Morning visitor; better outside the tent, as with all other creatures.

Long gravel descent to start, extra layer on as a strangely cool start. Few light showers through the day too, but mostly the standard hot and humid.

This stretch first up another highlight of the Japan riding, following a creek down to a sealed road by which time it had become more of a river.

Used to sunflowers being tall…

But rawan buki was a new one. A large field, with a pleasant path through it, of these single stem plants with a broad leaf on top towered over us.

Roadside cheer squad?

Our forty-odd kilometre descent finished in the town of Ashoro, where we lingered for a couple of hours. Found some rawan buki on soft serve ice cream – yum! Pleasantly, not overly, sweet green jelly. The town really leaning into the plant, the manhole covers pictured it and there were plenty of banners around – with a cartoon creature of the plant. The visitor centre used to be the station, but the railway long since closed – pleasingly there was a bit of a display to show some of the history. It looked like we might be following some of the old line later in the day.

With about four hundred metres to gain to Nukabira, we mostly avoided the (admittedly quiet) highways. Steeper in parts than the gentle valley we’d descended earlier, there were enough down sections to get our climbing legs working again later to regain the lost elevation.

Still finding some nice gravel.

Starting to see some old rail infrastructure.

Nukabira is a small town at the end of an inlet at the foot of the lake its named after, sloping up a few streets towards a couple of ski lifts. Very quiet it was, unsure if it still sees much activity in the snow season. Not even a Seicomart, we scrabbled together enough ingredients for an interesting dinner. We had a huge campground all to ourselves; well, as far as other humans went:

More campground companions, about eight centimetres long.

I found a small rail museum in the tiny old station and enjoyed poking around that just before it closed – lots of old maintenance and operational items. Seemed the rail line was mostly there to service forestry. There was a bit of walking to be done from the campground – down to the lake, more old rail bridges and we found another public foot spa in an open area.

Away at seven, well – down the hill to Seicomart, yet again; not long before we were at the visitor centre on the edge of Shiretoko National Park.

Back to Utoro.

After the bear attack and body retrieval in the previous few days, most of the hiking tracks were closed in the park. But there was a short one still open behind the visitor centre, so we set off on that. Ten minutes in and we promptly saw an alarmingly large bear crossing the track not really that far in front of us. Thankfully we were far more surprised than the bear – who just kept walking through doing its thing. Turning tail, that was the end of our walk for the day!

Having reported the encounter, there were no longer any trails open in the park. But it seems that our sighting was not unusual, the tenth in the last two weeks according to the calendar below:

No more hiking for us, had better get on with the biking – up over the pass, looking at Mt Rausu most of the way. Good gentle gradient, little traffic and occasional shade.

Back down to the northwest.

Mt Rausu.

Didn’t seen any more bears crossing, thankfully.

View from the pass – big parking lot, plenty of people around.

To the southeast. There’s Russia again, its islands seemingly wrapping around this part of Japan.

Wonderfully long descent it was too; although I got very sleepy on the way down, most unusual – lack of sleep in the heat catching up with me.

We pulled into a wild (for want of a better term) free onsen on the side of the road. Too hot to swim, we did bump into the father and son cyclists for the third time that week.

Quite the little dude; must be strong – his loaded bike was heavier than ours. Perhaps because we weren’t carrying so many souvenirs – deer antlers particularly.

Lunch and ice cream stop in Rausu town before heading up the east side of the peninsula. Not far to a rider house and a campground opposite sandwiched between the road and the rocky coast. Was rather difficult getting tent pegs in. Camp made, we continued as far as the road would take us – seeing a fair bit of wildlife, not to mention rather too much of old men in the hot rock pools that were made in the shallows of the sea.

Plenty of fishing net buoys all up this stretch of coast.

Two of numerous little pools built around hot springs in the sea.

Chum salmon and pollack the prize catches in these waters.

Back to camp; I think Orlaith kindly volunteered to ride the five-ish kilometres back to town to get dinner supplies. She did well as the fresh tomatoes, mushrooms along with pesto and chicken was one of our best camp meals yet. Certainly beats the dog roll in Mongolia!

Although my snap doesn’t seem to have done it justice.

Sleep, well – attempted sleep, the closest we got to Russia – only twenty-five kilometres across the water to Kunashiri Island.

Making the most of our chalet’s kitchen, poaching eggs may have lead to a pleasantly later start.

Think we got all this right before dropping the trash off.

Nice descent to start with, but first the large playground next to the campground demanded some testing for my nephews.

Roller slide? Reminded me of the roller stands we used to have while packing boysenberries.

Big pillow looking a bit deflated; already a leaf blower out keeping it immaculate, wonder what the man thought of us.

Ouch, no thanks.

One of the most enjoyable sections of riding on quiet tracks and roads greeted us coming off the hill. Lots of twists and turns descending, then through chicken and pig farms on gravel before a long series rollers through crops (onion, potatoes, carrots, daikon).

Into the town of Shari for lunch, Seicomart again. We popped over the road to eat near the station; of all the towns we’d been to recently, this area was the most recently renovated and up to date. Nice to see something new and not fading – even if it was just outside the station.

Fascinating structure made to look like it’s constructed with fishing net.

Shari also the gateway to famed Shiretoko National Park (we hoped for some hiking) – probably why the station was so much flasher than most provincial ones.

Trying to avoid the highway as we approached the coast, we eventually had no other option on a sweltering afternoon. This turned into one of the worst sections of highway we rode on (I remember only one other from three months in Japan – not bad going at all). Amongst increased traffic (only road around the coast), there was no shoulder and the edge of the seal was in poor condition. Thankfully this only last forty minutes or so, and we did get a tailwind – even if it was not helping the heat situation. Drivers were still courteous, so compared to most countries – not bad!

Relieved to find vending machines for a cold drink, we were delighted to find another wonderfully retro cafe tucked away – and it was open. Run by two dear older women, we were well looked after with iced drinks and then iced towels.

(Rachel’s photo)

One of the women enjoyed showing us pictures of the place – in summer here.

Obviously winter here. The ice flows down from the north and packs the coast in!

The vintage cameras caught my eye.

The handguns just sitting there dragged it down.

Returning to our bikes, and the furnace, we found a couple of extra loaded bikes. Fun to see the father and son from a week ago in the Wakkanai rider house.

A good sign indeed. Also, the road improved markedly and it was a little cooler right by the sea.

A short walk up to Oshin Koshin Falls was enjoyable; we may have lingered in the spray for longer than necessary.

Into Utoro for the night, Shiretoko mountains in the background.

At least some of the concrete coastal protection gives a little aesthetic pleasure.

While I went off to post yet more unneeded items home (the poncho I got in Sapporo was enough to send the heavy raincoat home), Rachel and Orlaith had fun trying to check into the campground. Seemed there was some confusion as apparently most of the national park was closed due to a bear attack a day or two beforehand – but we just wanted to stay in their campground the night, with plenty of other people around. I detoured to an information centre before climbing to the campground.

It didn’t look like we’d be doing much hiking in the park, unfortunately. But not as unfortunate as the hiker who was last seen by his friend being carried off into the mountainside forest. Eek.

The climb to the campground paid for by the view.

We wandered to a local izakaya for dinner; very nice, even if the TV news of the missing hiker was alarming – but that’s for tomorrow, first tasty salmon and roe.