Mt Fuji is not our friend!

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After the excitement of the Sumo we had to deal with our luggage again - checking out of our Tokyo hotel and heading off to Hakone. The Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park is 70km outside of Tokyo and home to Lake Ashi, volcanic springs, hiking trails, and of course the elusive Mt Fuji!

Linda and I booked a seat on the "Romance Car" train out of Tokyo to the national park. Although it did leave on time and it was clean and very comfortable it did not live up to its name and was not very romantic at all. Fortunately it still had the little ladies selling cutlet sandwiches and that almost made up for the lack of candles and roses.

We made it to Odawara - the final stop - fairly late and from there decided to get the bus to our hotel. We only had a piece of paper with the address of the hotel on it which said it was in Hakone-Machi so we ventured to the bus stop and got on the bus down the road to Hakone-Machi. What followed was a suicide trip through the hills of Hakone as our bus driver attempted to break the speed of light on the hairpin bends. Thankfully it was dark so we couldn't see the steep cliffs on either side of the road!

Imagine our relief when we finally got to Hakone-Machi and we were able to get off the bus with our lives! Then imagine our massive dismay when we discovered that even though the address of our hotel said Hakone-Machi, it wasn't actually in Hakone-machi! In fact it was nowhere near Hakone-Machi and was actually 45 minutes away in a place that sounded nothing like Hakone-Machi. Naturally this made perfect sense.

Luckily the bus driver took pity on us and gave us a lift back up the hill - think suicide bus trip in reverse! We were VERY relieved to reach our hotel!!

We had especially booked out hotel for its views of Lake Ashi. Mt Fuji is notoriously hard to see but with a guaranteed lake view from our room we felt sure we were going to be in luck. Sadly by the time we got up to our room it was well after dark and all we could see of the lake was a mass of dark trees outside. So we went to bed early - in our unusually large hotel room with an unusually fancy toilet! - and prepared to be dazzled in the morning.

We woke the next morning to a thick blanket of fog and a mist of rain outside our window. Our beautiful lake view totally obscured!!! We tried to convince the hotel staff to tell us that it was a good idea to go out in the cable-car and see if we could see Mt Fuji but they didn't fall for it. In fact I believe they laughed at us. Long and hard!

It would seem that Mt Fuji and us were not to be.

So we cut our losses and headed to Kyoto...

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Photos

The view out our hotel window
What we could see of Mt Fuji...