During this segment, we cycled through two of our hottest days in Japan. We witnessed the full blooming of lavender fields at a very popular farm along our journey. We also faced a cycling day with gale winds at our back which challenged us considerably. We also experienced a wide range of accommodation types from a luxury Marriott hotel to a basic guest house with shared facilities. We even cycled through our longest tunnel ever at near 5kms long. Overall, as part of our Hokkaido cycling loop, we managed to cycle from our furthest northern point to our furthest southern point on the island of Hokkaido.

2024.06.29 – [JP] Asahikawa ==> Furano (61 kms | Total: 2153 kms)

After our ample hotel breakfast, we loaded the tandem under a sunny sky and an already hot temperature. As our route profile suggested, we cycled up a gentle incline for most of the day. Although the cycling was not particularly difficult, the 30+C temperature made it more demanding. Jenny had learned that we should see some lavender fields along the way. We kept looking at fields along our rural route but we could not see any until the last 10kms before our destination town. The farm Tomita was overflowing with visitors and tour buses. We spent 20-30 minutes taking some pictures before resuming our cycling into town. We checked into our backpacker accommodation shortly after 4:00pm. The place reminded us our previous accommodation experience in New Zealand. The facility was very clean and comfortable but a bit on the outskirt of town. We did some well needed clothes washing at our accommodation’s laundromat as our cycling clothes were soaked wet and marked by salt stain from our day’s sweat. We managed to have dinner around our neighborhood as we had very few restaurants to choose from.

2024.06.30 – [JP] Furano ==> Minamifurano (47 kms | Total: 2200 kms)

We left our backpacker accommodation by 8:30am and rode into Furnano’s town center where we had a relaxing breakfast at McDonald’s. We stocked up with water before leaving town. We faced a constant moderate head wind throughout the day which made the cycling much more demanding as we continued our gentle incline climb. The hot temperature and lack of shade further took a toll on us. We encountered two consecutive tunnels that displayed fair incline uphill which was unusual from our experience with tunnels. After walking up the tunnels, we were thankful the route leveled off for the remainder of our journey. One element that kept us motivated throughout the day was the thought that we would be checking into a Fairfield By Marriott hotel. The luxury hotel booking was made reasonably priced due to credits earned on Hotels.com. Our hotel room was quite nice. Sadly the hotel offered no restaurant on-site. Later, I walked to the town’s only grocery store to purchase tomorrow’s breakfast staples while Jenny was manually hand washing clothes. The tiny town of Minamifurano lacked restaurant options in particular on Sunday nights. We had dinner at the “michi no eki” restaurant – Japan’s popular and widespread roadside stations – across the street from our hotel – the only restaurant option available to us. We kept on asking ourselves why would a luxury hotel get constructed in such an isolated area.

2024.07.01 – [JP] Minamifurano ==> Shimizu (48 kms | Total: 2248 kms)

We were both expecting a great night sleep in our luxury room but it was a far crying from it. We were not sure whether is was our double lattes in the afternoon or something else that greatly hindered our sleep. In the morning, we took advantage of the hotel’s late check-out (11:00am) as we enjoyed some more lattes with our room breakfast. The weather forecast called for some strong winds (~33 km/h) but thankfully we realized the wind would be at our back pushing us up the gentle incline. Our cycling was going fairly well until a few kms from the top of the mountain pass. There the wind gusts 55km/hr were so strong we had to walk beside the tandem. Jenny felt she lost her foot hold a few times as the wind pushed her into the road. As we reached the top of the pass (~640m), we were both concerned about our ability to cycle further downhill with the current wind gusts. After taking a few pictures of the surrounding scenery atop of an observation deck, we attempted to cycle through two tunnels directly after the mountain pass. We were relieved that the wind gusts were significantly tampered on the downhill. We both added a few layers of clothes to keep us warm during the very long downhill. After 15kms of downhill, we encountered a nice rest area with a restaurant. We had a earthy lunch of warm ramen noodle. Later we resumed cycling on a mostly flat secondary road. We self-checked into our accommodation room at 3:30pm. We were both relieved to have completed our day’s journey in these challenging weather condition. In the evening, we had some good grilled chicken for dinner at a nearby restaurant. On our way back to our accommodation, we purchased our next morning’s breakfast staples at a grocery store.

2024.07.02 – [JP] Shimizu ==> Obihiro (34 kms | Total: 2282 kms)

As we were eating our breakfast in our room, we both had a concerned look as to whether the continued wind gust forecast today would be as challenging as it was yesterday. Thankfully, we managed to cycle 33 kms without much difficulty up to the outskirt of our destination town. We stopped at McDonald’s for snacks, coffee and a rest as we already reached town by 11:30am. At the hotel, we waited until 2:00pm before the reception desk staff allowed us to check-in 1 hour earlier. After our showers, Jenny did a large clothes wash at the hotel’s laundromat while I walked to a grocery store for some snacks and beer. In the evening, we had dinner at a ramen restaurant.

2024.07.03 – [JP] Obihiro ==> Obihiro (0 kms | Total: 2282 kms)

We savored and relaxed during our hotel breakfast. Later, we reviewed and selected some of our photos for our next blog post. We left our hotel slightly before 11:00am as there was a scheduled power outage at our hotel for a one hour period. We took the local city bus to reach Midorigaoka Park where we expected to see a botanical garden. Sadly there were little to see or do at the park. On our walk back to the hotel, we stopped at a drug store for some toiletry supplies, had some nice McCafe drinks and spent a fair amount of time at a shopping mall. Back at our hotel, we rested for the remainder of the afternoon. Unexpectedly, we had a (really) bad restaurant experience for our dinner. The small place we opted for in the night market alleyway served tapas size meals (at full-size meal prices), collected a table service charge per person, billed us for tap water and it took them 1.5 hours to receive our last dish. Needless to say Jenny and I both wrote Google Maps reviews to record our experience and further counter-balance the restaurant’s 4.7 rating. We walked around 10 kms for the day.

2024.07.04 – [JP] Obihiro ==> Sarabetsu (39 kms | Total: 2321 kms)

We had a relaxing breakfast and check-out of our hotel at 9:45am. We were relieved to notice the strong winds from the previous days had finally tapered down. Before leaving town, we reminded ourselves that we were embarking on a 7 continuous cycling day leg – until we reached the port city of Tomakomai. By then, we would have wrapped up our cycling loop in Hokkaido. We hoped our reserved accommodations along the way would work out well for us. We cycled most of the day on quiet countryside roads lined with potato fields. Along the way we stopped for some photos at the Manabe Gardens and later at the old Kofuku train station. As we arrived in our small destination town, we stopped at a convenience store for a rest with some ice cream. We also purchased a few breakfast staples for tomorrow. We struggled briefly to find our Booking.com accommodation in town but we managed to finally locate it. We were quite pleased with our spacious room and the small hotel’s facilities. For dinner, we skipped the hotel’s expensive on-site Italian restaurant in lieu of a nearby Chinese restaurant.

2024.07.05 – [JP] Sarabetsu ==> Hiroo (49 kms | Total: 2371 kms)

After a modest breakfast in our room, we resumed cycling for the day. Up to now, we’ve been surprised how often that our KML route had brought us to gravel roads. Today it was no different as we got to cycle a fair amount of distance on gravel roads along farmland. After 23kms, we arrived in the town of Taiki where we stopped at a grocery store for an early lunch. We bought our food staples and ate them at the grocery’s well-designed and convenient lunch area. After lunch, we opted to cycle for the rest of the day along the highway’s shoulder. We arrived in our destination town shortly after 1:00pm. We managed to check-in into our guest house’s tatami room shortly afterwards. Jenny convinced the owner to allow us to shower ahead of the 5:00pm onsen opening. In the evening, we had dinner at another Chinese restaurant. On our walk back to our guesthouse, we bought some snacks. To our delight, we enjoyed watching a small float parade going through the town’s streets. We were still not sure what the celebration was about.

2024.07.06 – [JP] Hiroo ==> Erimo (48 kms | Total: 2419 kms)

Yesterday we inquired with the guesthouse owner whether we could have breakfast prepared for us. As we showed up at the breakfast room at 7:45am, our breakfast was waiting for us on the table. We delayed our departure from the guesthouse until 9:30am. I took the opportunity to call ScotiaBank to inquire on the reason my last automatic credit card payment had been reversed. It appeared due to the Canada Day long weekend, Tangerine and ScotiaBank did not collaborate well. The ScotiaBank agent indicated that the payment reversal would be automatically cleared by July 9th. I indicated to him that I was clearly not happy with the situation or resolution time frame. We bought some water before leaving town as we did not expect to come across any convenience store throughout our cycling day. As we left town, we were excited to cycle so close to the Pacific ocean. Sadly, we faced a fairly strong head wind for most of the day. During the first half of our day, we cycled through 16 tunnels. One of them was almost 5 kms and many others were above or near 2 kms. Once we reached our furthest southern point, our route turned westerly. We struggled to get over a 2-3 kms climb as the head wind hindered our effort. We ended walking much of the hill. Thankfully, we had a nice 11kms slow downhill into our destination town. We stopped for snacks before checking into our hotel at 2:30pm. We were pleased with our tatami room which, unlike yesterday’s room, offered a private washroom and shower. In the evening, we walked over to a nearby restaurant.