It's grim up north

Day 54, July 15th: Picked myself up off the kerb outside SeicoMart in Shibetsu at around two thirty. It was a gloomy, cold start. I spent twenty minutes watching the occasional headlight zoom past, trying to summon up even a gnat’s worth of enthusiasm. It got light enough for me to see, so off I went with my nose dripping onto the handlebars. Stopped off at a lake. I could just make out what looked like giant bats flitting in and out of a wall of fog. The sound of the water licking up to the small stones by my feet, and the occasional caw resonating from the white air told me to move on. In this grey, Mordor atmosphere I saw a fox crossing the road. He looked at me inquisitively. I crossed the road and crouched down. We looked at each other for a couple of minutes, before it skipped along a path and under a gate.

The cloud lifted, and eighty miles later, I arrived at Nemuro—signs both in Japanese and Russian. Just imagining who lived in some of these run down apartments and shacks, kept the day surreal. As usual, huge pachinko parlours, tyre centres, convenience stores, shops, hotels, garages, and the coast crying for attention.

Farmhouse, Nemuro

In the warm mid-afternoon sunshine, I rode through a small neighbourhood. A middle-aged guy with an enormous, brown handlebar moustache was standing bolt upright in the garden wearing a beige shirt, brown waistcoat, and brown slacks—his Sunday best. He was standing with one arm across his chest while smoking a pipe with his other hand. It was though he’d been placed there to fuck with my head. I looked back very uncomfortably.
‘What the fuck does that guy do?’ I thought.

Welcome to Royston Vasey.

This city is a mix of Japanese and Russians all living together in this low-on-laughs part of Hokkaido. Tensions over the Russian occupation of the four islands just off Noshappu, added to this weird atmosphere. Went past a statue earlier in the day: three figures pointing and shouting in the direction of those islands.

Nosshapu Cape is where Mad Max meets Little House on The Prairie.

On the way to Japan’s most easterly point, went past pictures of Russian soldiers and flags painted on signboards. The fog and the distant toot of a ferryboat added to the momentous occasion.

On the way back—pylon after pylon. Got me thinking about how Japan doesn’t exactly go out of her way to please tourists. Malaysia, India, Thailand, Singapore, Bali—all have great commercials. Japan could and should make a kick-ass commercial.

Angelic music playing throughout. Camera glides over a snow-capped Mount Fuji. Cut to cranes skimming the marshes in Kushiro in December and then to the temples of Kyoto surrounded by shocking red autumn foliage. Camera pans away from dark-skinned Shibuya girls complete with over-sized white socks playfully pushing each other down the streets of Harajuku. Cut to a deep orange sunset with silhouettes of farmhouses in the Iya Valley, then to some people grinning in a hot spring with monkeys on the periphery and icicles hanging off the ancient burnished beams. Cut to them eating from an immaculately arranged spread of sashimi. Camera pans across dolphins leaping out among the glistening icebergs of the Okhotsu Sea. Then a beautiful Japanese girl parasailing over the beaches of Okinawa. Cut to a sweeping night shot of Tokyo with a spectacular firework display lighting up the sky. Camera pulls beautifully away from a geisha smiling under a red umbrella in Kyoto with ‘Choose Japan’ at the bottom of the screen.

Boom, and there you have it. Simple, but we will never see that commercial and I don’t know why. A more realistic commercial would be:

A pan-pipe version of ‘The Winds of Change’ playing throughout. Camera shakes over the rice paddies on an overcast afternoon on the outskirts of Tokyo with spots of rain on the lens. Cut to dams and stagnant water with a crane moving a plastic bottle around with its beak. Camera pans away from a group of elderly hikers slurping on oden at the base of Mt Fuji. Cut to thousands of people stuck to one another on the subway. Camera glides over the pylon-scattered hills and dales in Hokkaido, sweeping toward the tetrapod-lined coastline. Cut to a test card image of cherry blossoms flickering in the wind. Cut to a wide-angle shot of a shinkansen hurtling past Mt Fuji in the summer. Then a final cut to David and Victoria Beckham with their tattoos digitally removed sitting in an onsen holding a can of Suntory Malts with ‘Choose Japan’ at the bottom of the screen.
Boom, and there you have it.

❄ ❄ ❄

On the way out of Nemuro an old guy shouted “Nemuro?” out of his car window while pointing in the right direction.
“Hai, so desu.”
No reaction, he just struggled out of his car, faced me and took a piss at the side of the road right in front of me and his wife.

Stopped at a hostel in Attoko after a hundred and ten mile day. Crashed onto the futon.