Tuesday 2^nd May 2017

Tsuruoka to Towadako (376 kms)

The hotel last night had the most beautiful garden surrounding a large pond with the usual fat carp swimming around.

During most of today we had views of snow capped mountains.

The plan today was to drive up Mt Chokai (about 1,100 mts) which sits on the border of Akita and Yamagata Prefectures. It didn’t disappoint, hardened snow banked to about 6mts on both sides of the road with great views out to the coast and the towns along it. At a couple of places a large number of local cars were parked- people were skiing down the side of the mountain towards the road.

The first Regularity was various speeds between 30 kph and 50kph. Despite missing a left hair pin bend by 100mts (on a busy road with local traffic) we reversed and made it to the control without too much loss of seconds.

The test was at Aomori Circuit to do four laps and exit on the fifth lap. We had one of the better times.

Lunch was overlooking Lake Tazawako, the deepest lake in Japan at 423 mts. Houses with blue tiles roofs were also evident here.

The last Regularity was about 9kms with lots of navigation and varying speeds. There was a very tight left hair pin bend and despite taking it wide, we had to reverse to get around. Under pressure we then made the mistake of turning left over the small bridge instead of right. Quickly realised we should have turned right, we reversed to find the control was just around the right hand corner. Despite these blips, our timing wasn’t too bad.

Hotel for the night was overlooking Lake Towada, the largest caldera lake on Honshu. Set on its own in large grounds, many of us sat in the sun talking over the day with a cool drink, watching the sun go down over the lake.