Biwako to Japan Sea

On the opposite side of the mountain we found ourselves on the west coast of Lake Biwa. There was so many great things I wanted to get pictures of, but my photography time was limited to where and when we stopped to rest. Although, seeing as how we only made it up to Takashima Cho the first day, I'd say we stopped to rest a lot. As I commented on Nil's site,

there were some small villages that seemed pretty deserted, especially around the area where the bridge crossed the lake further north. I wondered if they were summer houses that were deserted when the economy went to crap, or if they were actually "disposable" villages built by Keihan to take advantage of a new bridge / tourist attraction. The amusement park at the base of the bridge looked as though it had been closed for a while... I wonder if they actually planned on that though, and made enough profit in the first couple years so that it paid off.

( I used to work for Keihan down in Shikoku at another tourist attraction below the Seto bridge. The year it opened it was booming, and cars were lined up all the way across the bridge to get in, but about 10 years later it was pretty much dead. That was in '95, when I went back to Shikoku for Golden Week, it was out of business.)

You can see a couple shots of where we camped that night, the hot bath we relaxed in, and our breakfast table in the morning.

No bike trip would be complete without a bit of danger, so I'm happy to report that we were almost killed several times when after having ridden our bikes twenty minutes to town for some food ( through the country roads where I got the great sunset shots), we realized that we had both left our bike lights back at camp. The ride home was pitch black on narrow roads with cliffs on either side. I was once again shocked and amazed at how fearless Tomoe is when riding a bike in dangerous situations... (not looking for traffic or slowing down when she can't see the road etc...) This is especially amazing considering the fact that she was pretty scared of homicidal maniacs when setting up tent in a park or graveyard.

The remainder of these show the next day's route, from Takashima Cho over the mountains the Tsuruga, on the Japan Sea. We woke up early expecting a hard ride over the mountains, but were ever so happy to find that the first 8 or so km are up, and the majority of the ride was then a leisurely downhill 17 km ride into town on the opposite side of the mountains.

We arrived hours earlier than expected, and were quite disappointed in Tsuruga. I was hoping for a small fishing village, but this place was brand new and one of the cleanest cities I have ever seen. A while later we found that there are nuclear power plants along the coast, which explains the money and quick expansion that seems to have taken place. I'm thinking that they spend a lot of money to make the city look clean in order to offset some of the stigma of big bad nuclear plants.

Anyway, as I said, we arrived early, and didn't see much point in camping there since we would catch the early train to Tomoe's parents' place in Nagoya the next morning, so bought a feast at the supermarket, and sat on the beach painting until the sun set, then packed up and headed to Nagoya in time for snacks and a nice hot bath. Just thinking about it makes me sleepy so I'm going to bed. Maybe some day, if I am bored, I will come back and elaborate on this leg of the journey, but don't count on it.