Just a half-day of riding on leaving Seiko’s house, as a little ahead of schedule to meet Rachel’s brother for the upcoming long weekend. Not even fifty kilometres and only four hundred metres of climbing – far more restful than our day off bikepacking yesterday!

Bye to Seiko’s home.

Bit of flora on the covers for a change.

This house must have caught my eye early on as we endured a rat-run for morning commuters.

Birds starting to reappear.

Halfway through the climb to Lake Inawashiro we got back out to the countryside, plenty of harvesting of rice – which was a nice change from the traffic on the secondary highway earlier.

Short detour to find a konbini for lunch and overnight supplies. The 7-Eleven was unusually lacking fresh produce, so we ended up with frozen meals and veges – bound to thaw in the afternoon heat. Around the lake we went, passing a few free campsites – suitable besides being still morning and too early to stop.

Still a wee way to go; very flat though, as why go over when you can go through a hill.

At camp by one o’clock made for a relaxing afternoon in the shade of the campground trees, right on the edge of the lake. After making camp, tea, and a nap it was time for a wander around the quiet village.

Appearing from the cover above.

Kiwifruit!

Bell for the fire station.

Grain store with roof elevated off walls.

Back to camp to see how our now-thawed frozen meals would work out – quite alright. Although a cat found the milk carton in the porch of Rachel’s tent overnight, pierced it and stole our milk!

We appreciated a later start after farewelling our hosts, but were even more pleased to see blue sky and the sun out again after yesterday’s all-day rain. Stopbank trails to start took us out of town and then across a wide valley with a shinkansen viaduct in the distance. Plenty more flood protection work ongoing.

Thirty kilometres of rural riding was pleasant before we hit the suburbs of and then skirted Sendai, a city of a million, as best we could.

Into the suburbs…

From a distance, understandably, we spotted a prominent white statue. Our route down a busy arterial road took us right past it – a giant buddha, one of the largest statues in the world at over a hundred metres tall.

Midday by now, our search for lunch inadvertently took us into a large pachinko. We didn’t find food in here, but interesting and depressing to finally see inside one of the many machine gambling parlours.

Amusingly lunch was in another of the family restaurants of the same chain as we ate in last night. At least we knew the drill with limitless free tea and the menu. Out of the city we were quickly onto small rural roads, climbing slightly.

One road to keep us off a highway was closed to cars in part, but thankfully we got through gates and so forth without having to back track around this lake.

I finally saw a live Japanese racoon dog, tanuki, run across the road – they look quite different to how the popular folklore figure is portrayed on many small statues (think garden gnome sized, but far less disturbing). Saw one on a stormwater cover too.

I was impressed first by this rural house, but then more so by the topiary and the obvious effort involved.

Town signs returned for a bit (not nearly as many in Honshu as Hokkaido) as we found a busier road between Kawazaki and Zao.

Stocking up with fresh veges at a large roadside produce shop, just a short climb to an onsen town and a camp ground where at least there was at least some other people camping – a Japanese family.