Faster than a speeding bullet train

Our first excursion out of Tokyo turned out to be more of a success than either of us imagined. in Tokyo we are very lucky with the amount of english around including announcements in English on the trains and metro. Wboth thought we have more trouble out of town but it turned out to be relatively easy.

Today's adventure was to hakone, about 2 hours from Tokyo. We got to ride on the bullet train twice, which was very, very cool. It really is a super-fast train that goes at an incredible 180 mph. We kept trying to take photos as the trains sped through the station but they were just too fast!

When we got to the end of the line with the train, we continued on via a dinky little switchback train that took us up into the hills. It was nice to see some bumpy scenery as Tokyo is pretty damn flat (that explains all the bicycles there!). For those of you who might not know what a switchback train is, basically it zig zags up steep inclines by having a motor at each end of the train. Our little train would pull into a tiny provincial station and the next thing you see if\s the conductor and the train driver leaping out of their compartments and jogging along the platform to the other end of the train, greeting each other as they went. This happened about 6 or 7 times and got progressively funnier to watch!

When we arrived in Hakone, we were excited to learn that the next leg of our journey would take us by cable car to the volcanic landscape and hot springs that the area is famous for. Alas the price of the cable car was out of our budget, as was the museum dedicated to the author of The Little Prince, which just happens to be my favourite book in the whole world. I was sad to miss out but there will be plenty of other terrific things to see on our travels.

We wandered around the town for a bit and saw some incredible butterflies fluttering about and it was just nice to enjoy the tranquility away from the foot traffic of the capital. A very worthwhile trip, worth doing for the switchback train alone.

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