Day 3 - Hakone | Travel Blog

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June 1st 2006

Published: June 3rd 2006

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Amanda and Robert

Hakone

A beautiful view

We haven’t had internet access for the past few days, so we’ve got a lot of catching up to do! This is the day that we left Asakusa, heading for Hakone. We left our hostel pretty early, around 7 am and got on the subway to Tokyo Central Station. This was right during rush hour and we certainly learned not to do that again. We were literally packed in like sardines into the subway and I felt rather bad taking up so much space with my backpack on. Once arriving in Tokyo we decided to have breakfast at where else, another am/pm! With our breakfast of sandwiches and juice in tow we headed out looking for a park. What we stumbled upon turned out to be the right across from the Imperial Palace. Only part of the palace is open to the public, the Imperial Gardens. It is a beautiful garden filled with trees and plants that replicate how the land looked like hundreds of years ago. There is also a gorgeous pond in surrounded by trees and benches, very relaxing. At this point we had yet to master the art of using the coin lockers at the station so unfortunately

Getting on the bus

Bus station model in the ramen museum

we were rather weighed down carrying our packs around the gardens, but it was a beautiful place nonetheless. We could also hear what we believe were soldiers exercising although this part of the palace was blocked off to the public. From Toyko we headed to Yokohama, where we had heard there was an entire museum dedicated to ramen! It was a very interesting place, one floor was a gift shop/exhibit to cup of noodle, the second floor was constructed to look like a street in pre-WWII Tokyo, and on the bottom level there were about 12 ramen shops, each with their own way of serving these tasty noodles. The one that we chose specialized in ramen served with fresh crushed garlic and roasted garlic chips. It was sooo delicious, but I know we must have stuck to those around us. After lunch we headed towards our final destination for the day, Hakone hot springs. Our onsen (hot springs) was named “Kappa Tengoku”, which translates into Kappa Heaven. Kappa’s are mythical creatures that are said to live near bodies of water, their form somewhat like a frog. They are said to have a cup on top of their head filled with

Convenience

A delicious dinner from 7-11

water and when this cup is filled they are incredibly strong but when the cup is empty they are powerless. They prey on humans, but one way you can defeat a Kappa is by bowing, since Kappas are very polite, they will bow back—thus emptying the water on their heads. Needless to say we saw no Kappas.

The climb up to our room was rather strenuous, at a 21% grade, with about 100 steps leading up to it. Our room was a traditional Japanese room and the two ladies working there were very nice. They seemed relieved that I could speak Japanese as their English was very limited. After setting our packs down and walking around town (most of the shops closed as sundown, 6 pm) we headed up to the onsen (hot springs). We had a little trouble figuring out which side was the men’s and which was the women’s. It was written in kanji, which neither of us could read. After a couple of minutes we figured we better ask someone rather than chance it. The lady working there was embarrassed that she had forgot to tell us which was which.

We had dinner from 7-11,

Doraemon

Robert loves its Doraemon purse

which was the only thing open by now. I got to pick a ticket out of a Hello-Kitty box for some lottery the store had and I won a juice bottle. Hooray!

I am writing this in Kyoto now, but will have to update the rest later as they charge for internet here. There is so much more to write!! We hope everyone is doing well back in the states, please don’t hesitate to write to us! Internet access is limited but we do try our best to check our email whenever we get a chance.

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