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.