Last Saturday my group of Californians and I departed on the last field trip included in our tuition. We were off to the resort area known as Hakone, which is a beautiful mountainous area around a two hour train ride from Tokyo.
Dustin and Duffy wore the headbands they bought in the city of Obama
Upon arriving on our train from Tokyo we all had to board a public bus over a mountain to a lakeside village. I didn't have a seat for most of the bus ride and with the steep hills and switchbacks I wasn't having a lot of fun. There was also a baby crying so loudly that all we really could do was laugh at how impressive it was.
The lakeside village was very touristy but Justin and I left it and went to the shore and got some nice pictures. While taking pictures of the boat that we were going to depart on we were asked by some Chinese tourists to "please take picture". I said ok and tried to grab their camera but it turned out they wanted to include us in their shot! That was fun and felt good. It seemed that at least 80% of the tourists there were Chinese and our group leader said she had never seen Hakone with so many tourists ever. According to news reports I have seen, Chinese tourists have been coming to Japan in larger numbers recently.
Justin opened his salad upsidedown
Gas is about $5.85 a gallon
We all boarded the pirate-ship looking ferry and rode it to the other side of the lake. It was raining pretty hard at that time so I stayed inside with some others until we got off. We then boarded a gondola which took us to our hotel.
The hotel was pleasant and served us all wine and juice as we entered the lobby. It had a large indoor and outdoor spa (onsen) that used water from the underground hot springs in this volcanic area. From the spa and some rooms there are views of Mt. Fuji. For those of you who don't know, Mt. Fuji is the tallest mountain in Japan. It is a dormant volcano and is one of the primary symbols of Japan as it is often depicted in art and the media. Some friends and I have plans to hike Mt Fuji in July.
That night we had dinner, then had a birthday party for Duffy in one of our rooms. The hotel staff recommended we wake up at 5AM to be able to see Mt Fuji from the outdoor spa but my inhibition told me to not set my alarm and I would be fine. I woke up the next morning around 6:20 and not ready to be out of bed at all. I peeked out the window and couldn't even see a sign of Fuji so I went back to bed. I then awoke around 7:30 to my roommate Mikie on our room phone talking to our group leader because Fuji had become visible! He peeked out the window and said with enthusiasm, "It's the 'fooge'!" It was very beautiful but was only clearly visible for around twenty minutes and therefore not everyone was able to see it. I took some pictures and quickly went down to the large outdoor spa and enjoyed the view from there.
These were shot from the window
This bird was singing all morning
Views from the garden
These older ladies had me take a picture with them then insisted that I take one with my own camera too
We checked out at 11AM and jumped back on the gondola and went up higher to a sulfurous area. Here you could buy these hard boiled eggs called "100 year eggs" that, according to legend, are buried for 100 years, dug up, then eaten for longevity. These black, hardboiled eggs were sold by the thousands to tourists up by the sulfur but the last thing I wanted to eat while smelling sulfur was a hardboiled egg. Besides, the seven years of life it promised wasn't exactly the answer to my wish of seven more years of youth!
We then took a different gondola to a cable car station, which we rode to a train station where we transferred to one of only two trains in the world with switchbacks! The train would change direction and switch tracks on order to complete this rare maneuver. It was really cool. The only other country with a train with switchbacks is in Switzerland.
Once off that train we went and got lunch at a great soba-noodle place. This is actually the place that our group leader had her first date with her husband. I had the tempura and really enjoyed it. We had to rush back to the the train station after that to get on our express to Tokyo where I taught three hours of English conversation as soon as I arrived.
I usually don't take pictures of my food
