Written by Dave

Ohama to Abu Camping ground – Fox Shrine Day – (67k, 800M)

Today was all about seeing the Motonosumi Inari Shrine. I had it circled from way back in our planning days in Oregon. We were up early but more because we were in bed last night at 7PM than being super keen this morning. We went to bed early as it was dark and getting cold, not because we were tired. Then this morning, well, there are only so many hours one can lay in bed in a tent, right.

We made brekkie in the camp kitchen. I’ve included a photo of the kitchen here because they are almost identical in every camping ground; sinks and BBQs arranged with two aisles. I think our tent would fit in the widest aisle if it were really raining. We’ve yet to see anyone using the kitchens other than ourselves.

There are no chairs in the kitchen so we took our brekkie over to the surf shop and sat on their porch (as we did for dinner last night). It was more exciting this morning when about half way through brekkie, Officer Kato (the name I’m giving him) of the Ohama police force showed up to see what we were doing. He was kind of like the Japanese version of PC Perhale from the TV show Doc Martin. It sort of seemed like he was trying to catch us out but Nancy had all the right answers and had in fact called the surf shop a few days back to make sure that we were not breaking any rules. Officer Kato gook some photos, walked a lap of the camp and moved on. We finished our brekkie and think we have managed to stay off Interpol’s most wanted list, for now.

Our tent was wet but we got it mostly dried out and were on our way to the Fox Shrine (Motonosumi Inari ) before Officer Kato could have second thoughts and return. Traffic was zero – even with the stop at what seemed like a pretty touristy shrine, the first car of the day only passed us around the two hour mark. Komoot put us on some mossy goat track back roads today but mostly they also seemed to be pretty direct, if not occasionally hilly.

As for the shrine, it was just as the photos online, 123 red gates spilling down the hill towards the sea. The top gate was built in 1955 not long after someone had a vision about a white fox. The white fox is considered a god in Shintoism (or messenger to the gods, or something like that).  The 123 gates were added starting in 1987, some of them being moved from a different shrine. There is a high likelihood that I’ve missed the subtlety of the story here but we liked the views. Later we read that on weekends there can be an hour’s long wait just to enter the car park. We had it mostly to ourselves other than the work crew at the bottom (putting in a new landing) and the tour bus that arrived as we were leaving – lucky us.

Aside from the shrine and nice roads, the other highlight of the day was riding along the Sea of Japan for a good part of the ride. We had some really nice views starting right at camp and continuing throughout the day. We had lunch at michi-no-eki, $8 USD for two tempera prawn udon – high value for money. We had a couple route options after lunch but trusted Komoot and ended up having yet more nice riding along the sea. There was some traffic but the good folks of Japan’s highway department put up a separate bike sidewalk for the entire last 9k to our camp at yet another michi-no-eki – Abu Camping Ground.

For dinner we were planning on the station restaurant and had even check multiple sources to learn that they closed at 8:30.When went over for an early table at 5PM, we were informed that they were closed for the night. What a bummer. Oh well, the fish and chips shop was open and they did a pretty fancy meal which we enjoyed while watching the sun set over the Sea of Japan. It was well less than half the price of the restaurant and the views were just as nice, if not better.

It might rain overnight but we’ve got a dry spot scoped out for the morning if we need to get under cover for brekkie. If it rains tomorrow, we have a short day planned and a hotel tomorrow night so worst case we’ll be able to get dried out and not have two nights in a row in a wet tent.