Along the Herring Highway

Posted on April 8, 2024 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

***Herring House (Nishin Goten)***
*West Coast of Hokkaido near Haboro* – *June 17, 2018*

Somewhat paralleling the boom and bust of America’s west coast sardine/herring fishery (see Cannery Row), in the late 1800’s through the early 1900’s, fortunes were made and lost on the back of Hokkaido’s west coast herring fishery. The building in the above image is a Nishin Goten, a communal house for the herring fishermen of that era. Inside are the captain’s quarters, other areas where fishermen and other employees (I’m assuming the fishermen’s wives who were vital in processing the catch) could roll out their futons. Such houses featured a kitchen, a place to store slippers (in those days woven from grass) and a bit of furniture. These days, several Nishin Goten are preserved and open to visitors – well worth a stop if you’re traveling Hokkaido’s west coast along the famed Herring Highway.

Juxtaposition: Two Views of Flying into Japan

Posted on April 7, 2024 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

**Above Tokyo, Flying into Narita Airport on Japan’s Main Island, Honshu**
The ancient poets of Tang and Sung Dynasty China called city life “chaos and dust.”

**Approaching Chitose Airport, 33 miles SW of Sapporo on Japan’s most Northerly Island, Hokkaido**
*A much more agreeable landscape for a bicycle trek*

Toya-ko Campground

Posted on April 6, 2024 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

**Lake Toya Campground**
*Hokkaido, June 7, 2018*

We found one terrific (often idyllic) campsite after another during our Hokkaido trek. Above is Nakatoya Campground on the shores of Toya-ko (Lake Toya). The lake formed in an ancient volcano caldera, complete with an island near the center – similar to Oregon’s Crater Lake. Overall, Hokkaido’s campgrounds were quiet, clean, and inexpensive. In fact, several were free and if memory serves even the most expensive site was only about $20 (in 2018). Most ranged from five to 10 dollars per camper per night.

In the past, language might have been a barrier to traveling in Japan. I speak some Japanese, which was immensely helpful, but these days with language apps right there on your phone, most locals eager to assist well-mannered visitors, and a lot of printed material such as highway signs, menus, national park information and so on written in English, even language differences need not impeded a tour of this wonderful, lightly-visited island. On a latitude approximating that of Oregon and Massachusetts, summertime biking in Hokkaido is pleasant, particularly along the coast.

I had forgotten that I’d softened so many of these Hokkaido images… Dreamy summertime bike trek.

Seawall Foggy Morning with Fishermen, Hokkaido

Posted on April 4, 2024 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

This photo is an early experiment with softening rather than sharpening an image… taken before I appreciated how important careful note-taking is… I think this is in the harbor of Hagino.

We arrived in Japan on May 28, spent three days in the Crown Prince Hotel in Chitose, Hokkaido getting acclimated – figuring out where we might purchase fuel for our camp stove, re-assembling our bicycles and so forth -, and then on June 1 we embarked on a 67-day, 1,300 mile bicycle-camping trek circumnavigating most of coastal Hokkaido. For both of us, the trek was a fulfillment of childhood dreams of a self-guided bicycle trek in a foreign country. It was quite possibly The Most exhilarating adventure either of us had ever undertaken.

I paid for a significant part of the trip when I published an article in Adventure Cycling Magazine, which if you’re interested you can find here. We also published several articles about this trip right here on Cutterlight. The easiest way to access those is to simply type Hokkaido in the search box in the upper right of any Cutterlight page.

As I go through the 1,342 photographs from this trip (that’s after the initial culling), I’m not sure how many new images I’ll have to post. But I will underscore the feeling Barbra and I came away with after the trip. Go! If you’ve ever thought that a bicycle trek is something you might want to experience – think back to when you were 12 or 13 or 8 or 58 and riding in a car passed a couple or a small group of bike trekkers and wondered what it was like… wondered if you could do something like that – our answer is Why not?

Hokkaido Bicycle Tour Redux: Thank You Adventure Cyclist Magazine

Posted on May 27, 2020 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

It can take a considerable period of time from submitting a piece to a magazine to drawing an editor’s attention to finally seeing the article appear in print, but here it is, two years after we embarked on our 1,300 mile bicycle tent camping trek in Hokkaido, Japan as it appeared in Adventure Cyclist Magazine: The Summer of No Expectations

This was the lead article in the June issue. The theme is simple: If you’ve ever thought of doing something like this, Do It!

If you’d like a small taste of what riding through Hokkaido on a bike is like, here’s a link to a video we put together. Coasting to Shiraoi

Bicycle Trekking in Hokkaido, Japan – Vlog 1: Coasting into Shiraoi

Posted on April 1, 2019 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

In keeping with my goals for 2019, in addition to putting in time toward 500 hours of guitar practice in hopes of finally learning to play, I have just completed the second of five articles for magazine publication. The first article was a salmon-centric piece about life here in Chignik Lake. The second article was an introduction to our 65-day, 1,300 mile bicycle trek in Hokkaido, Japan last summer. While putting the article together I came across a few GoPro videos I’d nearly forgotten. One of those videos is below.

So what makes Japan’s northernmost island a nearly perfect bicycle trekking destination? Great food, clean inexpensive campgrounds, courteous motorists, abundant wildlife, rolling farmland, beautiful seascapes, terrific people, opportunities for hiking, fishing and even hot-air ballooning. The icing on the cake is bike rides like this! Leave a “like” and a comment or question. We’ll be posting additional video material from our Hokkaido Trek, so hit “follow” to make sure you don’t miss the next one!