Hakone

Hakone is a tourist destination southwest of Tokyo, littered with art museums, parks, and hot springs.  For our weekend stay, we booked a night in a ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn which also housed a hot spring.  Our names, along with all the other weekend guests, were displayed on chalkboards outside the door and we were greeted cordially by the doorman and concierge.  We traded in our shoes for the slippers provided and donned some informal kimonos.  It took a little coaxing to convince the husband that it was appropriate dinner attire. 

Ichinoyu Honkan in Tounosawa

We were treated to kaiseki, a multi-course dinner of simple but artfully prepared food.  It tasted and looked amazing – everything was fresh, seasonal, and healthy.  Our waiter was beyond courteous, and spoke fluent English.  The plum wine was brewed locally, and was just delicious.  On a whole other level than anything I have seen in the States. 

The rooms were not Brandon- sized.  

After dinner we had the option of using the indoor public hot spring baths, or reserving it for private use.  However, I had found us a room with its own private, open- air hot spring overlooking the river.  Not that I have anything against communal hot springs, this was just way more romantic and not something you see every day.  The sound of the river right outside our balcony and the noisy cicadas drowned out any noise we might have heard from the road, or other guests. 

Our room and the inn in general was a bit worn around the edges, and needed a little bit of maintenance, but besides that we had a great time there.

Also, one awesome thing about Japan is that since everybody gets around by train, the stations sometimes have delivery services to take your luggage to your hotel for you and vise-versa.  This saves so much time for tourists!!

The sights in Hakone revolved mostly on travelling from one part of the area to another – they have a very efficient loop set up which includes a mountain train, a cable car, a ropeway/gondola thing, boats, and buses.

That's smoke and sulfur coming out of the mountain.

We did stop at for a good while to trek through the Hakone Open Air Museum, which was mostly sculpture and had a few indoor galleries, including a very large one housing a lot of pieces by Picasso.  This exhausted the husband’s yearly tolerance for art museums.  As far as museums go, it was extremely whimsical and kid friendly. 

Title: The Hangover.  Just kidding  :)

We crossed Lake Ashi, which lies in a volcanic crater, by boat.  

Of course, after getting off of the gaudy “pirate” boat, we HAD to get in a goose boat.

  

If we were to go again, I’d take the bus straight to Lake Ashi and camp out near an onsen.  It’s cooler, and absolutely beautiful.

Hiking FAIL

The language barrier has seldom made travel noticeably more difficult in Japan.  When your IPhone is basically a GPS and can even plan complicated train routes out for you, in English, via an app, there are usually no worries when we venture out.

Usually.

However, when you are hiking in an area that doesn't get cell service, and it's been hours since you've seen another hiker, and the trail signs suddenly stop being bilingual - well, it's good motivation to get more familiar with kanji.

We had decided to spend Saturday hiking from one mountain which I had already been to, and was pretty familiar with,  to another peak nearby.  At the base of this mountain, there was another train station which we could use to get back home.  So we set off, passing at least ten trail signs on our way which had Japanese as well as English directions.  After about 2 1/2 hours, we reached an intersection at the top of the hill which was entirely in Japanese.  My dear husband voted for turning back and retracing our steps to where we started, so we could take the same train home.  I, however, am prideful, and was not about to admit defeat.  I mean, we had reached the top, right?  All downhill from here.  Surely we could figure this out.  There were only three options as far as trails went!

So we checked out the first option - pretty quickly we got the feeling that this was not the way to go.  The trail was very pretty but also very overgrown, it was obvious that it had not seen a lot of foot traffic recently.  It also appeared to be quite level for a long ways, not the descent we were looking for.  Thus, we went the other direction, and out of the two choices offered that way, we took the one that headed straight down the hill.  At this point, we didn't have a lot of daylight left, and this seemed the surest way to get back to a town, as we could see that it lead down to the river, and we could hear some kind of bell tower ringing in that direction.

Basically I had a 1/3 chance of it leading down to the station we were looking for, and it seemed like a smart choice.  Apparently not.  After a brutally steep descent, we popped out on a rural road which intersected the trail.  By this time we were able to get cell service, and find out where we were.  It was not the town we were looking for.  They didn't even have a train station.  To get home, we would have had to power- walk for four hours.  However, we were a mere two hours' walk from the closest train station, and were able to get home by a decent hour.    In retrospect, the trail that looked like it hadn't been used in ages probably would have been a better choice.

We ended up walking like 15 miles at least that day.  We were so tired, but I will say it was not as much of a pain as I made it sound.  The weather was nice, we saw some awesome views, and spending the day out in the mountains was great.  The forests hear are really verdant, especially with all the rainfall right now, and even our walk through a couple of rural towns was pretty decent.  Despite the fact that our legs were about ready to fall off.

I have a feeling that next time, my better half will be doing the navigating.  :)

Kamakura

Saturday, July 14^th

Saturday we went to Kamakura.  It’s about a two hour train ride for us.  Lacking a tour guide and any real planned route we had no hope of seeing all of the shrines and temples in this city.  Not to mention, we don’t really get up early on Saturdays.  However, we did manage to hit some of the more popular destinations, and a couple less crowded sites.  We were feeling ambitious, and egged on by Frommer’s advice, we spent the entire day on foot.  In retrospect, we should have taken advantage of some of the buses or even the carts pulled by runners.  The streets we took to get from Kamakura Station to Hase (where a good portion of the sights are located) were not interesting enough to warrant the 30 minute trek. The summer heat/ humidity was a little overwhelming as well.   

Our first stop was the Hasedra, or Hase Kannon temple.  

This temple is home to the largest wooden statue in Japan, a representation of the Buddhist deity Kannon.  There was no photography allowed in this area, which is unfortunate, because it was the most stunning thing I saw in Kamakura.  Though smaller than the Daibatsu, it’s still quite large, and covered in gold leaf, so it’s radiant even in the dimly lit temple. 

Although we were too respectful to break out the camera, I found a photo online to show you what I mean. 

On the approach to the temple, we stopped for lunch at this second- story restaurant (still not sure what it is called) and had okonomiyaki, which is basically a Japanese pancake with meat and vegetables.  They are quite tasty, and we cooked them ourselves at our tables on the built in skillet.  We dined next to some people clothed in traditional kimonos, who were curious enough to approach Brandon and ask him if he spoke English, or any Japanese, before giggling and taking off.

The next stop was an obvious one: the Daibatsu, or the big Bhudda.

It was quite crowded on a Saturday, but still worth the trip.  We got in line and went up inside the statue, which is apparently hollow, although it was so hot and claustrophobic I’m not sure why (just to say we did, I guess). 

We also saw Sasuke Inari Jinja shrine, which was littered with fox statues (still not sure why) and absolutely plastered with red flags (still not sure what they say).  Apparently this shrine was built adjacent to a ‘hidden village’ (umm… ninjas!!!) and although rather tiny, the approach to the temple was unique. The many torii gates that framed the climb up the steps were visually interesting. 

Here is a photo of Brandon washing his hands, which appears to be some sort of ritual for cleansing oneself before entering a sacred site.  Some people were drinking the water.  I did not choose to partake in the drinking of it, given that hundreds of people a day were using these things as drinking/ washing ladles. 

More photos

The dahlias here were out of control!!! They were like the size of Brandon’s head. 

Overall, Kamakura was a great daytrip, a bit crowded on the weekend but worth it due to the iconic temples.  If we had gotten there in the morning we might have been privy to a free local tour guide.  There are a lot of places we didn’t get to see but I think it will be a good long while before making a return trip.  Next time I am definitely flagging down one of those buff guys with the rickshaws!  

Coming Soon!

I will not begin posting until we actually arrive in Japan, which may not be until April or May of 2012, when my husband and I will be moving to Japan for an indeterminate period (probably a few years).  Until then, we are both counting down the days!