Hakone Revisited

Marika Bell came to visit from Singapore last week. We took the opportunity to play a bit of tour guide, went with her up to Hakone, over to Kamakura and around Tokyo.

I took Friday off from work and we headed up to Hakone on the Odakyu RomanceCar -- a limited express service to Hakone-Yumoto. Robert enjoyed watching the scenery out the window, and we bought him a package of cookie/crackers from the food-cart lady when she came by. Once in Hakone-Yumoto we transferred to the Hakone-Tozan line and switchbacked our way up the side of Mt. Hakone.

We stayed at the Fujiya Hotel in Miyanoshita, but in their Ryokan-style annex, rather than the main hotel -- tatami floors & futons for sleeping are a pleasant switch-up from Western style, and the room was great with plenty of space. After dropping our things at the hotel, we hopped the train to the Hakone Open Air Museum where Sarah and Marika enjoyed a relaxing foot soak in the museum's onsen:



while I enjoyed some art:



and some more art:



The next morning we completed the classic "round course" through the Hakone region, taking the train to Gora, transferring to a cable-car that took us up a steep incline to Sounzan where we transferred to a gondola. We had read that if you can get onto the gondola early in the day, you are often rewarded with spectacular views of Mt. Fuji. We made it to the Gondola around 10, but unfortunately for us, we were in the clouds and could see nothing but about 20 feed of cable off either end of the gondola. I guess we'll have to go back!

The first gondola ride came to an end at a place called Owakudani. There is a sulfer works there, and a lot of geothermal activity. The main tourist attraction at this stop is "kuroi tamago" or black egg. These are eggs that have been hard-boiled in the sulfur rich hot-spring water, turning their shells black:



The area where the eggs are hard-boiled is a bit of a hike up a hill from the gondola station, but well worth the trip. For the infirm (or unmotivated), there is a little gondola system going up the side of the mountain with just enough payload to bring down a few dozen freshly boiled eggs at a time, so you can purchase them without the workout. However, we made it up to the top to get the fresh stuff:



After eating our black eggs, we got back on the gondola and headed down to lake Ashi, but not before Robert displayed that he is not afraid of heights:



We ate lunch at a restaurant in Togendai while waiting for a pirate ship to come and ferry us down the length of the lake. Yes, I really did mean pirate ship:



After the pirate ship dropped us off, we visited a reconstruction of the Edo Checkpoint that existed along the Tokaido highway during Japan's Shogun period, then we hopped a bus back to Hakone-Yumoto and the RomanceCar to Tokyo.

Remember the cookie/crackers that I mentioned we bought for Robert on the trip to Hakone? So did he. When the snack-cart lady came by, he was out of his seat in a flash and over to her cart, pulling the box of cookies out of the side while she helped another passenger. It was so adorable that we couldn't not buy them for him.

Monday was "physical fitness day", a national holiday, so Marika and I went to see Daibatsu while Sarah stayed home w/ Robbie. He had preschool though, so mostly Sarah had a day to herself. I have a few pictures of the trip to Kamakura, but nothing that can top these pictures from our living room, so I will close with them.

Come on fingers, I know you can do this!