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WIDE OPEN PLAINS TO TSUKIGATA

Today I am heading to the halfway point from Otaru to Asahikawa, a town called Tsukigata…I found an onsen hotel there which I’ve fallen in love with. Price is reasonable at 4000yen also. I’ve figured out that now is also the time to start planning for my exit so I was refreshing myself with things that need to be done. In Asahikawa I need to exchange my rail pass order. Then I need to find a place in Wakkanai to stay during my few days there getting stuff packed up. Finally, the train from Wakkanai is a slow one so I’ll probably have to overnight it in Sapporo and then hop onto the 2nd leg ride back down to Tokyo. This is going to happen during Golden Week so it may be a bit tough finding a place to stay…maybe I can just bum it inside a McDonalds or some 24 hour place. I’ll have to figure these things out soon.

I said my farewell to Motoko-san, the nice lady at the guest house and she gave me some guest house referrals for the road ahead. She told me to come visit during the winter, they have a nice ski resort up the hill. Another great person I'd like to see again. I headed into town and stopped at a trendy looking cafe for breakfast and coffee. I ordered a BLT, tiny little thing I devoured with some fries on the side. I also got a fancy soft serve ice cream. After leaving the hilly coastline of Otaru, the road was relatively flat and boring all the way inland…not much to see, reminds me of Central California…just flat farm fields. Here the fields were already thawed and farmers were getting to work. The highway I took was pretty remote, there were cars on the road but not many towns along the way. There weren’t even any places to eat by the time I got hungry so I sucked it up and kept riding. I didn’t eat until 3pm or so at a conbini that finally appeared at a junction.

After some more flat riding I finally reached my destination. It was a small town, one conveniece store and two or three restaurants that may or may not be open. The hotel seemed to be the big thing in town, but there weren't too many people there either. I checked in and hit the onsen to wash up. The onsen facility is really nice, and a lot of people were stopping by just to go to the onsen. After going to the onsen, I decided to get some dinner but the town looked dead...a lot of these rural areas close up shop really early. I went back to the hotel and ordered an overpriced katsu curry.

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