Friday night Tamie told me she wanted to do something spontaneous so we decided to head up to Hakone for the weekend. Hakone is a mountain area not too far from where we live. It’s a great place to visit what with all the trees and nature – a nice contrast to the concrete jungle/rice paddies we see daily. I really dug the idea but was somewhat surprised — the plan was to head up there and find a hotel for the night. I was surprised Tamie was being so adventurous, as usually everything is meticulously planned and roughing it means only a 4 star hotel.
We got up early-ish and headed out to catch the first of several trains. We booked a romance car (an odd name for the reserved seat train) that took us up to the Hakone-Yumoto. From there we took another, smaller train that criss-crossed up the mountain to a place called Gora. After getting off this train, we took a cable car up to Sounzan, another station on the mountain, where we got on the Hakone Ropeway, a gondola that took us to Owakudani — a place famous for hot springs and black eggs.
At Owakudani, we walked up a small path (with a thousand other people) to take a closer look at some of the hot springs and to get our fill of black eggs. The eggs are boiled in the hot springs, which turns them black. Legend says that if you eat one it’ll add seven years to your life.
When we finished with the eggs and photo opportunities, we took another gondola to Togendai, a station on the edge of Lake Ashi. Lake Ashi is something I’d been wanting to check out since I arrived in Japan. We’d been in and around Hakone several times and even driven and walked around parts of the lake. However, there’s a pirate ship that takes tourists from one side of the lake to the other. Yep, tourist trap. I think Tamie was in the minority as we rode that boat across the lake.
At the other side of the lake, we got off the boat and started to think about what we were going to do for the night. Tamie was expecting to find an information center where we could ask about hotels in the area… unfortunately there was no such information center. There was a hotel, however, and I went and asked about availability. As expected, they were booked solid. I asked about other hotels in the area and the guy kindly pointed out a ryokan (old-style Japanese hotel) across the street.
We went to check the ryokan out and it too was full up. When I explained our situation the guy said that on weekends, Hakone is pretty much booked up… he did offer us a room without dinner or breakfast, which was great except for the fact we didn’t see any restaurants around, Tamie wasn’t feeling well, and Layla was getting sleepy and hungry. In the end, we headed back to the dock to catch a bus back home, grabbing dinner at a restaurant near the train station before coming back. Not exactly the perfect ending we had in mind, but looking back on the day we had, the good times certainly outweigh any disappointment.
Today, we were a bit less adventurous. We headed to the local park to play with Layla and play she did. She crossed a rope bridge that she’d been afraid to cross since losing a shoe on it the last time. At one point she wanted to play with her ball but didn’t want either me or Tamie to touch it… until she realized it’s not a whole lot of fun to throw a ball and have to go get it yourself while your parents sat together watching. We ended up playing together again in no time. Eventually, the bubbles we brought came out — watching the joy Tamie gets out of blowing bubbles is more fun for me than actually blowing them. I think Tamie enjoys them even more than Layla does.
At the end of the day, we headed to off to do some grocery shopping, but not before stopping at Starbucks to get some pictures of Layla. At this point, we don’t even go because we like the coffee/frappucinnos – I think we just go to get another picture of Layla there. We certainly have enough of them.
Pictures, as usual, can be found at the gallery.
 Saturday in Hakone |
 Sunday in Ebina |
