The rain starts at around 4.30am. Pitter pat on the tent. Maybe it will stop soon? It doesn’t stop. We get up in the rain and cycle away in the rain. While trying to balance my bike I manage to snap the cable running to my bike computer, which we repair in the rain. After 27km we reach a Seicomart on the outskirts of Kushiro, and buy some food. We spend the next 16 or so kilometres cycling through Kushiro. In the rain. After avoiding the tempations of Fish Land, we cycle out along the coast.
The sea is angry and grey, and all the rivers rush muddily towards it. I am wet and cold and curse the pretty flowers I had been admiring previously. I will be quite content with a drought resistant garden with no pretty flowers.
We are cycling through puddles and up streams of water running down the road, it’s impossible to see where you’re cycling. I get a flat tyre. We pull into a petrol station and repair it.
After vowing to stop at the next convenience store we see, we discover that not only can we get hot bento boxes, but they have a hot fridge there! We squelch around the store and drink coffee and hot chocolate, trying to get warm before venturing out into the rain again.
On reaching the campground in Urahoro, it is closed, so we set up in the cooking shelter. I happily wander off to the washrooms to change into my nice warm, dry clothes, and discover my Deuter panniers are not up to a full day of cycling in the rain through puddles and having water sprayed at them by trucks. Their little raincoats can not stop that much water from getting in. So everything in the bottom 3/4s of the clothes pannier is wet. The bottom clothes are sopping wet. Sigh. I wear my down jacket (dry) and tracksuit pants (dry), and hang a few of the other things up, in the vague hope tumble drying fairies will visit overnight.
There are bunnies.
Distance cycled: 119km
Trip total: 1026km
Location: Lake Shirarutoro – Urahoro
2 replies on “japan day twelve – another day of rain. quite a lot of it in fact.”
i’m beginning to think the japanese are not huge into camping considering the campsites are mostly closed… so do they not like camping so the campsites are closed, or are the campsites closed because there aren’t enough demand..?
I’m wondering if they’ll only go camping in the middle of summer, for maybe 2 months, so the camp sites don’t bother opening the rest of the time? It does seem odd though.