The last weekend of September

This was a three day weekend, and I decided no better way to spend it than to log some time up North in Niimi on my bike. I had put up a couple of pictures on the site before (under), so you can check it out, but here's the full story. I contacted Yarek (Phil's successor), to stay with him and organizing some fun things to do. The ride up was fairly eventful actually, seeing as I didn't leave Tamano until about 4pm, but was hoping to leave closer to before 3pm. That being said, this meant that I didn't have enough day light to reach Niimi, so I stopped in Takahashi to get on the train (580yen) for the rest of the way. Asking the employee if it was okay to take my bike on, and that I had a cover and everything, he said sure, but when the train rolled up, the conductor would not let me on the train despite my being prepared.

I even tried to get on the train myself, but he called over two people to hold me back from getting on. Wow. Despite all my ranting after realizing that I would not get on, including a couple of vehiment "aho's", or a##holes, I didn't get on. Only in Japan can you swear at somebody and they will apologize.

So I ended up biking the rest in the dark, and boy was it dark. I was not pleased about it. Turns out that Rachel Allen, another JET in Takahashi actually passed me in her car. She had hit a rabbit earlier in that same trip, and was traumatized by the possibility of hitting another JET on their bike, but I did have a rear light and reflectors.....

That weekend we went to the caves, Niimi's hotspots (there are only two it seems), and then the kicker: Biked up 30km north for the onsen. The best part about the onsen was going to the "relax room" and taking a 2 and a half hour nap in the middle of the day in a peaceful, quiet, cool room. Heaven.

Here's the Jenglish sign of the day from that ride:


And I couldn't really figure out what all these signs were from or about, but it looked neat. Kind of like putting license plates from around the world or something on your wall...