Tottori: Blame it on the Rain

When we biked across Missouri (more on this later), we kicked it in a primarily old-school fashion: though we carry iPod touches with us in case of an Angry Birds-related emergency, they were largely unneeded on the Katy Trail, which is exceedingly difficult to get lost on.

Missouri's Katy Trail, a.k.a. "Ol' No-Turns."

Likewise, our trip down the California coast (more on this, too) was relatively straightforward.  We did bring a couple of paper maps put out by Adventure Cycling, and these came in very handy: with a single glance at the elevation profile, we could be fully prepared for the climbs ahead by despairing for days in advance.

Not so with Japan.  The route we'd planned to take us to our WWOOF host's and then to a ferry port takes us through five prefectures and two major regions of Japan.  Short of carrying an atlas with us, there was no map that would show us the way, and certainly none that would point out the 7-11s and city parks.  So, iPods.

Between the Google Maps app and an array of online weather reports, we did it like true Millenials and used technology to keep ourselves informed on the road.  Each conbini we would pass on the road -- in the cities, they are thick on the ground, with three Family Marts within sight of each other, but in the hinterlands of Tottori they are precious indeed -- was an exercise in information-gathering.  We crouch on the concrete in front of the glass showing the porn mags, surreptitiously charging our electronics while we slurp down canned coffee and eat hard-boiled egg after hard-boiled egg, and we research.  How far until the next campsite, how likely is it we would have a mountain pass today, where's the nearest supermarket, what are the chances of rain?  Once we finish with our research, we pack up once more and hit the road, unless of course someone has written something somewhere on the internet, in which case we have another coffee.

There is no accurate way to measure how many hours we've spent right here or at one of a hundred identical conbinis, so I'll just conservatively estimate "a buhdillion."

After resting for a day in Tottori, a city known for its pears and its sand, we edged along the coast of the Sea of Japan (or as we would begin to refer to it after reaching Korea, "the Sea of Korea"), happy to be finished with mountains for awhile.  On the second day on the road, while stopping at a Lawson for our usual breakfast of yogurt, dried fruit, eggs, and coffee, we noticed that Yahoo weather predicted a 60% chance of rain for the following day.  The Japan Meteorological Association, usually a considerably more optimistic source, pegged it at 100%, but rated the accuracy of that prediction only a "B," meaning it had a 75% chance of being correct.  Both of these predicted the rain only growing heavier from the afternoon.  Weather.com predicted no rain at all.

Not to get too Andy Rooneyish (-esque?), but I've always found weather reports to be completely mystifying.  If a 50% chance of rain is predicted, then surely the meteorologists are right in either outcome, right?  I tend to assume that a 60% chance of rain means that it is certainly, 100% raining somewhere, just not necessarily where I'm standing at any particular time.

We woke up in the city park where we had camped at 5, and had everything packed by 7:30.  We were determined to make it to shelter before the rain started, or at least make it to another conbini in time for second breakfast.  The sky had grown gray and threatening by midday, but Providence led us to yet another Lawson for another cup of coffee and another bout of Interneting.  We had scarcely made it under the awning when the sky began to fall.  "Adequate rain gear" not having been on our packing list, we've been making do by wrapping ponchos around our loads and hoping for the best, a technique that works fine in light rain and gets our bodies and our stuff completely drenched in heavy rain.  This was heavy, too.

Another check of the weather reports.  Yahoo was pretty sure that it wasn't raining at the moment, but that it was due to pick up and fall through the afternoon.  The JMA concurred, as did Weather.com, a unique convergence of three darts on three separate dartboards.  Google Maps indicated a campground just a kilometer ahead of us, and considering the odds that the rain would keep up for the rest of the day and night, it seemed prudent to push through the rain and set up camp as quickly as possible.  Dripping wet, our glasses fogged and streaked, we arrived at the empty campsite and began hanging all of our possessions to dry under the shelter.  A shame that we couldn't make much progress on this day, we said, but at least we made it to cover before the rain got much heavier.




Before we could even break out our knitting, the rain had stopped.  "I'm sure it'll pick up again any minute," I said, keeping a smile of relief clamped on.  "It sure is a good thing we made it here, though it's a shame we missed this brief break in the rain!"

Needless to say, the rain had finished.  By 2 p.m., the sun had come out, leaving us to sit in our pajamas and mournfully watch our clothes and sleeping bags dry on the clothesline.  If we had waited at the Lawson for another cup of coffee, we would have missed the rain entirely, and could be halfway to Shimane already.

お台場公園キャンプ場, just across from the Daiei Road Station.  The first and only time we've been approached for a fee in an abandoned campsite, and at 1000 yen, completely reasonable.

The mysterious poor posture of the trees of the Tottori coast.

We learned what we had already known, the hard lesson we had learned a dozen times over: don't trust information you get from the Internet.