To and Through Tohoku

Part III of A Cycle Across Japan continues on a weekday morning in urban Tokyo after a few well-earned days of rest with Claire and a promise to meet again that evening. This chapter would encompass the journey north, my first foray into the Tohoku region of Japan to the north, one of the less visited and rural areas of Japan.

After sending Claire off to her last workday before the Golden Week holidays, I set out on bike an hour later with my morning coffee quaffed and a goal of meeting up near Narita later that night. You might know Narita by its massive airport serving the Tokyo region, but it was and still is a farming community with a famous temple and a controversial history around the airport’s development and the application of eminent domain. It is an easy and cheap location to bring a bicycle while making some distance from Tokyo, thus an ideal spot to meet for two adventurers.

Unfortunately, I was only an hour out when I realized I forgot my passport. Claire wouldn’t be returning home from work, and it would have been folly to continue without it, so I had to return and grab it. I felt fairly lazy, so instead of doubling back, I parked the bike, fully loaded, and took the metro back. Not something you’d chance in most other major cities, but Japan has a low incidence of bicycle theft, and when I returned two hours later, my bike was left unmolested, and I was ready to ride, minus some lost time.

My exit from Tokyo took me east, past the Tokyo Skytree, then along the Tega and Tone rivers. Overall, I had a decently pleasant egress after the hectic highways I mentioned in the last chapter, with quite a few river levees and paths separate from cars. In fact, the Tone River is famous for having Japan’s longest geenway, which goes some 230km car-free. This day, and the next with Claire, I’d ride maybe a third of that total. Claire’s work ran late, so I killed some time in a lovely, tattoo-friendly onsen on the outskirts of Narita town and scouted out camping before she arrived after nightfall. Lucky for us, a vegan friendly bar was still serving ramen, so despite a little grief getting there, our second leg together on my journey started auspiciously.

Our way to Tohoku started with a day in Chiba and Ibaraki prefectures. Cycling up and down rivers, bridges and bays amid the coastal lowlands was picturesque. I remember Claire’s intent to ride up the beach the whole way. Although that’s usually a good option, or sometimes the only one, I had an inkling to check out some of the lakes inland. That led us up alongside Lake Kitaura, where we wiggled back and forth among its inlets until we could go no further north along it. It’s easy to wing it up the main roads, but often worthwhile to look up alternatives, and I always could be found on this trip swiping around on my Maps app to study alternatives. Google Maps with accessible walking directions was generally satisfactory in Japan, and my conversion mathematics for crunching distances in metric have never been better.

The next day we entered Tohoku proper, via crossing into Fukushima prefecture. We were battling rain, onset of illness on my part and unnecessary grief from Claire’s work, as well as the usual paucity of vegan food and discriminatory onsen (and even beaches!). I remember around this time (re-)discovering McDonald’s french fries (“fried potato”, made vegan in Japan) and Starbucks, with a surprising set of plant-based snacks and sweets as lifesavers for my aching tastebuds. If a small city had one or the other, I was probably on my way there, needing salt, carbs, caffeine and wifi on any given day in no particular order. Those are just the daily doldrums of the ride though.

What will stick with me on this journey through Fukushima, and, much of the coastline north of it, was learning about the history of the 3.11 Disaster, the massive tsunami on 3/11/2011. A 9.0 earthquake in the Pacific sent a freezing, 50 ft high tsunami wave at Tohoku. It went as far as six miles inland in places and brought death and destruction in its wake. Perhaps more well known internationally was the nuclear power plant, Fukushima Daiichi, that melted down and irradiated much of the area. We cycled past its grave, and the utterly deserted communities surrounding it. There are radiation trackers in the area, showing a generally healthy ratio of lingering radioactivity in the area, but most who have been displaced haven’t returned. There’s some new construction, like the Great East Disaster Museum and Memorial we visited (& camped at), but its longterm vitality remains unknown.

Past Fukushima was Miyagi prefecture, with its capital of Sendai, that was founded around 1600 by the famed, one-eyed warlord, Date Masamune. That’s fairly recent for Japanese history, but much of its northern territories were more rugged and were the realm of the indigenous Ainu until there was unity in the south via the Edo period and rise of the Shogun. The Ainu, who ranged as far north as Russia, suffered a similar, sorry fate as our native populations did in the US though their cultural displacement involved assimilation and suppression instead of outright violent conquest.

In Sendai, we said our farewells for another couple weeks. Claire took the bullet train back, and I took my only day off outside Tokyo waiting out a deluge of rain and enjoying the city’s amenities. I’d have the biggest sub-adventure of the trip the next day, with a trip to Tashirojima, also known as ‘Cat Island’. As a lifelong cat person, visiting there was one of those quirky bucket list dreams of my life. The managed cat population roams freely and outnumbers the small island’s permanent, mostly elderly residents. There’s little of any industry besides a couple cafes to cater to tourists. I got to do the trip to Cat Island my own way, bringing my bicycle on the boat and camping overnight. The last ferry off Tashirojima actually leaves in the early afternoon, so everyone who’s not staying the night, which are the vast majority of the quirky tourists who make it out there, are shuttled off. I had all the cats to myself for one blessed evening.

From Cat Island, I took a ferry onward to Ayukawa off on the Oshika peninsula, so my trip’s contiguity was slightly broken, but overall the detour added more distance to my trip, so I’m fine with it. The road up and out of Miyagi and into Iwate from here on my own was long and challenging. The main way north along the coast is an expressway, which always forbid cyclists in Japan. Fortunately, the old road still exists twisting its way up and down mountains and tiny fishing towns and void of most traffic. I’d follow that way without detour before finally branching off at the border of Aomori. Highway 45 connects Sendai and Aomori City, in the central of the prefecture, but I’d instead be venturing to the far north, the Shimokita peninsula, which is ferociously shaped like an axehead. It’s still fairly wild and sparsely populated, so it became an alluring place to visit.

On Shimokita, I visited Osorezan in its center, on Claire’s suggestion, as she’s been about everywhere in Japan (except Cat Island, not her thing). I tried to avoid riding inland much, as Japan’s so mountainous, but I had a sterling endorsement this time so I braved the hills. This ancient temple here is the only one I’ve seen set on sulphuric hot springs, near the highly acidic Lake Usori. It’s set in a high basin, with peaks surrounding its isolated and burnt grounds. It’s considered a gate to the underworld in Japanese Buddhism. It was very much a worthwhile visit and walk around for being so far away, and it even had an onsen! I didn’t stay though, I had the town of Oma at Honshu’s far north to reach, with its own, simpler hot springs and a ferry to Hokkaido in the morning for my final chapter of the ride.