Thriving Thursday

This Thursday, both students and teachers were absent from school. It appears to be rare that there isn’t anyone at school, even on the weekends. Both teachers and students stay late after classes for club activities or preparing for the next day. Some teachers have stayed until 2 oclock AM doing who knows what. What’s even more insane is that they don’t get reimbursed for staying extra hours; a wonderful contrast to life in the west. For this wonderful gift of a day, one of the English/Japanese teachers I work with, Tominaga Sensei, and the official school yearbook photographer, Seiya San, met up in Shikaoi town, around 16km from my town, to take a nice 70km bike ride around the Tokachi Plain. Its great to finally meet some people in Japan who are into cycling. Although bicycles are one of the main means of transportation in Japan during the seasons that aren’t winter, long distance cycling doesn’t appear to be as popular as you might think. Oh well… more room for me! The roads in Hokkaido are some of the best that I’ve seen. I suppose it doesn’t take much to impress me, considering the state of the roads back in Winnipeg. The Hokkaido government receives a large amount of cash for keeping the roads here in good order. Most of the roads appear to be only a couple of years old if not much newer. Out in the country here, you would expect the back roads to be gravel, yet everything is paved, which really makes exploring this island a lot easier. I suppose the one drawback is the copious amounts of construction that takes place on the main roads. Before I continue with this Thursday cycling extravaganza, let me tell you a little bit about construction in Japan. It has to be a cutest thing ever (for the record, I only reserve the word cute for anything Japan). Rather than having regular roadblocks used to redirect traffic, they have smiling green frogs holding up the word “Sorry” (in English) with every 50th frog winking as you pass by. Some of the tractors are pink and purple, and to match, the construction workers are fitted with lavender hardhats. How could you possibly get frustrated or annoyed with that?! What I really love is that there is always someone at the end of the road who will bow to let you know that you’ve passed through the end of the construction zone of cutesy confusion.
So back to our Thursday morning of cycling bliss. The three of us ended up taking around 3 hours to cycle the 70km ride, taking fairly regular brakes. Although cycling the country roads of Hokkaido is a great way to get away from many of the luxuries that most big cities in Japan are known for, frequent rest stops with heated toilet seats and bade are some of the comforts that seem to be difficult for Japanese people to give up. We made a quick stop at a soft ice-cream place in Shihoro town, where I was able to purchase green tea ice-cream and cookies-and-cream in the same cone. Not a bad combination, I suppose. For the rest of the way, all 3 of us were going at a pretty decent rate, until a pack of wild dogs started chasing us, where our speed readily increased, and I nearly wiped out in a ditch, trying to defend my legs from getting chewed off. Ahhh Hokkaido, what a beautiful place.