After my lonely night on the moon I was feeling rather lazy and stayed in my cozy bed as the pitter-patter of the rain still hadn’t stopped. I didn’t want to pack away my tent while wet and get everything drenched while packing up. I decided to wait the rain out and worst case, stay an extra day here.
Mornin’
The problems were that my water was running out, I only had snack food and I was getting cabin fever being confined to the tent. I could address two of those problems by going to fetch some water from the stream that I’d be hearing all night. Mother nature however had other ideas and was hiding her wares from my drying lips. The creek was down a very steep embankment covered with dense and impenetrable shrubs, I couldn’t actually see the stream it was so dense. Foiled, I slunk back to my tent and asked the question ‘Should I stay or should I go?‘ another 100 times.
While writhing around in my stupor of boredom I realised the pitter-patter had stopped! I jumped out of the tent excited to get going, it was 3pm at this stage and it got dark at 5pm so I had a little bit of time.
It was now snowing..
..Heavily.
So I was right, the rain had stopped but it had just made way for the gentle snowflakes. To make matters worse, I looked up the road to discover this..
More road blocks!
Readers may have been questioning my decisions to continue heading north so far but it finally hit me. It was time to head back south and out of these forsaken ranges in Japan’s north. I plotted my course to the closest east coast and the now famous city of Sendai and vowed never to head north gain.
I quickly lost altitude and realised that riding in snow is not a bad experience, as it’s quite dry. Once it turns to rain however you get quite wet. In any case even with my dwindling amount of daylight I eventually hit the great city of Sendai and I was back in Neo-Japan.
It was a bit of shock to the system.
My first port of call was food and I couldn’t pass this place without giving it a try.
Ramen!
The inside was just as loud as the outside, the chef’s were shouting their heads off and would always say hello and goodbye to customers. The dining experience consisted of a single bar with the chefs behind preparing all the meals, it was also rather delicious as well. I’m pretty lucky in Melbourne, I have been to quite a few countries and what we have in Melbourne has definitely lived up to the local fare, apart from one thing…Ramen! I haven’t had a good bowl of Ramen in Melbourne and it pains me greatly 😦
Trying to find a place to stay again proved difficult, I looked for an internet cafe to try and help. Internet cafes in Japan are a different beast and I saw that they offered something called a ‘Padded Floor’ intrigued I asked to have a look, it was just as you’d expect. A computer in a booth with a padded floor. This place also had access to oxygen chamber, solarium and shower (it had been 5 days I think). Overnight rates were $35 but my experience with hotels were minimum of about $70 so I figured why not?
I went for a bit of a walk around the city and snapped a few pictures –
This is the train station.
They take Christmas seriously here.
From there I went back to my cubicle for the night, ready to make the most of this crazy Japanese Internet Café.
Fluorescent lights are essential to a good nights sleep.
figo's fromagio 
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Yeah man….go south! Poor bike. Left all alone outside. BTW, we didn’t hear much about the FZ6. How about a review?
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