Hokkaido Summer: Wild is the Wind

Higashimokoto – Abashiri 71 miles The road out of Highashimokoto continued in the same hilly prevalence from where it had left off yesterday. Yet the rise and fall of the landscape would today be the least of my concerns. As a far more brutally sinister enemy raged from the east, an enemy cruel and merciless,…

Hokkaido Summer: Waterfalls & Grizzlies

Sounkyo The 1,984 meter Mt Kurodake can be tackled in two ways, hiking or cheating. Be in so it was my day off out of the saddle I decided that it would be in my best interests to opt for the latter and cheat my way to the mountains summit. I‘d achieve this by firstly…

Hokkaido Summer: Farm Porn Uncensored

Furano – Asahikawa 46 miles Furano is famed in summer for its fields of lavender, and with the season’s sudden change farm labourers were out in force maintaining the crop in readiness for the hive of tourists that would shortly follow. Being slightly too early I would miss out on the lavender at its peak…

Hokkaido Summer: The Takikawa Midnight Sun

Takikawa – Furano 41 miles I awoke to the sound of a natural cuckoo clock, the skylark’s reeling also soon following suit from where he had left off the previous night. I was surprised by how well I’d slept on my first night back under the stars. Being broad daylight already the night had quite…

Hokkaido Summer

Sapporo – Takikawa 62 miles Despite the coming of the cherry blossom the weather the week prior to my departure from Sapporo had been a cold, wet and windy disgrace. A hostel guest that had just recently returned from the north would tell me that it was the coldest place he had ever been to…

Christ On A Bike

22/04/2014 Hachinohe –  Lake Towada It was now a Tuesday and I was a day late for the resurrection, yet Christ’s grave looked undisturbed and I had an inkling that he was still sleeping.  Which I thought to be rather rude considering how far I’d come to visit him, yet alas he is Jesus Christ…

Down in the Land of the One-Eyed Dragon

In the 17th Century there lived a Daimyo with balls of steel, a guy so hard that when he came face to face with the smallpox as a juvenile he plucked his own eyeball out giving him the nickname of the “one-eyed dragon”.  That Daimyo’s name was Date Masamune, and as he grew he became…