Hokkaido Touring Day 27: To Sendai City

English | 日本語

It rained quite a bit in the middle of the night. In the morning, it seemed to have stopped raining, so I decided to clean up the tent and hang it out to dry first. Then I ate breakfast with bread and coffee. As the sun was starting to shine, I dried off just in time to leave at 7:30 AM. It seems unlikely that the running dry machine (=my bike) will work well in this weather.

I tried to take a video with my Chinese action camera, SJCAM, but it was cloudy. It seems that yesterday's rain got into the camera and condensation got inside. It's not a bad action camera, but I want to get something with a longer battery life and without a waterproof housing. In the meantime, no video recording until the condensation clears up. The rain have destroyed a lot of things on this touring trip.
This area has a brown monotone sign for the shop as the picture. Why is that?

I take a lunch break around 12:00 and eat a rice ball and a banana. I checked the battery life of my new phone while eating lunch. I've used only 15% of it in about 5 hours so far. If I had charged it during the break, it would have increased to 93%. I'll use the navigation system after this to check my consumption, but it's a great power saving phone, great. Longer use and shorter charging time. After all, it's hard to get a true picture of usability from a simple catalog spec.

A little past three o'clock, I arrived at the roadside station, Sambongi. There were many dumplings and rice cakes for sale, and I'm a sucker for sweet things, so I couldn't help but be tempted to buy them all. Zunda dumplings are delicious!
Google Maps showed a shortcut route to Route 4 in the direction of Sendai, so I went there. I knew Google Maps always give me a lot of challenge. There is a mountain route. Route 4 must have taken a detour through the mountains. The distance was short, but the fatigue and time must have been greater here.

After a break, I found about ten adults and children gathered by the side of a nearby rice field, waving to each other. As I approached, they seemed to be cheering me on, saying, "Hang in there!" I smiled and said, "Thank you!" And as I got more closer, the kids responded as usual, saying things like "awesome" and "cool". It's quite fun.

I managed to get to Sendai Station at 5 PM and pushed my bicycles through the arcade to look at the shops and restaurants. I soon found a beef tongue shop that also delivers beef, so I sent some meat, hamburgers and sausages as bring home for my family in Tokyo. After my little mission, I'm going to take my time to find a bath, food and a place to sleep.

I went to a public bath in the neighborhood. Here is a town where the entertainment district called Sendai Kokubuncho is located. Most of the customers in the bath have tattoos. Well, I'm an old man now, so I took a bath with a nonchalant look on my face. I hadn't taken a bath in three days, so it was very comfortable. Then I went to the coin laundry in the same building and washed yesterday and today's clothes. Here in Sendai, The washing fee is only 400 jpy. I think I would have been happy to use a laundromat for such a price.
While I was washing clothes, I looked for a restaurant for dinner. The nearby beef tongue restaurant "Tsukasa" seemed to have a good reputation, so I will go there. I think for the lodging is an internet cafe, but I don't feel comfortable leaving my bicycle in the Sendai station area, so I decided to stay internet cafe located in a suburban.

After completing my laundry, it was starting to rain, so I put on my rain gear and headed to "Tsukasa". Maybe it was a popular restaurant, but there was a line... I had to wait 30 minutes and got the 1.5-person beef tongue set meal. The meat, soup and rice were all delicious. Remembering back on it carefully, I realized that the restaurant I came to last year with my wife was also a branch of this restaurant. It was a strange coincidence.

After dinner, I'm pushing my bike and looking out at the city at night, and just like in the daytime, I hear people saying "awesome" and "cool". At night, however, it's the adults, not the kids, who are saying that...

A little after nine o'clock, I could arrive at an internet cafe in the suburbs. And I charge all my devices, write in my diary, and considered my plans for tomorrow. According to the weather forecast, the weather is going to be bad all week, and there are no good camping sites on the route. I was considering many things, but I decided to run to Koriyama and stay at the internet cafe again. As I'm not hurry tomorrow, I decided to go slowly, although there is a distance. There seems to be hot springs and I will be able to relax. Well, I don't necessarily care about camping. The city is already close, and if there is a good campsite within a good distance, I will use it. I don't want to camp in the public park now because of the bad weather, so I'll do it some other time.
There are not many cyclists to meet. I only passed one person today.

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北上運動公園キャンプ場から仙台 140km