Advertisement
Published: November 17th 2014
Edit Blog Post
Arriving in Tokyo we were met by a young lady from the asian partner of Flight Centre. She gave us vouchers for accommodation and helped us to get our JR pass for tail travel. She put us into a Shuttle bus for Shinjuku station. Here we had to disembark and catch a taxi to our hotel. It was a bit scary but it worked out fine and we checked in for our one night in Tokyo.
Our serviced appartment was lovely, but we were ready for dinner so after some quick advice from reception we headed out to find a place to eat. Fairly soon we found a restaurant that looked popular and nice so we went in. Our first challenge was that we had to order our meals and drinks from an electronic menu and then feed it with sufficient cash before it produced tickets. A waiter took the tickets, gave us a table and handed the tickets to the kitchen. The food was very Japanese, cheap and absolutely delicious.
After a buffet breakfast of pseudo western and Japanese ellements we caught a taxi for Shinjuku station ... and then the fun began.
To get to Hakone
we could not us the JR pass as the lines were a different railway company. We were again faced with an electronic vending machine to choose destination, train type and seating. Greg must have looked bewildered as a young Japanese man asked if he needed assistance and then proceeded to help with the whole process. He did his own ordering then came over and said that we needed more tickets to get to our destination. As Greg waited in yet another line Joan guarded the luggage and chatted with the young man and his girlfriend. It turned out he had spent 12 months on a working holiday in Australia and had loved it. Once tickets were sorted we went our separate ways with him saying maybe they will see us later. Sure, we though this unlikely as the station was very crowded and had many railways each with many platforms.
Our first train was the Romance limited express train to Harkone-Yokomura. With reserved seating this was a very comfortable ride. Next we had to change to the mountain train. We were looking for lunch but all we could see were people rushing to get to very big queus for
the next train, so lunch and loo break were skipped and we joined them. With the first train fully packed we made it onto the second train. We were standing with our luggage, but there was no fear of overbalancing as we were packed like sardines. Still they pushed more people in. The mountain train was not just a name as a short distance up the mountain we stopped and reversed, but we had switched to a new track. Then we realised that this was a series of switchbacks as the train climbed higher. The holiday crowd ooed and aared as we crossed ravines, passed waterfalls and entered tunnels. Obviously this was and adventure for them too. Then suddenly at one station we say the young man waving to us as they left the train - they had spotted us after all!
We disembarked at Gora station to find the people rushing to join yet another queue, this time for the funicular (cable drawn carriage) that would take us further up the mountain (actually a volcano cone) to our hotel. We wandered for a few minutes looking for food and loos but gave up and joined the queue. Again
people were packed like sardines. After entering on the left, it was a challenge with our luggage to exit through the right hand door at our stop. A friendly elderly lady tried to chat with us in Japanese, Greg managed to say "I do not understand Japanese" and we all had a good chuckle. Successfully off the train we plodded the last very steep 300 metres to our hotel, draging our luggage. After checking in and getting to our room (and loo) we finally found an open bar where we had a cold beer and a bite to eat - it was 3pm.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.246s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 9; qc: 46; dbt: 0.1508s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb