Esashi Dirt Biker

There I was all primed for Nirvana, and I couldn't get in because I was a woman. Worse, I hadn't carried a tent, having heard that August in Hokkaido can be very rainy, and figuring, with blind faith, that I could spare myself the extra weight by sleeping cheap and dry in rider houses. Now, as I hung up the phone, I had depressing visions of minshuku and youth hostels sucking up my resources like black holes.

I dialled the next number with sinking spirits, but hit the jackpot with the friendly sounding matron of "Rider House Friend" who said sure I could stay, and gave me some convoluted directions. The price would be 750 ¥, no meals, 400 ¥ for the onsen across the road. (Click on the bold ¥ sign anywhere for the yen to dollars conversion calculator.) Sounded good to me, and started sounding better all the time after a 5am arrival in the western port city of Otaru, and a long, whoppingly expensive train ride from the green rolling hills in central Hokkaido to the windswept flats at the northern tip-top.

By the time we pulled into the end-of-the line station in Wakkanai, the temperature had dropped a few thousand degrees from Otaru's sparkling blue-skied warmth, and the wind was howling viciously. Not keen to actually live out my frostbite fantasy on Day One, I decided to heave my shoulder-crushing mountain bike bag into a taxi. Following my telephone instructions, the driver passed right through the dreary quasi-urban squalor of Wakkanai and onto a coastal road to the next town, Noshappu Misaki. I began to realize Harrell had misprinted the location of "Rider House Friend," and wondered what else he had misprinted.

Noshappu Misaki spread along the highway in low-lying clumps of gray, distinctly un-charming concrete and corrugated tin. The taxi made a final turn up a dead-end gravel road and arrived at another anonymous row of low buildings, one of which, sure enough, was "Rider House Friend." Even if I wasn't pushing, exhausted, through snow drifts, I felt like I'd found the Holy Grail as I struggled, in a raw coastal wind, to separate my bike from the trunk of the taxi. Bright yellow light from the glass walls of the entrance-cum-laundry room reached out through the falling darkness, and as I stepped in an aproned Japanese woman appeared through the family entrance to give me a glass of milk and collect my money.

While I was finishing the milk and stowing my gear in the shelves under the laundry room sinks, more "riders" arrived, a couple of shy, wind-whipped Japanese fellahs in full motorcycle regalia, looking like extras in a Mad Max movie, in clumpy, dust-covered boots, leather biking pants and jackets thick with pads, zippers, snaps, and patches. After they drank their milk and trundled in huge armfuls of gear off their bikes, we all signed in to a ledger book, and the aproned woman showed us the 6 tatami room next to the laundry, where all the guys would sleep, on the floor, or in the loft, which cut the room in half over three of the tatami. I was preparing to stake out some floor space when the lady told me to drop my day-pack in there and "rest" for a while. Apparently I would be sleeping elsewhere, but wouldn't go there, wherever "there" was, until bedtime.