So then after looking around Hachiman and filling my water bottles from a spring in town, we continued northwards.

Here's the spring.

The next fun attraction was a waterfall that Kobo Daishi (remember him?) meditated under.
This was in the middle of our first real climb.

Then we crossed the Continental Divide. There was a little park.
One side of this arrow flows to the Pacific Ocean, while the other flows to the Sea of Japan. You see a lot of this kind of cheesy stuff in Japan. Otherwise the park was really nice.

Next we rode around a huge dammed lake, which wasn't very pretty, but was cool.
Here are two giant sakura trees transplanted from temples that were submerged by the dam. The placards try to tell a story of the trees' survival as a symbol of nature being okay with these sorts of dammed lakes. I'm not so sure. Still, the dam was pretty cool to look at.