Kyushu. Japan Day 7

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Day 7
48 miles. Ave 13.2 mph. Ascent 907 m. Temp 27 deg.
What another wonderful day. When we set off at 9am it was already getting towards 20 degrees and very little cloud. The road, as usual followed the coastline heading further south but this morning the bulk of it was spent on cycleways, most of which were old railway lines, through wooded areas and small fRming country. The morning was made more interesting when our guide Daisuke set us a challenge to get two selfies each with a local. We had to stop someone and greet them with ’hello’ in Japanese, followed by ’together OK?’ This was phonetically. Kenyouchi, ishone. The first chap I got was a man about to go fishing and was shocked and giggled when asked but played the part. My second was a girl with her boyfriend who also enjoyed the fun. It was nice for all of us to interact with the local population and created great hilarity, especially when we stopped for our midorning brew near to some pensioners playing a game similar to putting. They took a real liking to is and posed for ages and then the ladies brought us a box of biscuits and forced water melon in our mouths. They must have thought we looked skinny. Great fun. At lunch time at the roadside we were outside a building with a big whale on top and every half hour a tannoy started erupting and the whale spurted water out of its spout. After this we did a series of 200 metre climbs along the rocky coast, stopping at one point to let Kenichi and Martin D swim in the warm sea water. Just on the edge of Kagashima we stopped at a distillery to look how they produced a spirit from rice and sweet potatoe. We bought some to sample at the evening meal and a few bottles of beer, which were sampled as soon as the hotel was reached. The hotel had some really good rooms and luckily, for some of us, these overlooked the sea not 40 metres away. The evening meal was excellent and they seem to get better every day, unless I am getting more used to raw fish and such unknown fodder. This trip just gets better and better.

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