Japan - a most hospitable country

Japan - what a treat it is to travel here.  "Thoughtful" is the word that summarizes Japan to me in my first 10 days here.  The culture just seems to have a pleasant life figured out.  For us that equates to things we appreciate:  Easy camping.  Washrooms at every park.  Familiar style groceries.  Bike shops with parts.  Beauty.  Cleanliness.  Order.  Kindness. Spring temperatures.   Really a welcome change from the tests of heat, noise, and chaos we've experienced in these past months.  We are excited for these two plus months ahead.  We will explore Kyushu, Shikoku, Honshu and Hokkaido from south to north. In July we will fly home to Canada and finish with a cycle home to Calgary from Vancouver. 

A night time pic of Fukuoku tower from our first night in Japan.  We camped along the parkway of the city beaches.  Free camping, as we had read, has been easy and accommodating.  Open, immaculate restrooms are part of every park.

Water is abundant on Kyushu. Every night we hear water.  From a river, from a canal, from a mountain stream.  While we know there will be times in our Japan experience that we will be much more urban, we are truly enjoying the rural areas of the less populated areas we are currently traveling.

Japanese groceries are more similar to North American groceries, they offer an abundance of product.  Prices here are more similar to home, which was a bit of a transition for us.  It's good camping is free!  We make all our meals and have the boys shopping on a budget.  Don't worry though, good food is always a focus.  Here is a picnic lunch of baguette with canned fish salad (tomatoes, onions, carrots and cucumber), sliced cheese, and lettuce.  The basket we bought in Laos for protecting the bananas we carry daily.  It was light enough that we didn't discard it prior to the flight from Vietnam but stuck it in with the bikes for transit.

A huge Shinto shrine that we happened into as we biked up a steep hill to a free camping area we'd located off our "free camping and hot springs" map.  Though we will seek out some tourist destinations (Hiroshima, Mt. Fuji, Tokyo), these ones that pop up along the way are super fun.

The coast looking off into the sea of Japan.  We will plan our route to include coastal as well as interior areas of each of the four large islands of Japan.

Our first evening meal celebrating the excellent fish available in the markets.  We found a cabin shelter on a tidal island which had a fire ring and a grill.  We declared a day off the bikes for the next day. Sampson, Markos and Rick would be the food supply expedition, Tanya and Tarn would stay back to dry out our gear in the sun.  It's spring time and along with the bounty of flowers and fresh green leaves, we are getting days of rain.  Something we've had months without!

A scene from our seaside tidal island fire ring.  Rick's SIM card allowed us to access wifi and find out the tidal patterns.  We arrived the first evening at 5:30 pm (low tide).  The next day's low tide would be 10:15 am.  In between the island was ours with no access on or off as the pebbly bridge of land was deep beneath the waves.  Planning accordingly, the food expedition happened between 9:30 and 11:30, Sampson, Markos and Rick made it safely back on the island with provisions for our day off.

This is not how a rear derailleur is supposed to look.  This is a scene of no return.  It took Rick's extreme ingenuity of single speeding his and Tarn's tandem, and then innumerable stops to adjust it as we sought out bike shops in the population areas ahead.  Without English communication and with a bit of detective work and luck, we located a new 10-speed derailleur within 48 hours.  Along the way of course we found food to feed the family and two nights of camping that needed to be on the way to one of these hopeful bike (not motorcycle) shops.  Things that helped make success of the adventure: sunshine, the parts of the road that were not climbs, the fact that Japan does have shops with quality bike parts, and the longer shop hours, 7 days a week.  Bike shop owners have allowed us a little window into Japanese culture too - they bring out chairs for all of us to sit, offer us a beverage and snack, and are happy to share with us a viewing of their tandem bike.  For some reason tandems are banned in various prefectures of Japan but the bike shop owners all have a tandem they love to show off.  No one has pulled Rick and Tarn off the road for riding a  tandem so far...

Markos heads into the clouds.  We are approaching and area of numerous volcanoes that are shrouded in clouds at the moment. The temperatures have been super pleasant.  Sunshine or rain.  On two separate rainy days we have sought out "onsens", or public hot pool baths that are common in most towns.  They are an incredible experience where men and women, in separate bathing areas, soak, scrub, and meditate in hot and cool pools, saunas and outdoor gardens.  Because we haven't found showers in our free camping evenings, the onsen experience is even the more welcome.  Our nightly "bandana bath" in a washroom toilet stall doesn't really qualify as a deep clean.

This senior lady loaded us up with lots of extra veggie gifts when we were selecting some cucumbers from her farm stand.  It is rare that we communicate in English but the communication of humanity and kindness is fluent in Japan.