Hakone

The Shinkansen between Kyoto and Hakone took another blissful 2hrs of travel, though being one of the busier parts of the Shinkansen, we were all split up across the carriage, destined to eat our fancy bento boxes in solitary (from each other).

Hakone was described as the hot springs part of our G Adventures trip, and getting to the hotel itself was pretty easy going, with our hotel, Yumoto Fujiya Hotel just a short walk from the Hakone-Yumoto train station, on the edge of Hakone itself.

The Kyoto rain had the cheek to follow us as we travelled, but after check-in we quickly departed on our Hakone day trip and though the clouds stayed, the rain didn't. We jumped onto the local bus, with the world record for least amount of legroom all the way into downtown Hakone at the east end of Lake Ashi.

The purpose of our visit was to take the pleasure boat from the east end to the north end of Lake Ashi from the Moto-Hakone Port. The boat itself was advertised as a pirate ship, but still ours was named Queen Ashinko, 'based on a concept of a 'heart-throbbing cruise".

The trip itself was about 35mins, with a couple of interesting sights on the way, like the Heiwa No Torii gate.

...The Hakone aquarium and home of the Ninja Bus

...The miniature Torii Gate.

At the end of the boat journey we jumped onto a cable car that took us up and over Mt Hakone with a short stop in between to check out the Volcanic area with it's yellow sulphur vents, and ever changing levels of visibility.

This smoky valley, optimistically dubbed the 'Valley of Hell', is locally famous for it's black eggs, that become black after being cooked in the sulphur and iron content boiling water. Locally the eggs are called Kuro-Tamago and taste just like any other eggs, with one caveat, each egg eaten adds 5 to 7 years to your total life span. I expect there is small print that nobody has ever read to stop you from prolonging your life indefinitely.

We bought our fridge magnets from the souvenir shop and then caught the cable car to the next stop, a funicular to the one after, followed by the express train back to the start and the hotel.

The remainder of the day was of course spent in the hotel Onsen, where we enjoyed the 40 degree indoor and outdoor public baths. Come dinner time, we were treated to a multi course degustation with mandatory wearing of Yukata. Except we wore one slightly too small for us and had to run back to the room as the locals laughed at us and our very exposed shins.

Back to Tokyo next, for the end of our G Adventures tour.