Tag Archives: Bicycle tour Hokkaido Japan

Hokkaido Bicycle Tour Redux: Thank You Adventure Cyclist Magazine

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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 2: Shiraoi to Hell Valley and on to Lake Toya

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This is the second installment from our videos about bicycle trekking and camping in Hokkaido. In this leg of our 1,300 mile tour, we pushed and cruised from Shiraoi to Jigokudani and then on to Lake Toya in Shikotsu-Toya National Park. Listen for the singing cicadas and the bubbling mud pots in the first part of the video. In the second part of the vlog, Barbra kicks in with her “amazing” commentary! Barbra says – I promise to bring a thesaurus next time. 🙂

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

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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!

 

 

xx

Gray Heron, Hokkaido – wildlife notes

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Gray Heron, (aosagi), Abishiri campground, Hokkaido, Japan.

One of the reasons we chose Hokkaido for our first bicycle trek were the reports that wildlife viewing on this northern Japanese island can be quite good. We’ve not been disappointed. Almost every morning we’ve woken to the songs and calls of birds, and our rides this summer have taken us through mile upon mile of gently rolling farmland, forested hills, river valleys and along coastlines. To date we’ve identified over 60 species of birds and have encountered bears, deer, foxes, mink, seals, porpoises and small whales. Some of the highlights have included:

  • 9 Brown Bears
  • over 20 Red Foxes
  • Dozens of Ezo Deer
  • 32 Red-crowned Cranes
  • Over 20 White-tailed Eagles
  • 2 Blakiston’s Fish Owls (and nighttime voices of other species of owls)
  • the world’s largest breeding colony of Rhinoceros Auklets
  • 3 species of cuckoo
  • 4 species of woodpecker
  • 2 species of snakes
  • Ezo Red Squirrels (and Siberian Chipmunks)
  • Peregrine Falcons
  • Dall’s Porpoises
  • over 100 seals
  • more butterflies and moths – and more different kinds of butterflies and moths – than we’ve ever before seen anywhere

Wildflower viewing as well has been fantastic. When we return to Alaska, we’ll post more detailed articles about Hokkaido wildlife.

Knee Deep in Trout and Char (somewhere in Hokkaido)

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Iwana (Dolly Varden Char) are one of Hokkaido’s most celebrated cold-water fish.

I have an incurable habit of looking into water for fish. It doesn’t matter what kind of water. At the beach I check the translucent prisms of waves for whatever might be cruising the surf. Coming upon pools on rivers during hikes I make efforts to position myself so that I’m looking into shade rather than glare so that I can maybe catch a glimpse of something with fins. I’ll even check out coin fountains in the off chance that a carp or even a goldfish might be swimming around. But bridges on quiet country roads crossing pretty little trout streams are especially inviting. There’s almost always a pool below the bridge, and if the water has a population of trout, there are often a few of them hanging out right there. No matter how hard-fished the water might be, it’s worth a look.

Yamame could literally be translated as “Mountain Girl” – a lovely name for a lovely fish. More commonly the stream-dwelling form of this species is called “Cherry Trout.” Similar to Cutthroat and Rainbow Trout of the Pacific Northwest, (to which yamame are related), some go to sea where they attain sizes measured in pounds and return to their natal rivers to spawn bright as polished chrome – Cherry Salmon.

And so there we were, mid-afternoon, straddling our bikes and leaning over the the concrete side of a bridge on a quiet road running through a mix of forest and farmland somewhere in Hokkaido. The water was perfectly clear, but the trout and char are so adeptly camouflaged to match the stony bottoms of these streams that unless one moves they are all but impossible to pick out. 

One moved. As it rose to take something off the surface I could even see its spots. A char of some type. I hadn’t done any fishing yet in Hokkaido. This fish was telling me it was time I did.

I didn’t expect the fish to be large and they weren’t. But in the space of about two hours I covered a couple hundred yards of this silvery mountain stream and caught two dozen or so fish  About half of them were iwana. The others were yamame. A few came to a parachute Adams – my favorite dry fly searching pattern. A lot more came to a pheasant tail nymph – my favorite nymph. A couple of overly eager types tried to eat the pea-sized orange strike indicator I was using. 

A younger version of myself would have kept a few of these fish for the frying pan. But these days I fish for trout in part to simply confirm that they are present, and I wanted these fish to remain present. So Barbra took a couple of photos and I released everything to continue living out their lives in this silvery piece of water and light somewhere in Hokkaido.

There wasn’t a single human footprint along the banks, much less a path. Knee deep in a cold mountain stream full of trout and char – sitting on top of the world, legs hanging free.

Tunnels of Love – Light at the end of the Tunnel – Tunnel Vision: A Bicyclist’s Point of View

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A kind snow tunnel – not too long, plenty of light, and just enough shoulder.

There is something about tunnels, sometimes dark and scary, sometimes magical and transformative.

When I was very young, my family drove around in a Volkswagen Beetle. I remember enjoying the magic of the immediate darkness of tunnels. The dark would be simultaneously met with the crackle of static on the radio as we lost reception. Then the heartbeat of yellow lights would blink into the windows from the dim tunnel lighting providing a rhythm to accompany the radio static. With a jolt from this world, the Beetle would be blasted back into the light and back into normal. It was fascinating to my young imagination.

Some welcome! Eighteen meters tall (almost 60 feet), the demon of Noboribetsu would be the perfect host to some of the tunnels we traversed.

Fast forward to our current bike trek in Hokkaido. Our ride has brought a whole new stream of consciousness to the tunnel. In recent years, hadn’t given much thought to these marvels of modern engineering, the exception being the time I drove our pickup while towing our fishing vessel Gillie through the unnervingly narrow tunnel that leads to the town of Whittier, Alaska. Steering wheel gripped tightly in my hands, I could feel the boat trailer sashaying back and forth on the slick railroad tracks that transversed the abyss. But that is another story.

The first “real” tunnel seemed long, but at just over a mile, it turned out to be merely average.

Our introduction to the tunnel by bicycle happened the very first day of our Hokkaido trek. It was a kind introduction as the tunnel was of the type designed to keep the heavy winter snowfalls off the road. Wrapped tight to a mountain pass, the tunnel’s outside wall featured a series of openings where sunlight poured in, giving the space a comfortable, open feeling. Moreover, there was a large enough shoulder to ensure safe passage even for our somewhat Rubinesque, trailer-towing bikes. Though several hundred meters in length, this first light-filled tunnel with its wide sidewalk was a breeze.

Our first “real” tunnel – dank, dark, cold, long and narrow – came later. We hugged the shoulder, our safety lights blinking, pedaling as fast as possible, worried that approaching vehicles wouldn’t see us in time. The amplified roar of oncoming traffic echoed and mixed with the odor of mold, grease, diesel and exhaust fumes and in that dark tube we experienced the paradox of simultaneously feeling that we we traveling very fast while making little progress. Jack found the energy in his legs to pull ahead, even while pulling the trailer. My nerves must have been apparent as a kind driver slowed behind me and escorted me to daylight.

At this point, I can’t believe how many tunnels we’ve gone through. The best tunnels have been the snow tunnels. They rank high because of the natural light and their relative brevity. On rare occasions, we’ve traveled through tunnels with a sidewalk separated by a safety railing. But even these tunnels can’t muffle the brain-rattling sounds of roaring trucks and screaming motorcycles, and there’s always the sense that you’ve got to concentrate on maintaining an unerringly straight course lest you pin yourself to some protrusion jutting out from the soot-stained tunnel wall.

One day, we had a relatively short ride from Yoichi to Otaru along Hokkaido’s southwest coast. The map showed tunnels…lots of tunnels…between the two towns and in fact the ride felt almost like a constant tunnel as even when we weren’t physically inside a tube we were psychologically preparing for one. This day featured our worst tunnel experience.

As usual, we were swallowed into the tunnel in question just as we had been swallowed into the semi-darkness and wet chill of previous tunnels. We rode on a sidewalk, which was just wide enough to handle our bike’s girth with panniers and the trailer. But perhaps a kilometer into the dimness and utterly without warning, the sidewalk shrunk to half its size. The next thing I knew, Jack’s front panniers hit the railings and he screeched to a stop. Escaping with a bloodied knuckle and a mouthful of expletives, we survived the tunnel by crowding into the flanks of our bikes and walking the remainder of the way, our shins absorbing a few pedal bites in the process, the experience bringing fresh gratitude for the light at the end of the tunnel!

After a wonderful two-days in the city of Otaru, we steeled our nerves for the ride up the coast. The ride would be beautiful. But there would be tunnels. Lots and some really long ones. Rattled from the most recent tunnel experience, at the first one we encountered we opted to push our bikes through on the very narrow sidewalk. Just wide enough to accommodate our bikes in this fashion, the sidewalk seemed to have been installed for maintenance workers rather than pedestrians. Our plan was for me to follow Jack closely and shout a warning if the outside trailer wheel got too close to the edge of the walk. Using this strategy was maybe safer, but it seemed like it took forever.

As we traveled up the coast, traffic grew lighter. We couldn’t stomach another long walk through another dark and deafening tunnel and the one we were now facing was truly a beast – two nearly adjoining tunnels spanning almost four miles. It was time to shore up our confidence and place some faith our fellow drivers. We strapped on headlamps and, as I was in the rear position, I added a couple of blinking lights to my rig and off we went.

Translation? Tunnel after tunnel after tunnel after tunnel!”

At some point, I had adopted a strategy of singing in the tunnels in order to drown out the deafening noises and to distract myself from my own nerves. I didn’t just sing. I sang at the top of my lungs. This turned out to work pretty well – once Jack didn’t take my singing noises as anguished cries for help. And so for most of four miles I belted out any song that came to mind.

Time to take in some sunshine, enjoy lunch, and scan for birds.

Once we had finally put the beast behind us, we pulled off the road for a rest and a celebratory lunch. Apparently you can burn some serious calories pedaling like a dervish while simultaneously singing at the top of your lungs!

Tinged with the unknown and eliciting perhaps mixed emotions of safety and danger, tunnels remain fascinating to me. For a little while, they take you out of the world in which you’ve been residing, close in around you, carry you along in a way that demands a kind of trust… and then deliver you to some newly lighted world on the other side.

A happy bear eating salmon at one end and light at the other. A perfect tunnel.

Agehachou – Asian Swallowtail Butterfly

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Almost surreal in it irredescence, this agehachou is one of the many stunning butterflies we’ve encountered on our Hokkaido bike trek.

We’re not lepidopterists, but it would be all but impossible not to notice the incredible beauty and diversity of the moths and butterflies – not to mention the amazing variety of caterpillars – we’ve been encountering on our bike trek around Hokkaido, Japan. If you find them early enough in the morning when they’re still warming up, you can sometimes sneak a decent photo. This agehachou (Asian swallowtail) is among the more stunning butterflies we’ve found, but it seems that all butterflies are beautiful. As the summer progresses and flowers change, different species are emerging. Today the paths were filled with nearly iridescent black caterpillars, leaving us wondering what form they’ll take as adults.