Blogs from Hokkaido, Japan, Asia - page 6

The rain wasn’t heavy, but it was constant, and within a few hours my tent was drenched. By torchlight, I was able to find a vast bulk of the water’s entry points and under each drip I placed a plastic bag to collect the water. Every hour or so I emptied the bags outside of the tent, before allowing them to slowly refill again. Ridiculously, I kept up these shenanigans until dawn, by which point I had 9 bags of water positioned around myself. I waited for the rain to simmer into drizzle before packing up camp. By the time I’d paid my camping fees to the site manager - who had no idea I had even camped upon his turf - it had started to rain again. Donning my wet weather gear and heading north, ... read more

Monbetsu - Hamatonbetsu 87 miles I slept uneasy though; the noise from the docks was prominent throughout the night. A seemingly 24-hour operation; ships being loaded and released of their cargo as an arrangement of sirens and horns sounded out continuously. As dawn began to slowly creep in, the low light projected an army of ants trailing up and down outside my tent. I watched them monotonously and just when I felt as if I was about to nod off, I suddenly bolted upright, shaking off my trance. 04:30am, I’d lounged around for long enough. My journey north was to continue. Heading out of Monbetsu, I was again to be subjected to another one of Hokkaido’s consistently straight roads, one that seemed to melt into the horizon and offer very little hope of curvature. My surrounds ... read more

The road out of Highashimokoto continued in the same hilly prevalence from where it had left off yesterday. Yet the rise and fall of the landscape would today be the least of my concerns. As a far more brutally sinister enemy raged from the east, an enemy cruel and merciless, and an enemy that on this day would take no prisoners. That enemy being the wind, the unrelenting, soul destroying wind that over the coming hours would completely dismantle any progress in the direction of Shiretoko National Park. In some 4 hours I managed a pathetically meagre 20 miles, I was very much getting my arse kicked. I needed to conjure up a new strategy. Finding a desolate and sheltered wooden shack of a bus stop to the side of the road I would pitch a ... read more

Geo: 42.387, 141.01816 - 25 July 2016 From Tokyo to Kyoto, Himeji, Naoshima in the Inland Sea and Hokkaido.Gilli departed early on the 16th and we left Anna & James in Tokyo to enjoy their last couple of days alone and then set off back to Kyoto. The reason for this is that Kyoto has an annual festival, the Gion Matsuri Festival which lasts the whole of July in Gion but with the highlight, a procession, on the 17th.We doubted whether we could get there in time as initially we were only able to book accommodation in Gion on Airbnb for 4 nights from the 17th but the procession starts at 9am and we would not be able to travel from Tokyo to Kyoto early enough. All the accommodation, understandably, was fully booked for the 16th ... read more

Unlike Spring in Japan with its pink and white profusion above your head or the red and russet leaves of autumn underfoot, the summer we experienced in a few days in Hokaido and northern Honshu was marked by every shade of green from lemon lime through to deep olive and blue/green as far as the eye could see. It was lush and had a tropical feel but luckily being in the north there wasn't the humidity we felt in our brief time in Tokyo and Narita. The rice fields and other crops were well advanced and the fields filled the valley areas. Where the mountains and valleys met the creepers and thick growth looked as if they could take over. Our idea was to break the long flight from Sydney to Helsinki and have a week ... read more