So much for posting these updates every other day, eh?

Day 6
Tajima, Fukushima - Tadami, Fukushima

Distance: 61.76 km
Average: 19.5 km/h
Max: 62.1 km/h
Total Distance: 539.10 km

By the time I woke up in my hotel bed in Tajima, I knew that today was going to be a pretty short day. I was a lot further along than planned, and if I continued going at my present rate I’d arrive at my final destination of Teradomari, Niigata three to four days ahead of schedule. Considering I paid good money for a hotel room, I figured it would be best to get as much out of it as possible.

I tried to sleep in, but waking up with the sun every morning changed my sleeping habits. I still ended up getting breakfast from the hotel restaurant at 7:00 am, but on this trip that was considered pretty late in the morning. After breakfast I went back to my room and simply rested for a few hours, enjoying the comforts.

I ended up staying until a few minutes before checkout, to the point where the cleaning lady entered into my room while I was in the shower, followed by her making a hasty retreat when she realized what she had just done.

After having a nice rest for the day, I started on the relatively short 55 km or so to Tadami, Fukushima.

Having lunch in some tiny village’s park. There isn’t really much in this part of Fukushima, so I was quite happy to come across a spot of civilization with fresh water.

It really didn’t take very long at all for me to arrive at my destination, so I spent my free time just looking around the small city. That also didn’t take long at all.

The city has a small population of 5,113 people, and about the only place I found to “hang out” was at a very nice, for the size of the town, park.

A decently nice park in Tadami, Fukushima

Earlier I had seen signs for a campground, so I felt that I could try and sleep at an actual campground tonight. As I left the park to go search for the campground, I immediately noticed this sign.

DANGER!

It roughly says that when you hear the siren sound, get to higher ground because water will be rushing through shortly. This ended up being a portent of what was to come. Keep this sign in mind. It’ll come up again later on in my trip.

I eventually found my way to the campground, and as I still had lots of daylight left, I spent my time cooking dinner and studying kanji. While doing this, I did notice that this was actually an auto campground and was more built up than I was expecting (you could rent huts and gazebos and stuff). Even though I hadn’t seen a sign anywhere that I had noticed that specified payment of any sort, I still had a hunch that visitors may have to, even if they’re just doing very simple camping. I decided to take on a “it’s easier to apologize than ask permission” attitude.

Once darkness started to fall I packed up my stuff from the gazebo I had been hanging out at for the past two hours and made my way down to the primitive camping areas. I found a nice empty spot and proceeded to set up my hammock. As I was just finishing up setting up camp, a guy drove over on scooter and asked if I was a customer. I stood and thought for a few seconds, trying to think of what to say.

“Eh, maybe?”
“Haha, maybe? This is a campground, you have to pay.”
“How much is it?”
“700 yen.”
“700 yen?! For just a hammock?!”
“Yup.”
“Nevermind, I’ll find somewhere else.”
“Try the dam way over there.” *points*
“The dam over there? Alright, thanks.”

So with that out of the way, I headed over to the dam. As with most other dams I’ve come across, this one was hydroelectric and either owned, operated, or both by an electric company. Now electric companies’ properties tend to have this air about them that makes me not want to trespass on them. This particular dam had a small gravel parking lot in the middle of a wooded area that I figured would work for me to set up my hammock between. The main problem was that there were signs all over the place that said something about camping, but I didn’t understand all of the kanji on the signs.

Actually there were two specific kanji that I didn’t know that, depending on their meaning and due to the structure of the sentences, could have made the signs say that it was either allowed or wasn’t allowed to camp there. After rereading the signs a few times, I finally decided not to risk trespassing on the electric company’s property and went off to find another spot. By now it was full-on night, and because I was outside of the city the only light came from my bike light.

I searched around in the darkness, going up and down the road for about 20 minutes until I finally noticed a previously unseen dirt road offshoot from the main road. It led up a short hill then ended in a small field. At the end of the road I got off my bike and started walking around to search for some trees that would work well for me.

This was the only time in my trip that I wished I had brought a tent instead of a hammock, because once I saw that big field I realized that it would be much easier to set up a tent than to find an ideal hammock spot. Fortunately for me, that thought left my mind immediately as I took a few steps away from the road and instead of finding hard ground under the softgrass, my foot sank into marshy water. Ugh.

After inching around the outer rim of the marshy area, I finally found a good spot for my hammock, went back to my bike, grabbed everything, went back to the good spot, and set up camp. All of this was done in the dark, as this field was on a hill right above and across the street from the dam. I surmised that the reason the field had been cleared was for equipment to get in and service the large electric wire tower that was in the middle of the field, so odds are was that it was also owned by the electric company and that I was still trespassing. The main difference was that at least it was hard to see from the main road.

Quick photo of my campsite before finishing up packing up camp in the morning. Cell phone cameras aren’t known for having great low light capabilities.

The next morning I awoke at dawn and had packed everything up and left before the sun even finished getting over the horizon. With a plan to eat breakfast once the sun had gotten a little bit further over the horizon, I set out on Day 7, what would become my most action-packed day of the whole trip.

More on that later.

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