Hakone - The ryokan experience

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Hakone was one of the most touristy place not too far away from tokyo. It was supposed to have beautiful landscape made up by lakes, mountains, volcanos, and many other museums such as the open air sculpture museum & museum of the little prince. Most importantly, it offered good view of Mt Fuji. All these could be explored through various modes of transportation within that area.

Hakone was an overnight trip for us. When looking for suitable lodging, I noticed the accommodation was really expensive. Then, we found Gora Ichinoyu which made our trip by offering comfortable lodging, ryokan hotspring (with private open air bath!!!) experience at a price that didn't overwhelm us.

Once we had direction to Ichinoyu, it wasn't too hard to find. (Thanks to an extremely kind obasan who helped us to search for direction to Ichinoyu instead of attending her shop). But, it sure required some effort in walking the slope up to Ichinoyu.

The room we had was pretty big with more than enough walking space after placing the futon (mattresses) on the floor, a toilet, a changing area and an open air bath. The rest of the day was spent lazing in our spacious room and eagerly anticipating our dinner.

The dinner that day was an eye-opener. Lucky me, it wasn't a meal made up of all raw stuff. Well, there was raw beef though. Egg dish was not hot. Fried fish was pretty ok and will be better served hot. Then, there was steamboat - shabu shabu pork and lotsa veg. Thank goodness there was a piping hot dish. It was such a leisure dinner... enjoyed the food slowly over chit chat in a quiet place (without waiter keep popping over to collect empty dishes)... sipped some bean tea and cocktail japanese wine. Oh, what a day...

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Photos

Ryokan - Gora Ichinoyu
Our most luxurious lodging of whole japan trip. But place not easy to find. Fortunately, we met a really nice and helpful aunty at Gora Station who took much effort in locating this ryokan from the map she had.

The open air bath
Temperature was abt 40 degree celsius... scorching at 1st but relaxing after a while.

Yuzu ice-cream
Almost forgo this thinking it's vanilla ice-cream