Hyogo 2: Move Along

It had only been five days on the road, but we were beginning to get worn down.  We'd gone a wildly unimpressive number of kilometers so far, having met difficulties in the forms of hills, mountains, slopes, climbs, and rain.  Typically, after three days of biking, no matter how short the distance covered, our bodies start to complain more loudly than usual.  After four, important organs start shutting down.  After five, our morale dropped to zombie-like levels.  It was time for a rest.

This stuff will wear you out.

The day before had been particularly hard on us.  The nearest park was still many kilometers ahead over uncertain terrain, and the sun was starting to set.  The rain clouds started to gather above the sleepy town of Tamba, which lessened our resolve even further.  Surely we couldn't pay for a hotel room just four short days into our trip?  How would we afford to continue our travels until a job came through for us in August or September?  Gritting our teeth and trying to ignore the raindrops that fogged up our glasses, we made it to a conbini at the edge of town, a Lawson that offers the blessed tonic that is Free WiFi.  In my e-mail inbox, we discovered an urgent missive from one of the many stinging jellyfish job recruiters (I always get those confused somehow) that we'd gotten to help in our job hunt in Korea.  The e-mail explained that we'd landed a Skype interview with a prestigious academy in Seoul, but the only time it could be conducted was the following morning at 10 a.m..  Which meant that we had three options: we could ask to reschedule the interview for a later date, we could free camp nearby and conduct our interview in a conbini parking lot over a questionable internet connection...or we could pass a restful evening in a local hotel room and be showered and dressed for our interview.  The course seemed clear.  We fired off an enthusiastic confirmation to the jellyfish, then happily turned around and pedaled back into town in search of a hotel.  The Travel Gods seemed to be giving us the go-ahead, paving the way back to downtown Tamba with rainbows.

We paid the shockingly high hotel bill (about $130), then tried to console ourselves by catching up on our Game of Thrones and beer drinking.  The next morning, we were showered, polished, caffeinated, and prepped for our interview.

The shower was probably a good idea.

The recruiter sent us a confirmation early in the morning, and when 10:00 rolled around, we were signed into Skype and ready to kiss some ass.  By 10:30, we had started to grow restless, especially since we were already half an hour late for the hotel's check-out time.  We e-mailed our jellyfish and the school, explaining that we were ready to begin whenever they were.  More coffee cups were filled and emptied.  By 10:45, there was still no answer from anybody.  A few more desperate messages explaining the need for haste.

Harry started to get this expression again.

At 11:10, we could wait no longer, and frantically tore off our work clothes, packed our bags, and fled before we could be charged more money by the hotel.  We cursed the unprofessionalism of all parties involved and wondered how we could have so misinterpreted the universe's premonitions.  By the time we got back to the same fateful Lawson where all this had started, we had received an e-mail from the jellyfish.  He explained that he had set up our interview time without actually getting word from the school that the time he proposed would work for them in any way; he apologized, and asked if we could be ready the next morning at the same time.

This was the spirit that we carried with us as we pushed through the mountains of Hyogo.  Unrested, uneasy (but not unwashed, for a change), we made our way to an athletic park for a long lunch and a nap.

Thoroughly discouraged at how the day had gone, we decided to camp at a campground that Google promised us was just a few kilometers further, a place called 丹波少年自然の家.  We found the place with no problems, and we were ready for a good rest there.  It was a forest that had been converted into a campground and family recreation area, the kind of place where a school might take its students on an overnight trip.  There were rivers, fire pits, cabins, and extremely well-maintained kitchen areas and toilets.  Best of all, it was completely devoid of other customers.  Perhaps we could take a rest day here on the following day, even!

I made a good faith effort to register us at the camp office, but found all of the buildings suspiciously dark.  There did seem to be one office that was in business, with office ladies typing away at something, but considering how closed-looking everything was, I figured it would be best to make as little noise as possible, figuring that it was better to ask forgiveness than permission.  As I hiked back to the tent sites where Jenn was watching our bikes, I watched in horror as a gang of ducks pursued and apparently raped a female duck that was waddling away from them as quick as she could, quacking in terror.  Ominous portents, to be sure, but I tried to pay them no mind.

By the time we had gotten our bags off of the bikes, a light truck pulled up and two Japanese men with clipboards approached us.  We smiled and greeted them even as our stomachs sank.

"Why didn't you come to the office and register?" one of the men asked.

Against my better judgment, my temper flared.  "I did, but nobody was there," I half-lied.

"Not the office right here, the one by the river."

"I did go there, but I didn't see anybody."  My mind flew back to the previous day, when a hotel clerk had fallen all over himself explaining how his hotel really wasn't suitable for us, that the other hotel in town was much better and we'd be much happier there.  I thought of all of the officials who'd just made the "no" sign rather than try speaking to me.  I got my gaijin up, in short.

"You can't camp here," one of them explained.

"What, really?"

"Yes.  We're closed, you can't camp here."

"Why was the gate open?  Why isn't it posted anywhere that you're not open?" I protested.  Jenn urged me to leave it alone, but I persisted, pigheadedly.  "There's all of this space, why can't we just set up here?  We'd pay, of course."

They both shook their heads.  I huffed and puffed, then petulantly asked if they knew of any other campgrounds in the area where our money would be more welcome.  They both pretended to think just long enough for us to give up and start packing up again.

Anger fueled us for another fifteen kilometers.  We railed against the stupidity of spending a fortune converting perfectly good forest into a campground, paying a staff of dozens to maintain it and keep the electricity running, then keeping away paying customers.  We could come up with few explanations other than out-and-out racism, figuring that a young Japanese couple would probably not be turned away so roughly (but then, a young Japanese couple probably wouldn't try it in the first place, nor would they act so belligerent when confronted).  Clearly it was a mistake to try to camp at an officially-sanctioned site in Japan; it was much better to break the law and camp in a city park.  Even if a campsite would lose money by turning us away, a much greater infraction would be asking one of the staff to overlook the rules by allowing us to stay.

We did find another park to camp, one much farther up the road.  It, too, was clearly closed for business, but it seemed much more abandoned than the last, the weeds grown over its benches and gazebos.  We set up in a gravel lot as the sun went down, hoping that the glowing eyes we saw in the woods were not bears but tanooki, and well-fed ones at that.