The day started innocently enough, cycling out of Chickushino shi with long expanses of city cycling ahead of ourselves.

Indeed, despite the small glimpses of countryside in the form of rice fields, it seemed to take us until about Hita before we managed to leave cities and suburbia behind.

Unfortunately, the climbing started almost immediately.

This hit S. particularly hard as some fatal combination of jetlag, general sleep deprivation, and a slight lack of fitness kicked in to make the hills feel insurmountable. They conspired to create a general feeling of unwellness, lack of energy, and even, towards the end, quesieness.

Thus, even though we rearranged the contents of pur panniers as much as possible, S. had to stop a little before Yufuin.

Luckily, the host of a ryokan by the side of the road gave us a ride to Yufuin. From there, we caught a train to Beppu and to our hostel.

But that was not to be the end of the drama for the day. In our rush to lock up our bikes and catch the train (we had exactly 2 minutes), we managed to leave one of our panniers behind.

Even worse, a moment of checking revealed that it was the bag containing the majority of our valuables.

Thankfully, the train conductor was at hand, and was helpfully able to phone the station, where a station employee quickly located the missing bag. Phew.

Once in Beppu, our hostel was only a 5 minute walk from the station, so it wasn't long before we were able to get to crash on our futons for the night.

Lots of luck went our way that night, vastly aided by S.'s abilities in Japanese. I guess that makes up for being ill in the first place... ;)