May 21st

We had some major thunderstorms during the night so when sunrise came at 4:30 this morning I wasn't very inclined to get of bed thinking that it would be overcast or raining. But then I thought, I'm in a hotel in Japan with a view of Mt.Fuji, I will regret it if I don't. So I stuck my head out the door and wouldn't you know it, beautiful blue skies and Mt. Fuji was looking splendid with a fresh dusting of snow! Gorgeous but bittersweet seeing as we were leaving.
Today was all about trains. The goal was to get from Lake Kawaguchi to Onomichi. It's roughly 700 kms however due to the train limitations, we had to do some back tracking which made it closer to 800 kms. 6 trains, and 8 hours later we arrived at our destination.
The first train wasn't covered by our JR Rail pass so we bought a ticket ($12) and headed to Otsuki. This was a slow commuter train filled with kids heading to school and lots of views of Mt. Fuji and little Japanese villages along the way. Once in Otsuki we found the ticket office and these two very nice agents sorted out tickets and the best route to take. I was about to say that we have given up trying to navigate the stations on our own and simply ask for directions but thinking back on the day, out of the 5 transfers we only had to ask for directions at two of them. Okay so the others may have been smaller stations but still I think it's impressive that we figured it out. We had a long enough layover at one station to enjoy a great buffet lunch that let us sample from a multitude of Japanese dishes. The english name of the restaurant was "Dishes made with nutritional ingredients".
Once in Onomichi the first "to do" was to find a bank machine. I had looked it up on line and found that an alternative to the 7-11 was the post office ATM and fortunately there was one right close to the train station. It was the most ancient looking ATM that I have ever seen but it worked!
Next stop was the hotel. Our rooms keep getting smaller!
Next was to check-in with the bike store. When we were booking the bikes it was clear that you can't pick them up the day before unless you want to pay a full days rental fee (or if you were staying in the swanky hotel connected to the store). However, the sales person said "I think in the morning there will be a lot of people." and he actually was happy to set us up with the bikes this evening at no charge. I will admit that I'm a little worried about the bikes, they're your standard road bike that I am no longer used to. I was hoping they were more like a mountain bike and that you still sat somewhat upright on. Wish me luck! Over the last couple of days, we've been realizing how heavy our little backpacks are and neither of us were looking forward to biking with a full pack. So we decided to take advantage of a service in Japan that allows you to forward  your luggage to the next hotel. But that first meant needing a third bag to pack the unwanted gear in. By now it was 6:30 and stores were closing at 7 so off we went in a hurry to find a bag. In the end, after checking a lot of stores, we found just the right thing. Done. Time to eat. We were too tired to search around so we went back to the restaurant near the hotel and the bike rental store. Wasn't traditional Japanese food that we were hoping for but it was all very tasty.