Monthly Archives: September 2016


All good things must come to an end, and such did our 10-day cycle tour around the deep south of Hokkaido. We bundled the bikes back onto the train, and that train whisked us back to Chitose, ready to face another semester at university. Thermarest posted on Instagram and Facebook […]

Southern Hokkaido Cycle Tour Day 11 – Onuma back to ...


*Featured image by Haidee Our last day of cycling on this end-of-summer cycle tour around southern Hokkaido would end up being the only day where we had rain. And the day was topped off with a shared campfire on a lakefront with another cycle touring couple. In the morning, we […]

Southern Hokkaido Cycle Tour Day 10 – Kakkumi to Onuma


After a thoroughly relaxing two days sightseeing in Hakodate, we were back on the road again. At 66km, it would be our longest day of the trip, and our minds and bodies felt it. The sleepy little fishing villages and quiet roads kept things interesting though, as did the quirky […]

Southern Hokkaido Cycle Tour Day 9 – Hakodate to Kakkumi




Not being one to overly enjoy popular sightseeing locations, I’d never been to the tourist-bustling city of Hakodate before. But despite my reservations about its popularity with hoards of Asian tourists, it was an overwhelmingly worthwhile place to visit. The old star-shaped fortress and its painstakingly reconstructed magistrate’s building is […]

Southern Hokkaido Cycle Tour Day 7 – Shiriuchi to Hakodate


Matsumae Town on the south coast of Hokkaido was a surprise. As one of the earliest settlements on Hokkaido by the Japanese in the late 1800’s, it still maintains its mainland-Japan feel, with traditional Japanese architecture not seen in other parts of Hokkaido. Today we also caught a glimpse of […]

Southern Hokkaido Cycle Tour Day 6 – Matsumae to Shiriuchi



Despite being late September, it was a sweltering day today. Climbing high up over bluffs and cliffs along the Japan Sea coast kept our speeds down. The views were to notch though. Wild beaches, untouched forest, and wild-camping in Hokkaido’s first-settled towns, full of history. The theme of early mornings […]

Southern Hokkaido Cycle Tour Day 5 – Okushiri Island to ...





In 1993, one of the most powerful tsunami in modern history hit Okushiri Island. Just 5 minutes after a powerful magnitude 7.7 earthquake, the 30m high 500km/h wave destroyed much of the north, west, and south areas of the island. We weren’t fully aware of the magnitude of that event […]

Southern Hokkaido Cycle Tour Day 2 – Setana to Okushiri ...


After an unusually hectic July, August and September, Haidee and I finally managed to head off on our annual two-week cycling vacation. Being the last two weeks of September, days were already getting short, and the evenings and mornings were getting a chill on them. After a summer of more […]

Southern Hokkaido Cycle Tour Day 1 – Oshamanbe to Setana