One of the main reasons we decided to go to Hakone was because we were supposed to be able to get good views of Mount Fuji, weather allowing. Huh. It felt more like we were in the deep jungle than some place with great views. It sure was pretty, though.
Our second day in Hakone we went to the Venetian Glass Museum – not very Japanese, but very beautiful. I definitely recommend it. We went to Gora Park (free admission with our Hakone Free Pass), had lunch and wandered around the park. At the park, you could attend a tea ceremony or take an art class. They had a lot of art classes to choose from. I wish I had signed up earlier for a class. This would be a great reason to go back. We also went to the Hakone Open Air Museum which had mostly large outdoor art. There was some indoor stuff and a Picasso exhibit. I highly recommend Gora Park and the Open Air Museum also. There were so many other museums and parks in the Hakone area. Add on many shops, restaurants, hiking trails and onsens and you could easily spend more than 2 days in the area.
Our first day in Hakone, I planned a day where we would make a big loop through the Hakone area and see a bunch of fun things. I called it the Rraine Go Everywhere Tour. I didn’t promise I would give accurate information, but I promised it would be fun.
We started off with bus confusion. The first bus told us “no” when I asked if it went to Gora. I later figured out he flat out lied to me. We had one day bus passes we had purchased online. We all assumed a screenshot of the QR code would be easier than logging on to the website every time we got on to and off the bus. The bus driver of the next bus yelled at us because we had to have the live website version instead of a screenshot. It was a mass panic to log into the website and pull the live version which showed that at this very moment in time our bus pass was valid. The website had to be renewed every time we got on and off a mode of transportation. Not user friendly.
When we got to Gora, Google maps directed us onto a small path through the forest to the world’s tallest staircase. It was probably 20 minutes of stairs. We found the cable car (funicular) station in Gora and figured out how to get in the right line for it. This also included stairs as well as a mob of pushing Japanese people. The funicular took us to a ropeway (gondola) station. It took over 30 minutes waiting in line because most of Japan is on vacation here, now.
We rode the ropeway (gondola) to the Owakudani (Great Boiling Valley) station. This a geothermal area with steam vents and bubbling pools. We got a spectacular view of Mount Fuji for a minute. There were so many people at Owakudani that we had to apply for a leaving time. The earliest leaving time we could get was an hour later. We walked around and looked at the overlook of the steam vents. Down the stairs were a whole lot more buildings, people and a giant black egg statue. Yay! More stairs! The line to take a picture with the black egg was long – maybe 20 minutes long. We decided we would live without a giant black egg picture. I had already decided we were eating black eggs though. Once in the gift shop I lost everyone in 30 seconds. I found the black eggs, bought four and high tailed it out of there since it was impossible to walk without touching other people.
When our departure time arrived, we went back upstairs and got on another ropeway and went down to Lake Ashi. Our bus pass worked for the funicular, the ropeway AND the pirate ship. Yes, I said pirate ship. Of course we rode across the lake on a pirate ship. Found some lunch in the little town of Motohakone and then walked up to the famous Hakone Shrine. It was beautiful with a red Torii in the water, a path lined with huge trees, and stone stairs.
The next location on my tour was the Amasake Tea House. This tea house is over 400 years old and has been run by 13 generations of the same family. The questionable part of this trip was how to get a taxi. I looked in the parking lot for a taxi stand, but saw nothing. I opened my Go app (like Uber) and was able to order a car pretty easily. The problem was how to know where the taxi would come. Would it stop on the narrow road below us or would it come up to the upper parking lot where we were? Soon my phone made a strange sound. I had the option to accept or decline. It was some kind of call through the Go app. I accepted and didn’t understand a word the guy said. He didn’t understand me either. I assumed our conversation was supposed to be “I am not allowed to drive up there, can you come down?”. I tried to translate “parking lot or street?”. I’m not sure it went through correctly. I told the girls to stay, gave them the licence plate number and asked them to text if they saw it. The taxi driver and I talked back and forth, but I didn’t understand him and wasn’t sure if he understood me. Then I heard more Japanese and a quiet electronic voice say something. I picked out the word “down”. He was using a translate app to speak to me. I now had arrived at a second parking lot lower than the first. Seeing no cars waiting, I said “Hai” which means “yes” and kept going down. I saw the taxi at the driveway to the 3rd parking lot. I texted the girls to come down. I threw my arms in the air triumphantly and the taxi driver did the same as I approached. Then I typed in my translate app that there were 3 more behind me. He made a surprised face and motioned me in the car since he was blocking a car coming out of the lot. I got in and hoped he would wait for the girls. He pulled forward into an obvious “don’t park here” spot just as the girls were rounding the corner. He gathered them up and everyone got in. He looked like he was having so much fun. What stories he had to tell of the crazy lost English only speakers tonight!
The tea house was old and beautiful, tucked away in the forest. They had green tea and amasake tea. Amasake tea is made from water, rice and rice koji. Wendy ordered a green tea and the rest of us ordered the amasake. The tea came with weird bean filled sweets of course. The amasake tea was kind of like drinking warm watered down tapioca pudding. I drank the whole thing, but would have preferred the green tea. The tea house had a dirt floor with a raised platform to sit on. You take off your shoes and sit on the platform around low tables. It was dark and cool inside the tea house. You really felt like you went back in time.
Our last stop of the tour was a shrine with two waterfalls. We enjoyed the waterfalls, but when we saw that the shrine was up a long flight of stairs that we could not see the top of, we opted out of the shrine. There was a nice foot bath to sooth our feet before the bus ride home. I thought ice cream might help too. I had seen many things on-line about Mont Blanc ice cream so I was happy to try it. It was horrible and left me feeling sick for hours after. I highly don’t recommend it.
I ended up renaming the tour to The Tour of Stairs.
After the first workshop that I came to Japan for, we took a taxi to Ueda and checked in to our hotel. There is a laundromat near by that I used last year. I should have gone there, but I didn’t. I decided to do laundry at the hotel. The girls went for a walkabout around town.
As I was loading the washer, I looked down at my dirty shoes. They were a pretty mint green a week ago. Now they were brown. I took them off and threw them in the washer – what could go wrong? I contacted Rika to see if she wanted to go to dinner with us since she was also staying the night in Ueda. She contacted the host of the guesthouse in Bessho Onsen and got a restaurant recommendation. We aren’t even staying at the guesthouse anymore and Rumi is on it!
I moved my laundry to the dryer and texted the girls to meet me back at the hotel in 20 minutes. When the dryer load was complete I opened the door and a puff of white snow filled the air. It went everywhere. I looked around panicking a little hoping to find a broom or something I could clean the snow up with. Nothing. As the snow settled, at least it blended in with the floor. No one else was there, thank god. I must have washed a kleenex by accident and it disintegrated into a million pieces. I pulled my sopping wet clothes (covered in snow) out of the dryer. I went back to my room barefoot and the girls helped me hang my clothes so they wouldn’t get funky during dinner
After dinner, I slinked off in the rain to the laundromat near by and dried my clothes. Wish I had just gone here first. Oh well, what else was I going to do tonight?
The next morning we walked around the Ueda Castle after breakfast, then checked out of the hotel and got on our train to Tokyo. My suitcase handle broke – ugh.
There was a craft store Peggy wanted to go to in Tokyo (recommended by Rumi, of course). Once in Tokyo Station we successfully navigated to a luggage storage place. It took some standing around in the middle of a throng of people trying to get our bearings, moving to another area, standing around, making another educated guess on where to go, taking an elevator, and sending me out as a forward look out to decide which way to go, but we found it fairly quickly. Once our luggage was stored, Peggy and I marked our location on maps and took photos so we knew we could be reunited with our luggage later.
We took another train to the craft store. It was huge and had lots of fun things. I bought some origami paper and some tape to fix my suitcase. Why did I buy origami paper? I already have a bunch at home I am not using. Dumb.
After, we were hungry, but feeling the need to be on our way pretty soon. We opted for McDonald’s, mostly to see how different it was than in the US and because it would be quick. It was different, but not huge differences. They bring your food to you. I had a chicken sandwich that was ok and an orange fizzy drink that tried to kill me instantly with sugar. Sally got a happy meal with no toy. That’s not happy. I did manage to finish my sandwich before the drink took my life force away.
We successfully retrieved our luggage. We found a ticket counter for the next train we wanted to take and Sally and I bought tickets. The guy asked 157? And we said yes. After getting the tickets I realized, 157 was the time. Shit, we have less than 10 minutes to get to the platform. I turned to the other girls and said “It’s go time”. Look for signs for platform 14. We found it in perfect timing just as the train was arriving.
Once in Odawara, Peggy navigated us out of the train station to the bus stop. There were people everywhere and the name of the bus we got on didn’t match the characters on my phone. Google maps was giving me nothing in English so I couldn’t even ask, “do you go to —-?”. Peggy tried to show our destination to a bus attendant type person and they pointed to the bus everyone was getting on. We crammed on with our suitcases and held on for dear life.
There was a parade just finishing up in Odawara so the streets were packed with people on vacation for Golden Week as well as floats returning to wherever they came from. It was fun to watch. We sat in a lot of traffic. The mountains around us got steeper and the jungle denser as we left Odawara.
The next town, I had researched possibly staying there, but we didn’t book before hotel prices went up. When we passed through, it appeared to only have one thin road lined with shops. There were so many people, they could barely walk. The hotel I had liked was way up a giant hillside. I couldn’t imagine how we would have even gotten up there. Maybe it was better we didn’t stay in this town.
Each area we went through looked similar – steep mountains around and nowhere to walk. We finally got to our bus stop and had to walk single-file on the side of the road. There was no sidewalk here. A couple blocks later we found our hotel, had a welcome drink and some “sweets” made out of beans. So many things are made of beans here. Bean sweets – I’ll eat them, but not my first choice. Even my pillow has beans in it – why?
We asked the hotel to help us try to make a dinner reservation. They called a couple places that were all booked up for two nights (Golden Week). We decided to eat at the hotel. The public bath at the hotel was nice after dinner.
Rraine Drops 