Day 8 - This time for sure, Akita!

2/9

So after leaving Gasto, the restaurant, early, I decided to go sightseeing. It was still not 06:00 though. I went to a castle and a temple, both were really nice, but I still didn't know too much about the city. I have researched since and it's a relative famous city. It has the biggest production of apples in Japan and the temple is were the first Shogun, Ieyasu, is enshrine.

Well, after sightseeing and checking updates on Facebook I hurried along because I couldn't wait to get to Akita and see what kind of city it was. On my way I stopped at a store to buy some lunch. A guy came over to me and started asking about my trip. Turned out he was quite happy to meet me and I think he was about to invite me home to his family for lunch, but I was in a hurry so after talking for a good 20 minutes I excused myself and went on my way. I feel bad that I didn't have time to hang out with him, he seemed nice. His family and him are living in Mongolia and he was just back to visit his dad. But time is time and it stops for no one. I wanted to get to Akita before sundown.

But I was a bit tired and took a longer nap than I expected. I did set the alarm, but maybe I didn't hear it or something went wrong with my phone. I did expect there to be many mountains, but it was actually okay. I haven't had a full day's break yet and I think I might have to do that soon, but I wonder if I can find things to do here in Akita. Most of the sightseeing is out in the prefecture, not so much in central city.

So the road to Akita was long it felt like it took forever to get there. After I thought I reached the city it was actually just the outskirts. When I finally came to the station I was really tired and wanted to find the manga cafe I wanted to stay it. It turns out it was hard to find, but I'm here now. I don't think I'll choose this chain again, the staff is nice but it's really bad ventilation and the facilities could be better in general. I don't know, maybe it's just here.

What do I do when I bike? I wanted to listen to a lot of music, but listening to my bike and the cars coming behind me is so import so I actually haven't done it even once. Besides there are no pockets in my bike pants.... And I have a game where I look at the license plates of the cars and see if they are from another prefecture. Most of them are not though. And the game was no fun in Hokkaido at all.

Tomorrow I'll go to the park and maybe a zoo or an aquarium, but who knows really. I'll see what I can come up with. And it's now one week since I started the trip from the most northern part of Japan! It has been 942 km from Cape Soya. Technically I should be in Tokyo soon, but hey, it's not like I'm waiting to go eat all-you-can-eat buffet...

Distance: 180 km
Time: 9 h
11 hours on the road from 7 till 20:00, silly mountains!
Condition: Tired of the people smoking and not having enough room in my booth..
Quote: What goes up comes down eventually.