
I awoke to my phone alarm the next morning and packed everything up, ready to tackle my second day. I was going to head further inland, on my way to Oshamanbe. That is, until I met a very intense character…
Tune in next time for fierce women, festivals and ferries.
