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.