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Asia, Day 13 | Japan, Day 5
Sep. 27th, 2023 08:49 pmToday we travel back to Tokyo, we've decided that we're going to do the Hakone Round, taking every possible form of local transportation:
train, funicular, gondola, boat, and bus. We start the day with pastries from Watanabe Bakery, bid farewell to our marvelous ryokan, and take the bus, to the train, to the funicular stop.
Honestly, the funicular ride isn't that pleasant; it's slow and full of people, plus there's no air conditioning, so it gets stuffy fast. It definitely qualifies as second-order fun. (J's face pretty much says it all.)
The gondola ride is pretty cool, bringing us over Owakudani, a particularly geologically active region of Hakone. Warning signs alert people with respiratory problems to the presence of volcanic gas, and we pass over active sulfur vents that are belching fumes.
(Sadly, though sometimes one can see Mt. Fuji in the distance from the ropeway, today it's wreathed by clouds, so we're unable to see it in its full glory.)
(Also, I didn't realize that Hakone is the main setting of Neon Genesis Evangelion! Though in the mythos of the show, it's referred to as Tokyo-3.)
We have lunch at the station at the end of the ropeway, and I try hambagu, basically a burger without a bun. It's very tasty but also uncanny -- something super-familiar made with a very different sensibility.
There are three boats on the route around Lake Ashi, all made up to look like pirate ships from the outside. It's relaxing to just sit down and watch the water go by, and I love seeing the torii gates erected near the shore.
From the final "port", we take the bus to Odawara Station, where we get on the shinkansen back to Tokyo.
Our final hotel is the Tokyo Bay Shiomi Prince in Koto City, and figuring out which train to take is super-confusing because it's not immediately clear that this is a Green Line-type situation, where a few different lines start out with the same set of stops, then branch out -- plus some are express trains that don't go to our stop -- and so I don't understand why the Japan Travel App (which is excellent, BTW) keeps giving me so many seemingly unrelated options.
After much consternation, we finally arrive at our hotel, and thanks to the miracle of takkyubin, our heavy luggage is there waiting for us. We eat dinner in the hotel restaurant, and they're offering wagyu steak as a special! I have to order it, and it's everything I could have wanted -- both creamy and flavorful, and served with a perfect wasabi sauce. American wagyu pales in comparison.
train, funicular, gondola, boat, and bus. We start the day with pastries from Watanabe Bakery, bid farewell to our marvelous ryokan, and take the bus, to the train, to the funicular stop.
Honestly, the funicular ride isn't that pleasant; it's slow and full of people, plus there's no air conditioning, so it gets stuffy fast. It definitely qualifies as second-order fun. (J's face pretty much says it all.)
The gondola ride is pretty cool, bringing us over Owakudani, a particularly geologically active region of Hakone. Warning signs alert people with respiratory problems to the presence of volcanic gas, and we pass over active sulfur vents that are belching fumes.
(Sadly, though sometimes one can see Mt. Fuji in the distance from the ropeway, today it's wreathed by clouds, so we're unable to see it in its full glory.)
(Also, I didn't realize that Hakone is the main setting of Neon Genesis Evangelion! Though in the mythos of the show, it's referred to as Tokyo-3.)
We have lunch at the station at the end of the ropeway, and I try hambagu, basically a burger without a bun. It's very tasty but also uncanny -- something super-familiar made with a very different sensibility.
There are three boats on the route around Lake Ashi, all made up to look like pirate ships from the outside. It's relaxing to just sit down and watch the water go by, and I love seeing the torii gates erected near the shore.
From the final "port", we take the bus to Odawara Station, where we get on the shinkansen back to Tokyo.
Our final hotel is the Tokyo Bay Shiomi Prince in Koto City, and figuring out which train to take is super-confusing because it's not immediately clear that this is a Green Line-type situation, where a few different lines start out with the same set of stops, then branch out -- plus some are express trains that don't go to our stop -- and so I don't understand why the Japan Travel App (which is excellent, BTW) keeps giving me so many seemingly unrelated options.
After much consternation, we finally arrive at our hotel, and thanks to the miracle of takkyubin, our heavy luggage is there waiting for us. We eat dinner in the hotel restaurant, and they're offering wagyu steak as a special! I have to order it, and it's everything I could have wanted -- both creamy and flavorful, and served with a perfect wasabi sauce. American wagyu pales in comparison.
