Heavy rain overnight pleasingly eased to slight mizzle as we breakfasted and decamped.
Better than some monuments to degrees of latitude we’d seen.
Barely having started the climb up Hachimantai, a mama and baby bear wandered out of the forest a few hundred metres ahead of us. Reaching for the bear spray as we all checked each other out, we were most relieved they didn’t find us interesting, or threatening, and soon walked up the road and back into the forest. Phew, bear attacks were becoming too-regular news that summer in Japan. The rest of the thousand metre climb was spent in vocal conversation with regular calls to any other bears. We didn’t see any.
We didn’t see much of anything as the mist was very thick; still warm, it was nice riding with little traffic. There were a few small installations harnessing the geothermal energy from the mountain.
I started to be more concerned with goblins than bears in this atmosphere.
Stopping at a large, but deserted, visitor centre part-way up the climb, we took a short stroll to some plopping mud pools.
Near the pass, the cloud broke up some to reveal a limited, but still beautiful, look at the surrounding contours.
A huge parking lot and visitor centre at the top of the road was clearly built for days with views better than ours. But a bit of sun and a good breeze was handy for tying our wet tents to our bikes to dry while we headed off to walk a few kilometres of tracks through stunted forest and around small lakes.
Active drilling for more geothermal activity right by the road.
First lunch was found in the visitor centre, along with curious photos.
Seems they make quite an effort to clear the road in the winter.
That might help scare them straight?
Back outside in time to pack our tents away as rain started. Absolutely pelted with stinging rain on the 1100 metre descent, the only respite being the long snow tunnels. Consequently we didn’t see much (again), but soon mostly dried out as it was hot and dry on the valley floor.
Soon found a michi no eki for second lunch.
A pleasant afternoon of riding on back roads and cycle paths skirting towns as best we could.
As we’d had a few nights wild camping, and gotten a bit wet earlier, it was time to find somewhere inside to stay – and do some laundry. Somehow Rachel found a large hotel in a new part of town that seemed to specialise in sports teams staying – we never worked out how. They were very welcoming and even let us store our bikes in the main foyer.
We turned our room into a drying room, and the white shower cubicle was no longer so pristine.
Seems I finally remembered to take a photo of the standard, bewildering, toilet controls – front wash, back wash, pressure, deodorisation, seat temperature, masking music all common choices.
Having got clean and dry, we weren’t keen to go far in the rain to find dinner. At least, I think that is how we ended up at a much fancier restaurant than usual. All worth it as the copious amounts of raw fish was up there with the best meal we had in our three months in Japan.
The only part I didn’t particularly enjoy was the raw fish mince (bit hard to see here, but can see top left on Rachel’s plate above).
Another excellent day, despite the bear scare and the painful rain – plenty more delights to put those in perspective.