Raymond, the Malyasian guy I met last night, left early. I got up and walked to the Hikone Castle area again to check out the garden. The garden area is very nice, and they have a tea house where you can rest and drink tea. Once I was done with that, I walked back to the guest house and started getting ready to take off. A guy appeared and started talking to me, he was from the local NHK station. They wanted to do a little segment on the guest house and Hikone tourism. Usually this area is overlooked by tourists, they say. But there were 4 Germans staying in the guest house besides Raymond and I. One of the Germans was a man in his 50’s. He is doing the whole around the world thing, staying at places all over…hope I can do the same thing when I’m his age.
The NHK guy interviewed me and took some footage of me stretching and riding off. I may be on the local news in Shiga, we’ll see. I waited for the guest house owner to return so I can say farewell to him, he is really cool. After I said good bye to the guest house owner, I headed towards the shores of Lake Biwa to take it all the way north. Sadly, a lot of the shoreline was polluted with garbage like plastic bottles, plastic, Styrofoam, and other crap. I don’t get it, Japanese are supposed to be respectful to nature but littering is a big problem here. I saw what appeared to be a pig carcass as well. I figured it wasn’t going to get any better so I just kept riding without stopping.
My next stop was Nagahama, a little north of Hikone. It has a nice castle and a park that was full of people. The cherry blossoms here were great as well. I ate some food here in the park and took in the scenery. After I ate, I hit the road once again and a little later I got my final glimpse of the huge lake behind me. After leaving the lake area behind, the route took me through some mountains with several tunnels, my worst enemy. One of them had a sign showing an alternate route for pedestrians and bicycles so I pushed my bike up a steep ramp only to see that it didn't lead anywhere. Well, tunnel it is...by this time I've been through close to 100 tunnels and I still can't get used to it.
Once again, the route all the way out of HIkone was littered massively. This is a serious issue that needs to be addressed Japan! Not only that, the trucks and traffic and wind made for a very unpleasant ride. Once I got into Tsuruga, I called several places my dad helped me find and settled for a cheap business hotel near the train station. They had a twin room they gave me for a single rate. After taking a shower and cleaning up, I walked around the area and took in the town. There are statues near the station of characters from the anime Spaceship Yamato as well as Galaxy Express 999. Along the shop arcade they also play country music over the speakers…pretty interesting.
I went to the nearby supermarket and luckily arrived in time to see the bentos being marked half off so I got some food for tomorrow morning. There was a coin laundry place nearby so I went there to do my laundry, I forgot my detergent the first time so I had to ride back to the hotel to get it. While the laundry was going, I headed back to the room to relax and eat. I ate a cup noodle and Vienna sausage type weiner I’ve had for a while in my pack. Then I went to the coin laundry place again to get my stuff. I was too cheap to spend an extra 100 yen for 10 more minutes so I decided to finish drying the rest of the stuff in my room. I hung my wet laundry in front of the heater in my room. I was pretty worn out from the ride so I fell asleep quickly.