Our first hotel stay in Japan gave us our first hotel buffet breakfast in Japan. Always fun to see what food would be offered, and there was plenty. An unusual, to us, mix – but good cycling food, should at least get us the few wet kilometres to the ferry.
As if we were going home anytime soon.
Having negotiated the ferry ticketing rather wet, we got wetter waiting to board out in the open. But once on board, before the cars, we and our bikes were well looked after again and managed to dry out some on the short voyage to Honshu.
A little to look out as we left Hokkaido, but mostly a grey voyage to Honshu. We’d chosen to take the shorter route to Oma and ease into the fairly quiet looking northern peninsula – avoiding the city of Aomori.
Off the ferry, we found there had been other foreign cycle tourists on board – chatting pleasantly the short distance before going separate ways. But of course, we soon met some of them at the supermarket buying lunch. Charles and PJ from Brisbane had some interesting tales, and bikes, from their recent travels in Europe. Riding together, it was not far to the northern most point of Honshu and chance to lunch together and continue chatting.
Rachel and I moseyed on around the coast, already noticing Honshu looking more prosperous – far fewer abandoned buildings and general decay, at least in these parts.
At some stage Charles and PJ rejoined us; well, at different stages as they ride at different paces. Turned out Charles used to work in high hazard industries too, a rather out-of-place discussion about process safety (which I thought I’d left behind) ensued.
Popping over a few small hills to the town of Mutsu, the forecast poor weather hadn’t eventuated so extending our riding day we endured thirty kilometres of rather tedious main road as far as Yokohama town – by which time twilight and drizzle caught up with us.
The small supermarket was a bit different to what we were used to, but amply supplied we set off to find somewhere to camp – as the supposed campground a few kilometres before town didn’t eventuate. We found a great big park that was deserted and discreet enough to stealth camp in, success!
Concrete logs must have been unusual enough to snap a photo of.
Every so often one of us had reported public toilets with these unusual facilities in. Was quite a while before I saw one, there was one in this municipal park. It had been decided between us that the special sinks were for emptying ostomy bags. A bit of research shows that they’re more common than we came across – regularly in accessible facilities for those that need them.
Maybe not for washing camp dishes.