The Noto Peninsula (see the Wikipedia entry) is in the same Japanese prefecture as Kanazawa (Ishikawa prefecture) and extends about 70 miles out into the ocean starting perhaps 30 miles north of Kanazawa. In most places, it is less than 10 miles across. It has a reputation for being pretty rural, pretty rugged, and well, just pretty. Tourism is one of the major economic drivers of the area, but as we found the tourism practiced is less like Disneyland and more often of the Route 66 roadside attraction variety. At any rate, from Kanazawa, a trip up one side of the Noto, down the other, and back, is about 230 miles if you don't get too lost too often. We wanted to do the recently-blogged bamboo shoots hunt on the morning of Sunday the 1st, so we'd have about four and a half days to cover that distance, requiring us to cover 40 to 50 miles per day of the trip. Having recently completed some fairly significant bicycle jaunts, we estimated those distances to be challenging but plausible on our mountain bikes. Road bikes would have made for a faster trip, since we traveled mostly on roads, but we weren't going to buy new ones for this trip! We bought a map of the Noto, racks and panniers for our bikes to keep the weight of our camping supplies off our backs, stocked up on junk food, and prepared to ride. I suggest you open this Google Maps of our intended route in a new tab or window to help follow along - it's pretty close to what we ended up doing.
The weather report and what we could see out our windows on Day 1 was not promising, with rain probable for three of the five days. The good thing about getting a lousy weather report in Ishikawa prefecture though, is the fact that they are nearly always completely wrong. (The reverse is also true, but much more sad) The weather report and the sky seemed to be in perfect agreement around departure time though, so we had our rain covers for the gear and rain clothes for ourselves handy. We felt the first warning drops about 30 seconds before pulling out of the parking lot of the apartment.
All geared up
Skies...not so clear
Fortunately, the rain proved light and fickle in the beginning, and we crossed Kanazawa to the highways without really having to face the elements. We were hoping the Noto Toll Road would be open to bicycles (a large percentage of highways in Japan do admit them) but it is not, and we had to use the smaller and less direct highways 8 and 159 as we headed north. The goal for the first afternoon / evening was to reach the environs of Hakui, a city 30 or so miles north of Kanazawa, which we were pretty sure would have restaurants and places to buy Snickers bars. The Noto has enough towns and cities that we weren't carrying food for the whole trip - we'd be eating in restaurants and harvesting supplies from grocery and convenience stores en route.
At the junction of 8 and 159, the weather took a turn for the apocalyptic, and a howling, driving rain swept over us. The wind was perpendicular to our direction of travel, which was better than against us, because I'm pretty sure I couldn't have pedaled against it and made any headway whatsoever. A test demonstrated that simply sitting on the bike and pointing it parallel to the wind was sufficient to be propelled at moderate velocity across flat ground, and lamentations were made to the effect that our direction of travel did not permit this low-effort form of transportation to be used over longer distances. Any exposed flesh was attacked by malignant needles of rocket-driven water - when it began we thought it might be hail from how hard it hit and the stinging sensation it caused. I turned my (hooded & helmeted) head and navigated out of the side of my vision to keep my face clear of the rain. We kept going, albeit slowly, figuring that we were both already wet, in the middle of nowhere, that we had no idea when or if this might stop, and that wussing out in the first three hours of a five day trip would probably cause deep and permanent shame.
Hiding behind a wall to put on rain gear right before things got downright nasty
For all the fury of the storm, it probably lasted less than half an hour before tapering off into less vicious forms of precipitation and finally coming to a halt. We determined that our various rain-proof and moisture-wicking garmentry was actually quite effective, and apart from shoes and socks we were dry again with surprising speed. Our fortitude had carried us to the outskirts of Hakui, and we began to think about dinner, and possibly lodgings. Ana hungered for okonomiyaki, which is not always easy to come by, and I just hungered. We went through most of the town on the main road and didn't find anything in particular that we wanted, and settled on following some signs to a McDonald's, where at least we knew the food would be cheap and greasily satisfying. The signs didn't lead us to a McDonald's (still have no idea how we screwed that up) but to our great satisfaction we pretty much tripped over an okonomiyaki place. We ordered extra large portions and abused our free refills of soda and generally greatly enjoyed feeding ourselves and being in a warm place.
Reaching the outskirts at twilight
Okonomiyaki place we stumbled onto
Okonomiyaki
After the killer rain earlier, we'd considered trying to find a hotel instead of camping (we were on vacation and not necessarily interested in denying ourselves reasonably-priced creature comforts) and asked the restaurant staff about nearby facilities and they went totally overboard trying to help us. One guy walked us to all the nearby hotels in the neighborhood (closed for the evening or full due to Golden Week) and then they all started trying to call other places without much success. We gave it a few minutes and then called off the hunt - morale had risen considerably with dinner and a hotel didn't seem so important any more, so we pedaled down the road looking for an acceptable tent site. We skipped a graveyard, found what appeared to be a fallow, grassy field by the side of the road, and, making liberal use of our headlamps, made camp.
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