mandag den 23. juli 2007

Tuesday Oct. 31 - Getting a Hino emblem




Tuesday Oct. 31

Up too late, see the sex-fixated temple, do some free internet transmissions and leave this one-horse town at noon. ‘One-bull town’ might have been more appropriate, because the tourist office informs me that they have some Pamplona-like bull stuff going on several times a year, and that I missed it by two days. Nevertheless, the company in Yufuin and Beppu I wouldn’t have missed for anything.

I ride inland following some rivers, all in all some 129 kilometers with practically no cars, all of which would have been like, totally marvelous, had the bar not been raised so high over the last few weeks. Now it is just a very, very good road, but at least I get myself a Hino emblem from an old bus parked somewhere along the way. The houses on Shikoku seem to be back to the standard of those on Honshu, though I still see a number of car junkyards. Which of course I find fascinating. I also note the occasional man walking in the opposite direction, wearing white clothes and a cone-type bamboo hat and a pilgrim’s staff.

As darkness approaches, my tired body tells me to pick the first hotel I see, so for a couple of thousand yen over the planned price I end up in a place with surprisingly good food (is tuna still politically incorrect?) and one of the hot baths. After half an hour in the latter, I’ll tell the Finns that they can keep their saunas and their birch branches and their rolling around in snow. This is the real thing, completely devoid of the sauna’s masochistic element of hardly being able to breathe, every time some idiot pours more water on the hot rocks.

1 kommentar:

Friscobiker sagde ...

The guy in the bus is funny. Another tricked picture.