TOUR DE NIIGATA

I woke up feeling pretty good, knowing that I had a full day of rest ahead of me. However, I didn’t want to waste a free day so I planned to head out into town. At around the same time I got an e-mail from Paul saying he was going to an outdoors shop located on the other side of the river to pick up a patch kit for his bag. I figured that he would be passing right by the guest house since it was next to the river. I went downstairs and sure enough I saw a tall Australian guy walking towards me. I rode towards him and he figured out who I was. We both walked to the outdoors shop and talked about our trips so far. After getting his patch kit, we walked back towards the hotel and I needed to get more money. Paul suggested that I go to the Japanese Post Office…yes they are both post office and bank. The Japanese Post Office acts as the social security office distributing benefits for the elderly and general banking services. By the looks of it, they are highly profitable…they have a lot of cash stored in their vaults I imagine. Now only if the USPS could become profitable.

Sure enough, they were able to exchange dollars to yen so I felt safe again…but this time around I am being very thrifty with my spending habits. Paul and I walked around the arcade area where they have a bunch of little shops and places to eat. We found a ramen shop the guest house owner was telling me about that serves very traditional style ramen. It was pretty good and the inside had a very cozy old school feel inside. Paul paid for my ramen which I was very thankful for. After we ate we cycled down towards the river to find a park he had heard about. The cherry blossoms along the river were in full bloom here so a lot of people were out even though it was a Monday.

Afterwards we found a shrine that was having a small festival of some sort in the park next door. The food looked good but I resisted the temptation to buy the pricey food items. We then headed towards a bike shop where a Kiwi guy works. Paul met him the night before, he was also a touring cyclist/professional bicycle mechanic. The shop had all kinds of high end top quality touring bicycles. The tires on some of them were as fat as ATV tires. The Kiwi guy’s name is Don and he’s been living in Niigata for a decade. We told Don that we had just come from the festival at the shrine. He said we should stay away from those because the food handling is horrible and it’s run by the yakuza. We talked bicycles for a long time, and it started getting cold as the sun went down. Before leaving we took a picture together.

Paul and I left and headed back to the hotel to get jackets. We agreed to go eat dinner so we headed towards the train station where they had all kinds of shops. After browsing around for a while, Paul eyed a place called Oh-sho and headed straight towards it. Oh-sho is a Chinese/Japanese food chain restaurant. I got a dinner set, it was delicious…cabbage and pork stir fry, rice, miso soup, gyoza, and rice. Paul once again paid for dinner, what a genuinely nice guy he is…I hope I can repay the favor later on down the road. We walked around inside the train station area after dinner. We bought some snacks at a super market and then walked into an international grocery shop. The prices were so ridiculous, especially for dried fruits and nuts. I guess we take our dried fruits and nuts mix for granted in California. However, it was full and people were buying all kinds of stuff. They have Mexican, Thai, American, Australian, and Italian groceries. We spotted Canada Dry Ginger Ale in the drinks section so we both got a can.

Afterwards we walked back to the hotel and parted ways. Paul will be heading back down towards Tokyo while I will keep heading up. Paul gave me a lot of tips and advice about traveling and touring Japan…very knowledgeable individual. He's an avid traveler and I enjoyed hearing all of his traveling stories. I hope we meet again somewhere on the road. Once I got back to the guest house, I lounged around for a bit with Tamura-san. He was working hard on some sort of music project he was involved in. Tomorrow, I'm back on the road...getting closer and closer to Hokkaido!