Day 4
Daigo, Ibaraki - Nasushiobara, Tochigi

Distance: 81.67 km
Average: 17.6 km/h
Max: 67.8 km/h
Total Distance: 392.41 km

By today the signs of being tired set in. There were lots of mountains to go over, compounded with the first three days’ work catching up to me, and it all adds up to Day 4 having the slowest average riding speed of the trip.

This morning I left the park I slept at for Day 3 in Daigo and proceeded to get out of the city. Fortunately for me, it was much faster to do so via bicycle than via automobile. Before I left the city, I stopped at an amazingly huge (for Japanese standards) grocery store. I ended up only buying a single stick of yakitori.

After leaving the store I proceeded to get on the prefectural highway I had chosen to get out of town. I soon arrived at what was the longest traffic jam I’ve been in that I can remember, but luckily I was on a bike. Once I saw the perpetual line of cars, I rode up on the sidewalk and proceeded to speed past cars for the better part of half an hour. That jam must have been nearly 10km long. And remember that this isn’t in some huge metropolis. This is Daigo, Ibaraki, with a population a hair over 20,000. When I reached the jam’s halfway point, I realized that the jam was because there was some big even that everyone was going to. I didn’t stop to see what it was, but it completely amazed me for how such a sized town could create such a huge jam due to an event.

Before I reached the edge of the traffic jam, I reached the edge of the city. This was noticeable because in Japan cities tend to be in valleys, and as soon as you hit the mountains the cities stop. Daigo was no exception, and as soon as I hit the mountains the city quickly stopped.

On the edge of Daigo, Ibaraki: A very comfy bus stop

After going up for a bit, the prefectural highway I was on split, and I took the fork I had been planning on taking. By this time it the road had become completely surrounded by trees, with nothing else around, but at the fork there happened to be an onsen resort with a surprisingly large amount of cars. Figuring that I could use a shower and a hot soak, I pulled in and parked.

Inside I found out that it cost a bit more than I had hoped (1,000 yen). I’ve been to better onsen that cost the same or less, but overall it was a nice little break. One of the baths did have a waterfall-esque thing so that when you sat under it you received a very hard massage from the water that actually felt quite wonderful. After spending some time there cleaning and relaxing, I changed back into my bike clothes and headed back out.

Earlier in the day, while looking at the map, I decided to make the day relatively short and only go for 80km. At about what would be the 80km mark I noticed that in the middle of the vast expanse of nowhere there was a reservoir held back by a dam. Considering that large dams (of which there are many) tend to be tourist destinations (see Koyama Dam from Day 3), I assumed it would be a good spot to spend the night and, most importantly, would have running water. Finding clean water ended up being one of the most important things I would look for, especially now that I was heading out into the non-inhabited parts of the region.

So I climbed up and up and up the mountains, all while realizing that as soon as I left the onsen there were extremely few cars on the road. I was actually kinda happy to see a bathroom set off to the side of the road, as it showed me that at least people went through this area.

The only facilities in there were two toilets. The signs on the doors say that it uses water directly from a spring, so don’t drink it. Sure.

I kept going and going and going


The road, going up.

…until I finally reached the dam.


The water was an amazingly deep green. The photo doesn’t do it justice.

The dam was, as expected, a tourist destination. It even had a bathroom, outside of which they had a water fountain. Damn right, baby.

Unfortunately, though, as soon as I arrived the skies opened up and started pouring down rain. The bathroom’s building’s roof had a slight overhang, so I ended up sitting there and making lunch, spent a few hours alternating between watching the rain and writing out the entries for the first three days by hand.

Once there was a lull in the rain, I left my stuff down near the bathroom and took a reconnaissance walk up a nearby nature path to scout out a good place to set up the hammock for the night. It didn’t take too long until I found a good spot, then I headed back down to the bathroom to wait a bit longer until it started to get dark before setting up camp.

Back near the bathroom, I noticed that an SUV full of guys had pulled up and were using the same overhang to stay dry while they cleaned up and repacked stuff from whatever trip they had just done. As I sat down to join them in their sitting, a dog walked up and started sniffing me. It seemed friendly to everyone, so I figured it was their dog and I started petting it. But then, once all of the guys finished up they all loaded up into their SUV and drove off, with me still petting the dog. It then dawned on me that it wasn’t their’s.

Oh snap.

I wandered around the area, with the dog in tow, seeing if anyone was around the area. No luck. We were a good distance away from the nearest town, and I could only assume that a family had visited the dam and forgetten their dog behind. The dog seemed pretty hungry, so I took out some of my granola bars and fed them to it.

Eventually he went off on a scent, sniffing around, and I took the opportunity to head back to my stuff, pack it up, and head up to my pre-chosen camping spot. I quickly set up camp, and none too soon. Shortly after getting my hammock set up, the heaviest rain of the trip started pouring down. It became a constant roar on my rain fly for the duration of the night.

And speaking of the night, by Night 4 I had come to realize that a combination of a freak summer weather system during my trip and me being up in the mountains ended up with the nights being far, far colder than I had either expected or prepared for. Night 4 was particularly bad because the extremely heavy rain helped to lower the temperature even more. It got to the point at night where I started being afraid I’d get hypothermic if I got wet at all, so I was hoping upon hope that my hammock system would keep me dry.

For the most part, it did, and I was able to stay dry really cold versus the wet really really cold I had feared. I didn’t get much sleep that night.

Day 4’s Hammock setup, along a nature path. Unluckily the weather sucked, luckily that meant that meant very few people visited the dam, and nobody took the path

By the next morning the rain had stopped, so I broke camp and continued on my way.

On Day 5 I would come to the realization that almost all of today was a huge waste. More to come… next time!

Popularity: 24% [?]

Like it? Hate it? Either way, subscribe to the Lucky Isle RSS feed!