The Okh-coast with the Most

....rain, that is.


Sorry, that pun's been floating in my head for about 400km now, and if you didn't like it you're free to read some other self-indulgent traveller's blog!

The current state of affairs is we're settling in to a hostel near the town of Teshikaga, waiting for the bad weather to stop, so there will likely be a flurry of posts in the next couple of days!

Anyway, in order for my pun to even make sense, the story is that since leaving Wakkanai a week ago, and travelling down the coast of the Okhotsk sea (get it now??!?), it's been at least cloudy and often rainy. For the full week. Here's another block of text that's been ruminating for the past few days; it's entitled
"Things we have yet to experience in Japan"
-An enjoyable morning of camping complete with a dry tent
-A view of a mountain peak, unobscured by cloud
-The "non-rainy season" of Hokkaido
-A tailwind
-A starry night sky

Less complaining and more pictures, right? In Wakkanai we met a fellow cyclist by the name of Yoneda Kiyoji, who took us out for dinner and even treated us! He also allowed me to practice a little Japanese which I would imagine was trying for him.



We set out, rounded Cape Soya, which is the northernmost point in Japan, and didn't really bother taking any pictures since we arrived in concert with every tour bus north of the 40th parallel. Down the cloudy coast, we actually found a pretty decent free campsite overlooking the sea.



There we met another cyclist, Takahashi Yuichi, who we rode with for the day. We stopped early in the town of Okoppe, to take advantage of the free lodgings (pictured below, an old train car) and to avoid the rain. Yuichi read the menus for us at a few restaurants, which was awesome, and also took us to a Sento to get cleaned up. A Sento is, of course, much like an Onsen, except without the pretense of thermally heated water (but all of the nudity).



We bid adieu to Yuichi and headed south along the coast. We actually managed a good day of riding (I lied before, we had a tailwind that morning) and aided by another fantastic cycling road, made it to the town of Abashiri. At the free campsite there, we met another two cyclists (one from Osaka, one from Korea), had a pleasant evening, and then of course woke up to pouring rain the next morning.




I'll stop there and leave some for Matt to complain about, but before I forget, THE MAP! (The green marks are where we stopped for the night, with G being our present location.)


View Larger Map

We may also set up some sort of a photo album somewhere since it's too annoying posting them all on blogger. More to come,

-z