An early morning transfer to the airport was markedly faster than the reverse four weeks earlier. With some sadness we farewelled Mongolia and Ian – both having helped to make for a fantastic month’s of bikepacking. Strangely, we were flying United to Tokyo – which was adequate, but things ran late all day. Mongolia having been an addition to the original trip plan, I was very much looking forward to finally getting to, and spending three months biking in, Japan.

With a shortened time to make our connection at Narita to fly north to Hokkaido, things got a bit rushed as we had to collect and recheck our bike boxes. This proved most amusing as the airport staff were not used to bike boxes and it seemed they would not fit through the X-ray machine. So with a lot of helpful supervision and people kindly making a fuss over us, we had to unpack our bikes. The staff however seemed far more interested in our bikepacking gear as a concept, rather than as a means to conceal anything nefarious.

After the performance, we did make our connection in time. Well, we were on time.

Landing at Chitose, we were somewhat at how dark it was so early in the evening. For some reason, we started assembling our bikes in the terminal – probably on account of the high temperature and humidity outside. This was not the done thing, and we were moved on to finish putting bikes together outside. Dinner was our first taste of famed konbini (convenience store) fare.

Ready to go again.

Almost ten o’clock by now, thankfully it was not ten kilometres to get to the camping ground Rachel had booked and organised a late arrival at. Setting off at such an hour in a new country wasn’t the best – but at least it meant when we found ourselves on some sort of freeway, there wasn’t much traffic! Maps had us on an elevated road when we wanted to be turning right onto the road below – a bit of creative route-making eventually got us where we needed to be, setting up tents in a dark and quiet campground optimistically hoping for a good sleep in the humidity.