Hakone

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Waking up to a slight snowfall in Nikko, I was happy to move on to Hakone, hoping it would be slightly warmer there. From Nikko we took a taxi, a local train, two bullet trains, a local bus, a pirate ship and finally another local bus to get to our destination of Hakone. We were fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of Mt Fuji both on the train and on the Pirate ship. It was an almost clear day so most of Mt Fuji was in view. Due to the cold weather she looked stunning with just a nice sprinkle of sweet sugar on her.

At our lovely Guesthouse we were greeted by the two friendly owners, who gave us the rules of the house then one sat down to show us how make a bird from origami. With a 4x4” square piece of thin pink paper and a fold here, a bend here, another fold here, a twist here .. I made what kinda of looked like a Crane. Simple as 1, 2 ,3... yeh really ! Ask me to repeat how I made it, well maybe not.

Japan invented a world hit in 1971. Any guesses ?? The embarrassing karaoke machine. Yes, I know I can’t sing, but really, we’ve all watched X factor, who can actually sing? We spent the evening shouting our lungs out and laughing till it hurt to songs by Madonna, Abba, Grease, Queen, Kylie and Michael Jackson. We would have sung all night long. When we saw the elderly owners of the small local karaoke bar were falling asleep in the corner of the bar, we knew it was time to leave even though it wasn’t even 10 o’clock. Ah well, there’s always the next city!

Today I was on mission... to see Mt Fuji clearly! Firstly we popped on a gondola or ropeway as the call is it Japan, actually its in the Guinness World Records as the busiest ropeway in the world, with over 2million pax in 2008! Ascending high into the mountains gave us a wonderful view of the lake Ashi below. At the top we hopped out and instantly smelled the natural sulphur evaporating from the hills, it stunk really badly, a bit like rotten eggs. Funny enough what did we do next? Eat an egg. 100s of eggs are brought up here daily, cooked for 1hour in the sulphurous water which turns their shell black. According to Japanese legend if you eat an egg you live an extra seven years! So of course I ate an egg, although it tasted the same as the one I had for breakfast only an hour prior. Getting the gondola down, we visited the open air museum nearby. Around the grounds were sculptures, paintings, abstract art by the likes of Picasso and Henry Moore to name but a few. For lunch I tried Japanese Gyoza dumplings for the first time. I thought they were going to be filled with beef but they turned out to be veggie ones, but dipped in soya and sesame oil they were really tasty.

After lunch we got the bus back to board the pirate ship again to see if we could see a glimpse of Mt Fuji. Hey presto! Between the clouds we got a very clear view of Mt Fuji and it was well worth it.

>>>> there's lots and lots of photos in this blog, so keep filcking to the next page to see them all <<<

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