BEE Japan

The day started as ideally as possible: in a tent on a rocky riverbed in the cold mountains of Tokushima. Ideal minus the rocks & cold. I would have preferred a soft bed, but because I had arrived in the dark the night before I didn’t really have the eyes to scout out a good spot to pitch my tent.
Nor did I notice the absurd amount of trash along the river bank! After waking up yesterday morning and packing up my tent & bags, I set out for 45 minutes and swept across the riverside to provide it some relief from the plastic bags, PET bottles, diapers, waribashi, empty beer cans. Yeah, all that trash, about 5 45-liter bags, in only 45 minutes! Imagine how concentrated that mess was (I’m afraid you’ll have to because I forgot to take any before photos). Sometimes on this trip it feels as if I’m tailing a 5000-pound garbage-crapping Nessie or sumo wrestler–I don’t know where this stuff keeps coming from but people, please help me track down this giant beast! It’s really uglifying some gorgeous places in Japan!

From here I had a couple options of roads: 1) a semi-mountainous road, 2) the Super Forestry road that climbed to the peak of a 1400 meter mountain. Based on my previous decisions, which do you think I chose?

And I climbed and climbed, and discovered a mystical waterfall that looked like a bathing hole for sprites & waternymphs (the title image for this post). I dove in and went searching but couldn’t last more than a minute in the icy water–so lucid and inviting on the surface however.
And then I climbed some more until the road stopped!
That’s right, I suddently found myself without pavement, but struggled on anyhow, thinking it must surely pick back up at some point…any road on the map, especially one boasted as the Super Forestry Road, and especially since this is Japan and the river I was riding along side had excessive concrete dams at 500 meter intervals…

Yes the road did return, only to disappear again. Appear & Disappear. I played hide n’ seek with the pavement for about 1.5 hours up the top third of the mountain. I could have turned back and taken the road that was sure to be asphalted, but I was stubborn and pushed my bike in places, rode it when the gravel was smooth enough, and eventually I made it to the top:

I made it: King of the Mountain. My highest climb that I can remember, about 1400 meters, and the most unconventional road yet on tour. The ride down was about 1 hour of coasting & braking, and at the bottom I fell into the onsen and soaked my tired body before camping again–this time on grass!