Rolled out to Honshu. A wrap-up post and the beginning of something new

4:30 AM. The Sun Gou Hayabusa ferry at the second pier is already ready to depart. I rode my bicycle into the huge hold, where truck trailers stood along the edge so they wouldn't get in the way. A worker in a hard hat tied up my bike, and I went up to the upper deck. Dawn hadn't started yet. A full moon hung low over the port. I decided to get some sleep. On the deck there are two cabins with long leather cushions along the edges. Soon people were lying stacked in them. A sailor in a white hard hat came in and announced to the sleeping bodies:

— Excuse me, we're departing.

Yesterday evening Hajime and I rode up Mount Hakodate, which offers a view of both harbors of the peninsula. Hajime is from Shikoku. He's studying biology at one of Hakodate's two universities, his girlfriend studies at the second one — the university of education. I remembered in the morning that we didn't take a photo together. — It's a bit messy here. — Hajime kicked some socks off the table in the living room. — No big deal, typical student apartment.

So ended the first stage of my journey. Behind me lay the island of Hokkaido, with its large burdock plants, deer, "beware of bears" signs and grandmothers. Packing my bags to board the ferry, I opened my wallet and found several business cards in there. Here are some of them.

Tumara Yuu. This person somehow got lost in the hustle and bustle and isn't described anywhere in the blog. I met him back in Shinagawa, a day before climbing Fuji. In a store where I was looking for a map, the salesperson didn't know the English word "map", and while I was gesturing to him what a map was, Yuu approached and offered to help. He translated my request to the salesperson and went to look at comics. Then he came back to the shelf where I was choosing a map. — You managing? — Yeah, sort of. There's no suitable map here. He searched with me, and then invited me to his place, saying he might have a map at home. In any other country in the world, I probably would have declined, but here I got curious. Yuu lived a two-minute walk from the store. The entrance to his apartment, like all Japanese ones, starts with a step where you need to take off your shoes. So half the apartment is 10-30 centimeters higher than the entrance level. This way, no dirt gets brought into the apartment. Why this genius invention still doesn't exist everywhere in the world, I don't know. Yuu, demonstrating hospitality, very quickly, stumbling, took off his shoes, moved a bag out of the way, almost fell climbing from the entrance into the apartment, and invited me in. We immediately went up to the second floor, where his workshop is located — Yuu turned out to be a glassblower. He makes lampshades and sells them at an arts fair in Tokyo. Unfortunately, I haven't found his photo and a photo of the workshop yet, but I hope I'll find them and then attach them to the post.

— you could consider this the first cycling encounter in Japan. She's the first one who saw me pedaling. Where she is now, I don't know. Probably her bike trip is already over and she's in Osaka. Her blog has lots of interesting drawings and things she made.

. I still correspond with this cheerful and slightly strange guy on Facebook. He even intended to visit me in Sapporo once, but ended up being delayed with a client or went to karaoke — anything's possible. Big thanks to him for the internet. Actually, few Japanese would just take and register a contract and internet device in their name like that.

• the girl from the karaoke bar, with a pretty face and hand marks on her chest. Never learned to write her name in English.

• city engineer. Of that very city I'll move to someday. He recently wrote me an email, wished me a pleasant journey. By the way, you can rent an apartment in Sapporo for $300 to $500. We're talking about a small studio in the center or a two-story house on the outskirts.

These are only the people I exchanged business cards with, besides them there were many more interesting encounters. For some reason Hokkaido, because of its nature similar to Sakhalin and some memories from the wilderness, reminds me of this woman I met twenty kilometers from Hakodate. She's holding a bunch of carrots just pulled from the garden, and behind her back, for some reason, she's hiding cabbage. I turned around on my bike on the road, breaking all the rules, to photograph her.

Hokkaido was completed in 18 days. I'm managing to stick to the daily budget of $20, more often I spend less than that, a couple days when I was treated everywhere I didn't spend a yen, but only a couple times I spent more.

I woke up and went out on deck. From all sides the shores of Aomori's deep harbor were already visible. But neither the wind and sea surface, nor the view of the shores and foaming trail behind the stern made me frolic around the deck like a little dog — it was the green-painted deck, rust on the locks and smell of oil from the engine room. This feeling of childhood, the smell of father's work clothes.

The ferry docked, and I rolled out onto the island of Honshu, in the city of Aomori. Without a plan or route, I just rode along the roads. Maybe I'll make it to Lake Towada today.