The heavy rain cleared to leave a beautiful morning on Lake Toya. Plenty of kayakers and SUPers to watch as we cleaned much mud splatter off our tents and dried them in the sun before heading back around the lake.

Back through town and an honest climb out of the crater that the lake and surrounds sit in.

Over the crater edge onto a bit of plateau for ten kilometres, more extensive farming – even a crop of rawang buki, hadn’t seen any for over a week.

Best view of Mt Yotei yet.

Rawang buki not taller than me, this time. (Rachel’s photo.)

Sharp drop back to the ocean, back to the Pacific, at Uchiura Bay. Through a couple of town, unfortunately we’d joined the highway to get around the bay – but still much more pleasant than highway riding in other countries, particularly home.

Finding the old highway stuck closer to the coast for bit, we took that welcome option.

Buoy art.

Refreshments from a rare non-chain convenience store.

Typical small rural station.

Roadworks up ahead showed why this stretch of road may have been quieter than normal – only open every half hour, we had to stop for a bit and wait.

Wasn’t difficult to pass the time here, warm water was very inviting.

Pity it was too early to camp, would have been a great spot.

Given the green light, we rode through the work area – a new tunnel was going in, I assume due to problems with rockfall in the current cutting. Seemed excessive for a relatively redundant route – must only be a small amount of local traffic, as the new highway we had been on is near. But perhaps this is a country that can build things and I’m unused to it.

Soon to be tunnel portal.

Signs that rockfall may be a problem.

Ex-tunnel view definitely preferable.

Extensive stabilisation.

Quite the temporary fence and scaffold.

Out of the roadworks and heading for the highway.

Engineering sure saved us a lot of climbing and descending in this hilly country.

Back down to farms at sea level, we found a few back roads – and had lunch in a field. The coastal highway around Oshamanbe was busy, and we did our best to avoid it – but it was difficult as we found ourselves skirting a huge engineering build. I’d apologise, but I’m not sorry, for more construction photos below – it certainly defined that stretch of riding.

The shinkansen (bullet train) is being extended from the southern Hokkaido city of Hakodate to Sapporo (by far the biggest city in Hokkaido). Count-lost mobile cranes, form work and concrete pouring; all a bit mind-boggling in scale.

Having decided the direct route down the east to Hakodate (to get a ferry to Honshu) offered no quiet alternative, we left the Pacific and cut west across the peninsula towards the Sea of Japan. A little climbing to Pirika – with a big, open campground attached to a large hotel-onsen.

Wonder what they grow here.

Checking in – seem well catered for budding cyclists.

Unusually the cooking shelter was screened for bugs, a nice change to avoid mosquitoes. A good wash and soak at the onsen to top off a different, but interesting day. Quite the contrast between Lake Toya and all the construction; still very hot, of course.

Camp dinners still delivering; mostly Rachel’s influence.

A late start with several cups of tea deliberating over having a full rest day due to heavy forecast rain or chancing it because outside it was improving. Eventually we left the rider house riding rural roads around the base of Mt Yotei.

A big parking lot at Kyogoku lead to popular paths around steamy hot springs fed by water under Yotei. Rather atmospheric.

Surprised to see some Mongolian wool products at one of the stalls.

Continuing south, more rich farming land – immaculate dairy farms, cropping (carrots ready to harvest were tempting).

Into Rusutsu for lunch, and a slight detour so Rachel could see the resort town she visited thirteen years before for a ski holiday. The large amusement park, part of it inside a hotel, the most notable feature to my eyes in summer.

A town for my brother-in-law, it seems.

Outside cows!

Somewhere along the way, a michi no eki (large roadside services complex without fuel, often selling a lot of local produce and wares – we frequently visited these) helped us stock up on dinner bits.

Every so often in Japan the road marked on our maps would turn out to be a track – this was usually a welcome change.

This was one of the good ones, a steep easy descent to Lake Toya.

A flat quiet road around the lake towards our campground.

The campground was a beauty – right on the lake, big deciduous trees and a little bit going on.

We’d managed to stay reasonably dry all day, so didn’t tempt fate and got the tents up pronto. The various ingredients we’d collected throughout our riding made another great dinner.

Not much hanging around drinking tea into the night as the rain soon arrived. It bucketed down for much of the night, small streams running down to the lake everywhere and I found that the seam sealing of my tent wasn’t quite up to scratch in a couple of places – but my sleeping gear and me stayed dry.

A very easy day due to a lot of rain forecast later. No rush to leave though, so I poked around the abandoned hotel next door before we wandered the geothermal area that fed last night’s onsen. Also a new visitor centre just up the road, so spent some time there chatting to the woman, who happened to be an intrepid bike tourer.

Onsen on the right, Rachel and I each had respective halves to ourselves the previous night – not a busy place.

Mt Niseko visible at times – a popular ski area, Rachel having skied there on one of her previous trips to Japan.

A very quiet, smooth and leisurely descent on little more than lanes. Cute town signs to be seen.

Passing a lot of ski villages and runs, we were soon in Kutchan – a bit of a service town. After limited supplies cooking dinner the previous night, we spent a lot of time in town replenishing our reserves.

Best tea in a cafe, for my tastes, yet. Better than our go-to teabags for camping – if I ever return to Japan, must remember to take decent tea.

Also found a huge second-hand gear store – this would be a great place to come if over skiing. Plenty of other sports, clothes and household items covered too.

It was good to be able to shop at a supermarket for a change, this one with a huge array of prepared meals. No cooking for us tonight.

Didn’t take me long to get used to raw fish, so good.

Do love my saddle-bag for its surge capacity.

Only a few kilometres south out of town to a new rider house us pushed over a massive twenty kilometres for the day. Now that it was September, the campground and rider house were empty – so we had great facilities all to ourselves. This would often be the case for the following two months, but it did mean a lot of places weren’t open. Not that that stopped us. The rain arrived in force, but we were safely inside and doing chores by then. What a strangely short day.

Only a little, ten kilometres, of the rugged coastline left to start our day.

Old glass buoys as lampshades, or made to look so.

As we turned inland towards the floodplain, we passed Japan’s first nuclear power station – but it was rather hidden behind the last of the cliffs – one of which we rode through. But there was no missing the visitor centre – which was surprisingly open at nine-thirty on a Sunday.

Even bigger than some of the abandoned hotels we’d seen.

Well, this is different.

I enjoyed poking around the various science and engineering displays, trying to remember what I’d once known about such things – didn’t want to bore Rachel too much by staying too long though.

Some of the interactive displays were impressive.

What we’d not seen hidden away.

Definitely pushing the boundary of our “visitor centre” interpretation – and we didn’t even go to the large heated swimming pool.

Friendly Mr Fission?

Getting a bit ridiculous now, the more we walked around and found still more.

To Kyowa town for lunch and supplies – back to rice fields, and with views of the Niseko range.

Happy guy.

We got distracted by the local history museum, which was also large considering the size of the town we eventually found. A lot of the foyer seemed to be given over to many scarecrows from a local festival (which we’d missed by a fortnight) – most of them were alarming to some degree.

Suspiciously like Mr Fission in disguise.

A bit of smelting history caught my eye.

We’d not seen much reference to the Pacific War in places we’d visited so far, so this was surprising.

Lunch inside a non-chain convenience store was some respite from the heat before we started climbing. First through a little farmland before joining the Niseko Panorama Line. It’d been a while since we’d been in the hills, so our longest climb for over a week was a good change. Even the heat changed when a lot of cloud rolled in, cooling things down pleasantly.

Got a bit of a look a the power plant as we climbed.

The coast down which we’d ridden in the previous day.

Shortly before the pass, there were a series of walking tracks to and around some rather lovely wetlands on a series of boardwalks. The sun came out at times, it rained at times and for a while it did both. Very pleasant to linger and watch the dragonflies and general changes in the weather.

Back at the parking lot, it was time for a big sando and Calpis.

Near the pass, there were a series of tracks through the hillside – making it look even more like teafields.

Fun descent for a couple of hundred metres lost, before turning off and regaining some of that altitude.

Into a very quiet Niseko Goshiki Onsen, some more big abandoned hotels to wonder about.

But there was an immaculately kept, unattended campground. We were the only ones camping, a couple of vehicles overnight in the parking lot.

Another big kitchen shelter to ourselves, mostly.

Over the road at the onsen, we also had our respective halves to ourselves – nice soak up in the mountains before heading back for tea and bed on a misty night.