Been a great day on the bike. The rural scenery after leaving Hagi city has been fascinating . Started with a long climb up from sea level to about 400 metres. The silky smooth Japanese roads are ideal for settling into a nice climbing style.

Just a few of the impressive vistas 

Forecast light rain hit earlier than expected and the last 30 km turned into a ” wet socks ” day. I was hoping to stealth camp somewhere. Eventually I lucked on spotting an Onsen ( Japanese hot spring bath house ) and decided that it was worth checking out. Why be cold and wet when I had the chance to be warm and wet ! Started an hilarious sequence of Comms with the ladies who ran this Onsen. After establishing that I was looking to find a campsite they rose to the challenge big time. Took a while but they got an OK to head a couple of kms to a golf course that would allow me to stay.

My kiwi friend Seiko Shirai had helped me with preparing a Japanese text that politely requested a spot to camp. This seemed to do the trick just fine 😊 I had a nice hot soak , climbed back into my cycling kit then followed this nice guy in a flash van up the highway to this golf course. Still lightly raining the prospect of putting up the tent was balanced against the offer to settle into the flash loos 😳

Tamara – the manager and a guy who gave me lots of food and too much to drink .

The young lass , Kyoko who manned to golf shop was pleased to allow a ” toilet guest ” as long as I promised not to overstay next morning. She seemed to enjoy the novelty of communication with this old kiwi guy. She even shouted me a coffee from the vending machine. 

Really the generosity and kindness of Japanese to random total strangers is not to be underestimated .