Trip to Sado

With my recent three day weekend (for the autumnal equinox, of all things) I took myself and my bike to Sado Island, the biggest island in Japan (exclusive of the obvious four big ones), about a 2.5 hour ferry ride from Niigata City, to my south. My goal was to ride my bike around the entire island, or as I now call it, to circumcycle the island. The island itself looks small enough, but if you unravel the coastline, it’s pretty long. According to Tomoko’s cousin, who lives on Sado, the coastline is 280km. According to the map I bought it’s about 215. According to my GPS and my butt, it’s about 250. I’d add on 10km to that for tunnels, though.

Integrating photos into this blog is sort of a pain if I do more than a few, so here is the link to the photo gallery for the whole trip: Sado Gallery

I spent Friday night in Niigata City. I packed up all my bike stuff, tent, sleeping bag, and rode to the train station, where I quick-folded the bike, and hopped on the 6:44 train to Niigata. I got a hotel and then had a late night of accidentally paying someone else’s bar tab, and karaoke. I caught the 12:30 ferry to Sado the next day. I almost took the bus from the train station to the port, but instead, set up the bike, and rode it. I am glad I did. I saved 200 yen and actually beat the bus there.

The ferry, the okesa I believe, was pretty nice. I got a sweet row of benches on the deck where my folded bike wouldn’t bother anyone (technically I should have paid another 1500 yen to bring a bike on) and I could lay down. Gulls followed the boat for a really long way out into the ocean, and were performing amazingly acrobatic stunts to catch the potato chips people were throwing to them from the deck. After arriving around 3, I set up my bike, got a bowl of ramen, and was on the road a little after 3:40.

I made it to Futatsugame, at the northern point of the island around 5:30, about 45 kilometers away. I set up my tent in the campground, but was the only one there and couldn’t figure out cost, etc. Anyway, I needed a beer, so I walked up the hill to the Fisher’s Hotel and asked if they had a restaurant. They didn’t. Only a sign out front that said “Restaurant.” They did have beer and some comfortable couches.

I was up at 6 am the next morning and on the road by 7. There were a group of three dudes my age having breakfast down on the beach. I talked to one of them, and he told me in English that “Awashima is good island.” Awashima is the island off the coast of Murakami that I have not yet visited. I then blasted down the coast, over some sweet cliffs, down some badass switchbacks, through some long tunnels and seriously serious bridges. I stopped about every hour to buy a new bottle of Aquarius sports drink, which seemed convenient and cheap at the time, but at 150 yen a pop, I probably spent 30 bucks on the stuff. The rest of the way to Ogi is sort of a blur, partly because I did it so fast. I made it to Ogi, about 90 km away from my starting point, by 3:30, and that was after I took the much hillier and narrower coastal road rather than the bypass that cuts across the island to Ogi city. I at first was worried about the passability of the roads through that section of coast, but they were all nicely paved. The Japanese leave no road unpaved. Or river or cliff or seabed. Seriously, they had paved the bottom of the ocean at one point along the coast.

“What?! We didn’t pave the REEF? Quick, men, to the mixers!”

Ogi was pretty nice. My supervisor at Senami Elementary recommended that I try taraibune which means “try a boat” in Japanese. Ok, it doesn’t. I don’t know what it means. Basically you get into a giant bucket and jostle yourself around a bay with one vertical oar. It didn’t enthuse me enough to try it alone, so I went of to an onsen, and then hit the road to find a place to camp. I found a pretty cedar grove about 5 minutes inland, 10km north of Ogi. It was right across the road from a big looking farmhouse and an old woman stared at me for a long time while I stood very still pretending she couldn’t see me. There were a lot of spiderwebs in that forest. A lot. And the bamboo made really weird knocking noises that night in the wind. Once I thought for certain there was a flock of woodpeckers above my tent. For a while I was convinced monkeys were knocking the bamboo together just to scare me out of my sleep.

I was up at 5:30 and on the road by 6 that morning. It was a good thing I got such an early start because 20km later, at the single stoplight in the town of Akadomari, I busted off my right pedal. The actual hosel/socket/faucet/whatever of the pedal cracked and the pedal came off of the rod that it had spun on before. For the next 54 km, I simply kept that foot clipped in, and applied pressure inward, which kept the pedal on but made that leg rather sore. I rolled into Ryotsu around 10:30 am, more than enough time to grab a burger, fold up the bike, and hop on the 12:40 ferry back to Niigata. All in all, a good trip, but maybe too fast. I have seen the entire coast of Sado, though. Next time I’ll stop and spend some time at a few of the attractions I missed and take some of the mountain roads that are supposed to be beautiful.