Day 10: Akita to Tsuruoka, 81.7 miles

Woke up this morning to find they'd stuck a wind farm in the backgarden. Cheeky buggers.

I had the first day of riding without my jacket and winter gloves on today. It was 12 degrees with a cloudless sky. It took me a long time to get out of Akita Prefecture* which had bad roads and too much traffic. They also haven't finished building the Expressway so Route 7 was very busy. Route 7 is the coast road so I was looking out over the Sea of Japan all day.

My GPS auto routing (bicycle TomTom) decided to take me on a detour through the suburbs of Sakata. It was like stepping back in time 100 years, really narrow winding roads through tiny minature houses. Minuture people too, there's a lot of 4ft tall old ladies about.


*A prefecture is similar to a county but they are named after their political capital; ie- East Sussex would be called Lewes Prefecture.

The architecture is changing. Most of the houses round here have these traditional roofs.

Morrissey-San's home for retired live stock.

There were two things I couldn't escape from today; wind turbines and that mountain in the background.



How I get around. All the signposts are dual language so
navigation is really easy. Today I was on Route 7 to Tsuruoka.




Suburbs of Sakata



Tsuruoka


Jun helped me out and showed me where the hotels were. Lots of people in Tsuruoka speak really good English which is strange as I thought it was the arse end of nowhere. NEC have a plant in Tsuruoka and they are also extending the Expressway here. Maybe it's not such a backwater after all.