The Himedomachi Cycling Club

The BnB owner chatted for the thirty minutes it took me to chew through breakfast. I asked her if she was born in Iwamisawa, and she said she was an immigrant from Shikoku. She’d come here after she’d got married. Although she mentioned a son there was no evidence of a husband and I assumed she ran the BnB to make ends meet.

A lot of guests stayed during the Ice Festival and, when I said I had always wanted to see that, she shivered and said, “Too cold!” She served me fried salmon and unpolished rice, miso soup and pickled vegetables. I had to go back to bed for an hour afterwards to let it digest.

The television was on, some kind of documentary about a young girl who wanted to play the flute in an upcoming festival and every scene featured a family kneeling on the floor in front of piles of food they scooped into their mouths with chopsticks.

The Japanese are very good at telling you nothing while you tell them everything. She mentioned the prisons and I wanted to ask if that was where she worked. There was something about her personality that was distant.

She told me that when she was young she and some friends had cycled for a few days on Shikoku and when it came time to leave she came out to look at my bike.

“Is that all you’ve got to get to Sata?” she said, gesturing at my saddlebags and laughing.

“Well, I’m not camping,” I said.

“I can see that!”

My departure was unusual enough to get the neighbours out and, as I pedalled away, I could hear a man quizzing her on where I’d come from.

I had two routes planned, one a long loop to Tsukigata and Tobetsu on the Alan Booth route, and another more direct route to Eniwa. I wanted to get out and see the plains before I left, so I set out towards Tsukigata. For the first five kilometres it was cycling in Japan as I had imagined it, along a quiet road, with broad views and my speed ticking easily into the twenties Then, like Hannibal Lector having a friend over for dinner, the wind appeared out of nowhere and embraced me.

I took some no so great photographs and turned back into town, hitting the 12 and heading towards Ebetsu. The wind dropped at one point and I accelerated again, only to realise after a few kilometres that my Garmin was hopelessly lost and leading me out to the sea. It had done something similar in Switzerland, confidently directing me towards a motorway and onto a road full of huge lorries. If it does eventually succeed in killing me I assume an evil demon will leap from it’s plastic shell shouting, “My work is done.”

I travelled down the 46, passing through a town called Kita (North) Hiroshima. Like new world settlers, I assume the town was named after where they originally came from, like New York, or London, Ontario. The town where my ex-wife used to work was called Kawaura, and when settlers from there came north they called their town Urakawa, simply reversing the kanji. It’s still there, just west of Cape Erimo.

I fought the wind. On my third, “Oh, for fuck’s sake” I stopped and ate some food and drank some water. My kids gave me a water pouch before I left and I’ve used it to keep my bear spray. It sits on the handlebars beside my hand. It means that I have to stop to drink, and I usually do this outside the town I’m in’s post office. They are frequent enough that it’s a good reminder, if I haven’t already bought some Sports Water from a convenience store.

Five road bikers passed me on the other side of the road, wisely cycling with the wind rather than against it. At the 7-11 in Kita Hiroshima four, young Japanese bike packers pulled up beside me, with tents and sleeping mats hanging from their frames.

I caught their eye.

“The wind is too strong isn’t it?” I said to them.

One of them repeated my words back to me.

“The wind’s too strong isn’t it,” he said, not being rude but too shy to engage me.

I tried again, “Makes cycling really tiring!”

I got a smile in reply. The Japanese talking old foreigner routine wasn’t making much progress.

I got to my guest house, the yellow house in the picture, at the stroke of check in.

The owner said, “You’ve put your bike in the right place.”

I’d propped Ribena, my 3,000 franc gravel bike and the most expensive item I own, against the wall in the garden that let directly onto the street.

“Is there somewhere I can put her?” I asked.

“Because there is rain coming?”

After a certain amount of pushing, she’s wedged into the unlocked glass walled portico outside the front door. Last night she was in a garage with the door open. I guess there are no bikes thieves in this part of Japan. I find it beautiful yet scary.

They have free laundry and blistering efficient electric heaters. My little tatami room backs onto the railway line and a level crossing. Trains pass through every twenty minutes, often with a blast of a whistle. I love it. The possibility of adventure and travel into the unknown. I’d happily live in a converted station master’s house.

I’m the only guest again. I was hoping for conversation with the owner, like Alan used to conjure up, but I guess travel is so easy now, so unextraordinary and commodified that, once he had shown me around the property and handed me a printed map of the restaurants, he left me in peace.

Peace, except for those beautiful whistles.