Tokyo

Just three riding days and one day for the ferry from Aomori at the north end of Honshu Island to Hakodate on Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan's four main islands.

The first day, June 7th, lots of climbing, lots of forests, lots of great scenery...

...sounds much like almost every day in Japan. So a couple of new themes, starting with snow fences. On this day, we saw three different varieties, the first having steel louvres much like a venetian blind that are lowered presumably when snow is expected.

Second is much like the first except upside down with the louvres needing to be raised...

...and the third variety is something in between where the louvres are midway up the supporting structure and appear to expand both up and down...

...and here, beside the type 2 snow fence is a good old-fashioned telephone booth - we have seen many of these on the trip. It would be interesting to know when it was last used because you hardly ever see anybody without a hand-held device held in front of their face.

The first thing greeting us when we entered the forest was a reminder that there are bears in the woods. Two of our group have seen one but it disappeared too quickly for photos.

The afternoon ride was beautiful, here Ursula riding ahead of Eve not far from the day's destination.

A couple of birds along this stretch, first a hawk that had just flown up to the top of the utilities pole after an attempted catch...

... and a grey heron that demonstrated its displeasure at me pointing my camera at him by flying away.

The second riding day gave us national park forest and of course hills, fortunately mostly moderate, up to a lake the we rode around - looks like a lovely recreational area but seriously affected by COVID shut-downs.

Further along, after lunch, a long steep climb along two successive lakes formed by dams, the lower one appearing to be full to its brim and the higher one being down maybe two metres.  

Ursula getting to the top of the climb and a break for water and banana and whatever else we had in our pockets.

Then a wonderful descent and an egret performing in the field.

Friday 9th... well, today was different from the previous two, not because there were no hills or forests - indeed, the hills were even meaner to climb and we took advantage, as did several others, of lifts from the support vehicles - rather because it poured rain most of the day. A beautiful descent to lunch in a gorge which also attracted small tourist busses and many people walking the trail by the river, all well-attired for the rain and carrying binoculars.

After lunch we found a nice coffee shop just before the worst part of the storm passed with very strong gusty winds and very heavy rain.

A lot of fun at dinner that night - we were ready to relax after really tough hills for those who rode every bit of it plus the inclement weather. The theme in that night's restaurant appeared to be something akin to carnival in other parts of the world, and the relaxation was probably helped by the restaurant having an open bar.  

Saturday June 10 - a short ride to the ferry for the 3-1/2 hour voyage to Hakodate at the south end of Hokkaido Island. Tim led the convoy...

...and we put the bike on the lowest deck of the ferry where they had tarps on the floor - not sure if that was to protect the bikes or to keep the floor clean because the ferry decks ere spotless.  

Hokkaido Island, Hakodate on the left side of the photo. The hill in the middle is in fact the tip of a peninsula - it has an observatory on top from which there are good views of town - the weather looked good approaching town, bt most of the time we were there, there was an overcast and the top of the hill was obscured.

This photo (which I did not take) is the view of Hakodate from the top.