On my map, it looked like a quaint little road, meandering for a while alongside a rambling brook. What it actually turned out to be was a four lane super highway of death and destruction. Seemingly, it was the only way out of Niigata where I had just taken a ferry to from Hokkaido 20 hours earlier.
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As the ferry pulled into port at Tomakomai in Hokkaido 19 hours after leaving Tokyo, my first thought was that I was woefully unprepared for touring in Japan for the next two months. I had arrived in Japan deciding to tour by bicycle about a week beforehand. At that time I was traveling to Northern Ireland to tour Giant’s Causeway that I decided that I would tour Japan. Having just come off a stint as a Peace Corps volunteer, I didn’t really have much gear to meet those ends. But I assumed that I would be able to pick up the essentials (a bike) all in Tokyo and figure it out from there.
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