Written by Dave

Forecast for today in Obama Japan: Drenching rain at times.

Knowing this and knowing we had a few weather days built into our schedule, we decided to use one today. It rained overnight and there were some dark clouds and heavy rain in the morning. As the day progressed we mostly had very dark clouds but not much rain here on the coast. Who knows what it was like in the mountains where we were planning on riding through. I think we made the right call on a rest day. As a bonus to us not slogging it out in the rain (haha), we got to be tourists for the day here in Obama.

Our first stop this morning was to the Obama Shrine. The shrine was built sometime around 1639. It’s small but in pretty good nick. We had less than a minute walk to reach it from our hotel and in fact, can see it well from our window – too bad about the wires and visual rubbish clogging up the view. Anyway, the shrine was nice looking, though I’m still working on how to capture a good image of one. The best I could do today was a photo of the shrine staff’s hand-made brooms – while the brooms are visually interesting, it’s probably not what the shrine is about.

One of the “must try” items of Obama is the yu senpei, a thin round cracker made using flour, eggs, sugar and local hot spring water. They are said to be good for your body because of the spring water. They taste sort of like a vanilla wafer but they are crisper and thinner.  As for their medicinal value, I’m not sure but I certainly didn’t feel any worse after eating one, so that’s something I guess.

As luck would have it, we wandering around the shrine and came across a nice looking coffee shop, Coffee Stand Canaan, which looked like it was just about to open.  We lurked around the area with intent, watching several other people start to gather and then the door opened and the sign came out.  We managed to get some very delicious coffee and sat drinking in the window seats looking at maps.  The coffee hit the spot, as there was no coffee available at breakfast this morning. Hmmm…   If we were to come here again Nancy says we’d have to time it to get a room at the Orange Private Hotel and Spa.  It did look very nice from the outside (nice and new), but it was very hard to find any days it had rooms available when we played around on their website. Our hotel was build in the 1930’s and has some oddities.

After our delicious coffee we hit the famous Obama outdoor foot bath. It is 105 feet long, the longest in Japan. It has a water temp of 105 degrees F and sits right on the waterfront for views of the sea (and sunset if you get the timing right). We had a soak but didn’t linger as it was cool outside still and you are only allowed to put your feet in. It is free and open to anyone, tourists and locals. Like the bikkies above, foot baths are supposed to have medicinal properties – extracting toxins in this case. I can’t really tell you if this work but maybe we needed a longer soak – further study is required…

Right next to the foot bath there is a place where you can rent a basket, bring your own food and steam it in a small steam chamber – using natural hot springs steam. Get your food at the discount shops, cook for nearly free and soak your feet for free – all in all, a cheap holiday adventure.

Getting towards lunch we next asked the ladies at the Orange gift shop for a recommendation. They gave us a couple ideas, including our dinner restaurant last night and a hotel across the street. We opted for the later and had a serviceable tempura udon. The tempura was served separate from the udon (normally it is soaking in the udon) making it easier to get crispy tempura – a nice touch. Normally eating tempura udon you have to get the timing just right so that your tempura prawn is not too hot to burn your mouth and not so cool that the tempura batter is soggy. There’s a lot less pressure eating this dish if they separate the tempura and the Udon.

After lunch we made it back to the Orange gift shop and adjacent Orange Gelato shop. We missed the gelato last night because they closed early. Today we didn’t make the same mistake. They had some normal flavors, chocolate, lemon, orange, sea salt and blueberry but also some more unique ones, black sesame, green tea, roasted green tea, tomato (yes, you read that correct), pumpkin and sweet potato. We opted for a mix getting blueberry, black sesame and sea salt. All three were great and clearly had low amounts of added sugar.

We returned back to the hotel and began looking more at the route ahead. Naturally, I procrastinated on this task and with some effort, drug Nancy down to my level. We agreed to go to the spa before too much more planning. Still, I think a relaxing spa is an excellent contribution to the planning process as well. Right, Nanc?

Tomorrow we have a longish day with about 80k to ride in total. After about 25k up and over Mt Unzen, we catch another ferry back to the other side of Kyushu. Much of the first 25k will be ridden through Unzen National Park. Unzen is one of Japan’s oldest national parks, created in 1934 to encompass the mountainous interior of the Shimabara Peninsula. There is a temple on Mt Unzen that dates from 701, so there were clearly people here who recognized the special nature of the area before the government got on board to protect it. We’ve mapped another possible goat track ride over Mt Unzen – hopefully we’ll get some nice quiet roads, then of course a smooth sail, 9^th ferry crossing of the trip.

After a kind of unremarkable hotel brekkie this morning (with no coffee!), we are skipping out on it tomorrow morning. We want to get an early start on the climb. This afternoon, the sky is clearing and it’s looking like another blue-ribbon day tomorrow. I’m super excited about the climb, especially since my legs are fresh after that afternoon spa, err, make that planning session – haha.