Day 31 — Ichinoseki to Osaki - Tom and Marilee Retire to the Road

October 3, 2025

Day 31 — Ichinoseki to Osaki

Marilee here.

Today’s ride was sunny and pleasant, through small towns and farming communities, mostly along reasonably quiet secondary roads. In other words, fairly unremarkable. So instead of giving you a blow by blow account of the day I am going to use this space to record some comments and observations about our experiences in Japan as cycle tourists so far.

And, because there was only one photo taken all day long, I’ve popped in a few photos that didn’t make it into other posts.

Please don’t expect deep insights— these are just some random thoughts about what we’re encountering that may be of interest to readers unfamiliar with Japan.

Hotels

It’s occurred to me that we don’t usually say much about where we’re staying, because generally we are tired of typing by the time we’ve reached the point in the daily post where we get to our destination.

Since leaving Hokkaido, campgrounds have been sparser (and often involve long climbs to reach them) so we have been staying more frequently in hotels. The weather has been more unsettled as well, with some rainy nights, so we like having a roof over our heads. Japan has a few chains of budget business hotels that are great value. We have paid on average between $50 and $75 a night, with breakfast included.

The rooms are tiny by North American standards, and the bathrooms in particular are an astonishingly efficient use of space, packing all the necessary functionality (sink, bathtub, toilet) into a closet-sized area. They have invariably been sparkling clean.

Breakfast buffets, even at these budget places, put NA hotels with their packaged donuts and fat free yoghurt to shame: there is always scrambled eggs, chunks of grilled salmon and/or mackerel, fresh fruit and yoghurt, a salad bar (which always includes steamed broccoli, corn, lettuce, coleslaw, and sometimes potato or pasta salad), toast and croissants, plus Japanese breakfast items — rice, miso, stews and curries, pickled vegetables etc. There is coffee as well, from automated machines which deliver a tiny amount into a paper cup, meaning that we have to make an embarrassing amount of trips back and forth to the coffee machine in the course of a typical breakfast.

Camping

I think we may have mentioned this peripherally in other posts, but it’s worth repeating: the other campers wherever we’ve stayed almost invariably have simply enormous tents. We can’t get over it — these things are huge! And the main activity we’ve observed is cooking meat and fish on a small charcoal grill while relaxing in the covered veranda of one’s giant tent. There is also “day camping”, which involves putting up a tent, grilling all day, and then taking it down and going home after supper.

Houses

In Hokkaido, most buildings appeared to be relatively new, and the towns had a very spare, functional appearance that reminded us of northern Canadian towns: everything built to withstand a long hard winter.

As we move south, we are definitely noticing a greater number of traditional style homes — either older homes, or new homes built in a traditional style. And many more gardens. Which leads me to …the first of my random photos.

We have started seeing big beds of these flowers in people’s gardens — very colorful and eye catching.

Also these fruit trees, which we guess to be persimmons.

Wildlife

By far, the most frequently spotted wildlife so far is: well, it’s a tie between crows and dragon flies. So many of both of these! Dragon flies can be a hazard, we’ve learned, when you are flying downhill at top speed and a large specimen (they are all large) whacks you in the face. But, presumably because there are so many dragonflies, there are virtually no mosquitoes, which makes camping much more enjoyable.

Also a very frequent and lovely sight are white storks or egrets in the rice fields.

OK, that’s it for today’s episode of Marilee’s random thoughts. I will leave you now with the one photo we took today, which was also pretty random: as we were biking through a little town I noticed a church spire in the distance. It was an unusual enough sight that we went off to investigate and came across a Russian Orthodox Church, apparently in the midst of extensive restoration.

Today's ride: 59 km (37 miles)
Total: 1,587 km (986 miles)

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