D1 Back to Togattaonsen

Route: Sendai - Akiumachi - Togatta onsen
Bicycle: 64 km
Train: 370 km
Total ascent: 1,131 m
Average speed: 13,6 km/h
Riding time: 4:33 h
Weather: some clouds, some sun, getting colder, 18 C

I noticed a few weeks ago that I am left with too many vacation days, and then I saw that third of November is a local holiday so I decided to take the full week as vacation. As always, I organize several different routes all across Japan: 

• Option 1: Matsue and Tottori on the Japan sea coast
• Option 2: From Onomichi over the Shimanamikaido to Shikoku and onwards to Uchiko
• Option 3: from Sendai through the mountains to Nikko  

I had also have agreed with a ex colleague to cycle together from her vacation house, which is in Nasu Shiobara. So roughly on the option 3 route.  When confirming with her a few days ago, if she was really available, it was confirmed and the weather up here also looked reasonable for the week. That said, tomorrow it seems to be raining.

When I first reserved all the hotels I buy mistake started to reserve from Saturday 31st of October forgetting that that was the NPC Halloween ride. So I had to re-organizing everything and finally started today. I got the Shinkansen at Tokyo station around 10, arriving at Sendai shortly before noon. 

I was in Togatta onsen earlier this year with a friend, in February, to see the snow monsters. But then I was telling her that I wanted to come here again by bicycle. 

Surprisingly, the snow monsters are hard as stone. But somehow the trees beneath it survive every year.

When planning the route for today, I saw on komoot that there was an attraction somewhere vaguely in the right direction in Sendai: Zuihoden. A mausoleum for the local rulers. 

There were three museums for different rulers, which to me all looked pretty similar, and I overheard some Japanese tourists who were also commenting the same. They are in the city, but still in a forest. Yet they were destroyed during the war by fire bombs. And rebuilt in 1985.

Sendai is a surprisingly hilly town. And it took quite long to get out of the town. I’m a little bit wondering if I actually took the best route because I did come back down to a river with a gorge in that river does flow into Sendai.

I didn’t well too long at the gorge because I still had over half of the right in front of me and did not want to arrive too late, because it would be getting cold and potentially dangerous with some deer or other animals crossing the road in dusk. I did get to this nice damn lake, which had the main road crossing over this red bridge while I had a very quiet road on the shores of the lake.

I arrived in my onsen village shortly before 16:30,  got some food at the local conbini and then checked in to the hotel and went to the onsen as quickly as possible to still get a little bit of the few over the river and up into the high mountains.

The plan for tomorrow in principal is to ride up on the Zao Ecoline to Mt. Katta, although the weather forecast now has slight rain during most of the day tomorrow. So maybe with a heavy heart, I will need to stay down in the village and hop from onsen to another. On Tuesday when I need to move onward towards Fukushima, the rain seems to be over. Fingers crossed.