During our lunch break today, on our ride from Suzu to
Wakura Onsen on the Noto peninsula, a newspaper reporter was struck by seeing
two non-Asians on bikes. He spoke enough English (a rarity here) to ask about
our trip, and when he heard what we're doing he interviewed us for a story in
the local newspaper. That will be our second appearance in Japanese media. A
couple of days ago, we stopped at a bike store for minor repairs and our story
interested the owners to the extent that they took our picture in front of
their shop and put it on their website (http://umeda1912.net/umeda1912_news/cat10/).
Part of their interest in a bike
trip by Westerners likely relates to the extremely homogeneous nature of
Japan, whose population is 98.5% ethnic Japanese. We've seen only a very small
number of non-Asians in the big cities and absolutely none elsewhere.
Wakura Onsen is a major onsen (hot springs spa) tourist destination.
It has several large lodging sites, including ryokan Kagaya, a 20-floor hotel that
can hold approximately 1,300 guests. It has existed as a resort for 1,200 years,
ever since a priest traveling in this area noticed an injured crane bathing its
wing in the warm water.
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| Newspaper interview |
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| On the web |
Scenes from today's ride:
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| Some of the many fishing boats we saw today |
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| Steam rising from the ground in Wakura Onsen. A couple of large resort hotels with hot springs are seen in the background. |
