When we woke up this morning, the sky was grey and overcast but it wasn't raining.  We were starting doubt our decision to spend and extra day in the hotel when the heavens opened and remained that way for most of the day.  Decision justified!  In the end it was all good.  We put in more than twelve hours of work, ticking some major items off our to-do list. 

We also came to a decision on how to tackle the last eight weeks of this trip and to put us in the best position to make it to Cape Sata.  We still have a long way to go and with the weather playing havoc with our progress, in conjunction with bad navigation and diversions, we have decided to cheat a bit and catch a ferry for part of the way. 

So tomorrow we start off for Niigata, about four days away (there just happens to be four days of good weather forecast) from where we will take an overnight ferry to Tsuruga which is just north of Kyoto.  This will claw back about a week of cycling and catapult us through a large section of Hoinshu, the busy island.

With this advantage, we hope to get as far south as we can before having to take a ferry back to Osaka to catch our flight back to South Africa at the beginning of November.  Hold thumbs!