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Published: April 14th 2024
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Sometimes when travelling, things don't go precisely as planned and that was one of those days.
Plan was to catch the 10am express bus to Gotemba Premium Outlets (but not stay) and connect to a local bus to our next Ryokan, but it turned out that it is a very popular bus and you needed to book a ticket and it was sold out. This meant we had to catch the local bus to another stop and change again. So three separate buses. This meant a much longer journey and arriving over two hours later than planned around 14:15. In hindsight, I should have stayed in Kawaguchiko and kept the car for 2 days and have a day trip to Hakone from there, but then we wouldn't have had a wonderful stay at our next ryokan.
When we arrived there was a steep flight of stone steps which was challenge because we still had one large, heavy bag to carry up. I had stop about three times to catch my breath. When we reached the Ryokan, Tsukinoya, we thought we'd leave our luggage and asked the owner if she could call us a taxi to go to the Hakone
Ropeway. She then asked her husband to drive us there. We were overwhelmed by their kindness.
It was a decent drive up winding roads which we had come down, on the bus. We decided to go one way and catch a bus home from the lake. The ropeway was great going up over a peak, where we could see sulphur fumes billowing out of chimneys. It looked like something from a sci-fi movie. Below must be the source for the mineral waters supplying the onsens. We then went down towards Lake Ashi to board the Hakone Pirate Ship. As warned, there was a large crowd of people, but when got to the ticket office, we were give an option of First Class tickets, which meant you were at the front of the ship, so we paid the extra and discovered the other benefit was you skipped the line and much more room to move around. The regular section was pretty packed full of people. We finished our cruise at 16:15 and decided to have an early dinner at a place called Torauto Lab.
We were now experts at catching buses. It's easiest if you have a pass or
IC card like Suica or Pasmo (these are no longer available except at Airports for tourists only and we hadn't done that). Otherwise cash is fine. You take a ticket when you get on the bus and pay when you leave by giving the driver the ticket and cash and he puts the money in and gives you the change. It looks you're suppose to put in the exact money as I noticed they used another small machine to change notes and the they used that change to pay, giving you whatever is left. I'm guessing the locals do that on their own but all the drivers we had were happy to do it for us.
When we finally got back to the ryokan, the lady showed us around and took us to our room. We were all absolutely delighted as our futons were already made and there was still room for a floor table, but this time the cushions on the floor were on wooden seats with back support. There was also our own toilet and a wash basin on an enclosed balcony with another table and two normal chairs. Because the room was so nice, we all
decided to try the onsen for the first time. There were two and both of these can be locked so they are private rather than public onsens, which suited us better. The onsen was beautifully decorated and the water was beautifully warm and not too hot. So glad we tried it.
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