Yamagata to Iwate
Weather: rainy, then heavy clouds, a late break in the evenings. Low 20’sC throughout the day.
Distance: 4??km
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Today was a day of much driving and little sight-seeing, as the typhoon had thrown a bit of a spanner in the works..
Woke up at 5:30 to rainy weather… the plan had been to head more or less straight north to the accommodation, with one of the roads being at least partially a gravel road, so taking extra time. Along the way there were some scenic spots, a castle, and an early arrival leaving time for extra ride-outs in the area.
In actuality, rain was not only forecast all day, but the rain radar showed heavy rain more or less along the entire route I had planned, whereas it was showing mostly dry along the east coast. So, not fancying an entire day in the rain, especially since I still don’t have proper rain gear, I decided instead to head towards Sendai and the coast roads just north from there.
The first part of the day was interminable slow roads with queues of traffic and solid yellow lines. I was seriously second-guessing my choices of leaving behind the sparsely populated mountain roads and heading into suburbia, but the day finally got better after I peeled off to visit a dam. People sometimes wonder what my obsession with dams is.. it’s quite simple – they are usually high up in the mountains next to rivers and away from people, so perfect motorbiking territory!
To give my day a bit of direction I had picked out a couple of community waypoints from the BMW Mileage Rally. These turn out to be pretty hit-and-miss, some are great (like the motorbike temple the night before), others are random waypoints in the middle of nowhere.. for one I even ended up in a retirement village only because it was the center of an island! One of the better ones, and my first stop of the day, was at some sort of exhibition center for the Blue Impulse jet acrobatics team. There was also some sort of bicycle event on, so there was live music and food stalls as well as the jet exhibit.
The highlight of the day was a completely accidental stop. While riding along the coast I saw quite a large vessel on display and rode up to take a look. Turns out it is an old whaling vessel, the Tashimaru No16, which is part of the Oshika Whale Land exhibition dedicated to the history of whaling. Apart from a couple of whale skeletons and a few exhibits from whaling history there’s not a lot there.
In general I got the impression that this part of the coast got hit pretty hard by the tsunami 15 years ago. There are a lot of brand-new villages high up in the hills, a brand-new highway, again, set up in the hills, and a lot of empty flat land near the coast with only some new fishery infrastructure and related factories near the coast.I did find some really nice roads on the Oshika Peninsula, and I definitely want to come back someday with better weather. There are some great viewpoints up in the mountains, but due to the fog I barely saw anything.
As it was getting on and since I didn’t want to get caught out after dark again, especially if it was going to be rainy near my destination, I headed towards the highway. The way I ended up going took me a long way up the Kitakami River and, as it was up on the embankments, had a pretty nice view. Then it was 100km or so on the highway before peeling off and enjoying some nice, almost european, scenery for the last stretch near Mr Iwate.
I checked into my hotel for the night, the Pension Kumasanchi, where the owners made me feel quite welcome. First thing was onsen after such a long day in the saddle! Afterwards I went downstairs to write my diary, and the hosts gave me ところてん (tokoroten), a strange gelatinous square block which you press through a device and turns it into some sort of noodle. Eaten with soy-sauce and からし, a spice, they are quite nice with a beer.
