Left our new and excellent hostel heading for the Shakotan Peninsula. But first a twenty kilometre ride out of the city in the morning rush (which wasn’t particularly manic) before hitting the coast – where the highway stayed busy and built-up for some time.
Hostel.
Friday morning in the suburbs sandwiched between the central city and mountains west of Sapporo.
Our obsession with documenting every different manhole cover we found seems to have taken hold – unfortunate it didn’t start four weeks earlier, we missed many.
Waiting waiting for another to trundle past.
Aww.
Bit of fun in a large supermarket trying to find a magnesium supplement – thought it might help both my muscles and sleep – before reaching the touristy centre of Otaru. A large canal was used for loading barges in the wayback. Many of the warehouses were built of stone, unusually, and have survived. The first warehouse we came to now specialises in music boxes. Never seen so many in my life. Very popular place to visit and with thousands of boxes playing scores of different tunes all out of time – quite an assault on the senses, but not unpleasant!
Steam driven chime clock out front to keep with the theme of mechanisms.
Ornate ones.
Fun ones.
A lot of fun ones.
Old ones.
Half of the ground floor; you can see the stairs from the mezzanine to the third level in the attic.
Back outside to the relative quiet of tourists everywhere.
Back on the bikes to have a look at the canals and some of the other older buildings.
Not as old, but far more derelict.
Lunch eaten outside the, unfortunately, closed Otaru museum we then took a steep exit from the city through narrow streets and lanes – almost deserted though, so that was nice.
Stone store houses continue.
Seeking quieter roads, and being alongside the coast, we found ourselves at a quiet harbour as the cloudy day turned to drizzle.
Leaving the pleasant harbour the road soon turned to steep rough double track – quite a surprise in Japan. We had a work party as an audience, so extra effort made to pedal the whole way up. The back side was even steeper down, but rideable.
Through Yoichi, we struck by this wood clad storehouse (we’d see many of these from Honshu south, but hadn’t seen many so far). It was part of a museum housed in old buildings, and somehow we got a guided tour.
The thick walls and sloped shutters a recurring feature.
Most of the museum dedicated to what was now becoming a familiar history of the extensive herring fishing industry – where the fish was dried and sent south for fertiliser.
Drying racks.
Onward to find somewhere to camp the night as the drizzle continued. Plenty of tunnels as the hills came down to the coast.
A good sign.
Shakotan Peninsula – always difficult to work out what we might actually see from such maps.
In a rest area at the one of the tunnel portals, there was an explanation of how the many emergency call points we’d seen over the previous month worked. Despite not being able to understand most of it, it was interactive enough (there were flashing lights and so on) to be of some interest!
Over a hill and through some long coastal tunnels we called it a day at Shakotan town as there was a nice seaside area for camping. Having scoped it out, off we went to an izakaya for both dinner and to escape the rain. Returning to make camp, the rain had mostly stopped and we had an entertaining rest of the evening under the shelter two men had set up for cooking and eating.
These guys were old university mates and were repeating a camping trip they’d taken with a group of friends fifty years ago, very cool. They had enough English that we could share stories; much fun, although I couldn’t work out how they were going to get any sleep both squashed into a kei car.
Rachel’s photo.