We headed to Hakone. This trip is catching up on me so it’s going to turn into more of a photo blog with captions. Hakone is confusing as each leg of the journey is replaced with a different mode of transport. We headed to Owadara by bullet train, then changed over to a train from Owadara to Hakone-Yumoto, then changed to a slow mountain climbing rail that took an hour to get to our stop at Gora. If you’re here for one or two days I would highly recommend getting the Hakone Free Pass which covers your journey from Owadara onwards, or for a little more you can get it to cover it from Shinjuku. Since we had our Japan Rail Pass to take the shinkansen we stuck with Option 1. It costed 4000 yen for two days! Pretty good!
There were beautiful scenes to absorb especially coming to the end of koyo (Autumn leaves season).
Once we got to our ryokan (traditional Japanese inn) we headed back out to continue the transport tag game. From Gora it was the cable car that trudged up a steep mountain.
There we caught the first ropeway. There’s three of these (if my memory serves me right) to get to Lake Ashi but we stopped at Odawara.
We all squealed with glee when we were greeted by Mt Fuji. He’s quite well known to be an elusive one behind fog and clouds. This was the clearest I ever saw the mountain so I was excited. Odawara is a popular stop to see the springs ooze out of the mountain and for boiled eggs in hot spring water.
We also had fresh wasabi soft serve which was at first, strange but then delicious.
We then had the infamous black eggs. At first it seems a bit creepy and unappealing but it actually is just boiled eggs. They taste like the best boiled eggs you will ever have. James and I didn’t think we could get through 5 as that was the minimum purchase but we chowed straight through them. Yum yum yum! Perfect amount of cooked!
We then thought it was a good idea to beat the sun down for a hike to the next stop instead of taking the ropeway. It was a beautiful walk that took around 30 minutes. I was glad that we decided not to hike UP the mountain to the previous stop but down as it was bloody intense. There were some beautiful sceneries and a lot of momuji leaves that cake the wet floor. We eventually had to start trudging as we would’ve missed the last ropeway service which just means trouble.
We were both feeling quite ill that day so I grabbed some amazake (sweet sake) which was my favourite as a kid. We immediately felt better after that. Warmed our bellies and soothed our throats.
We went back to our ryokan (Gora Ichinoyu) which has a specific dinner curfew. We had shabu shabu for dinner, yum!
Our room had a private onsen that overlooked a forest. Quite magical really. From the start of my stay the trees had leaves and by the end of it, they were silouhette skeletons against the thick fog skies. I really enjoyed watching the change.
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