Hakone Visit - Oct. 4, 2012

To a certain extent, the 24 hours delay to our trip plans worked to our advantage. While Wednesday, our original planned day to visit Hakone, was rainy and grey, Thursday dawned bright and blue and beautiful. If we had gone through faster, we might even have been able to see Mt. Fuji - unfortunately, by the time we got to the part of Hakone with the best views, the clouds had rolled in, making for dramatic photos but no mountain view. Still, the weather was gorgeous for the bulk of our day.

Hakone is an area known for its hot springs and onsens, and is a place that many people visit on a day trip from Tokyo. It encompasses a mountainous area and a lake, with a network of various means of public transportation connecting it all. The way most people visit Hakone is on the Hakone Free Pass, sold by Odakyu (railway/dept store?), which covers almost all the forms of transportation in the area, as well as a round trip train ticket from Shinjuku Station in Tokyo (if bought in Shinjuku - it's 1100 yen less to buy in Odawara, the main station before entering the Hakone area). In fact, I think part of the appeal of visiting is the chance to switch through so many forms of transport.

The first leg is a train that climbs uphill from Hakone-Yumoto, past the Tounosawa station (where our hotel was), and switchbacks up the mountain to Gora, where passengers transfer to a cable car. At Sounzan, they then transfer to a ropeway (or go a different way to a bus), which takes people up and over the mountain and down to Togendai on the shores of Lake Ashi, where they transfer to a sightseeing ship (in the form of a pirate ship) to cross the lake. At either Moto-Hakone or Hakone-Machi on the opposite shore, the loop is closed out with a highway bus, which takes people back to Hakone-Yumoto. There are highway buses that go along many of these routes, but it's not nearly as interesting or scenic.

One of the switchback tracks

When I read that the train went through a number of switchbacks through the mountains, it never occurred to me that trains just don't switch directions easily. Therefore, it was fascinating for me to realize that the way they do switchbacks is to go up the track to a stopping point, switch the tracks, and then go "backwards" down the new track uphill. It was even more interesting that apparently only one guy could drive the train, so at every switchback, the driver and the guy at the other end of the train would get out and switch ends of the train before we could start up again. Not the quickest form of travel, but pretty fun to watch.

On that first train, we got out at Miyanoshita to check out the town and the Fujiya Hotel. The latter is quite a famous landmark in the area, a historic old hotel with a lot of character and evidently some nice restaurants. We almost got diverted here when we spotted an old photo of some really cool looking waterfalls, and even asked the staff how to get there, but realized our schedule didn't really allow us to take a 2 hour round trip hike. Instead, we continued on to our next destination, the Hakone Open Air Museum, at the Chokoku-no-Mori stop on the train. 

Part of the Fujiya Hotel

The main building of the Fujiya Hotel

There are a number of art museums in the area, but we're typically not really museum people. I had vaguely thought that if we did stop at a museum, maybe the open air museum would be more interesting since it was a sculpture museum and we could look at the scenery, if nothing else. However, this turned out to be a highlight of the trip. There are over 100 sculptures, set along a beautiful open air area of 70,000 square meters, as well as a few indoor galleries. It was a beautiful setting, and there were some really interesting sculptures. Not a big fan of Henry Moore, who had far too many "reclining figures" sculptures at the museum for my taste, but really liked many of the other sculptures and the settings. I especially liked the suspended reflective balls which reflected back the gorgeous scenery around them, and a stained glass tower that was especially beautiful on the inside. We also really enjoyed a special exhibit by an artist whose name escapes me, but who made really cool use of light, texture, and interactivity in his various exhibits. One exhibit was a room full of hanging black threads that you walked through, playing tricks with your perception, while another had a sheet of gauzy white material, suspended by air jets in a brilliantly white sunlit room. I can't really do justice to how beautiful it was in words.

We next wanted to go to the Gyoza Center for lunch, but this was where our Thu visit became a problem - the Gyoza Center closed on Thursdays. In paging through a local dining guide, which I couldn't read, and looking at ads in the train, I noticed that there was an "Itoh Dining by Nobu" listed. At first, I didn't think much of it, but after seeing ads for a relatively inexpensive lunch at a place with kobe beef, we decided, what the heck, why not try it? Upon arriving at Gora, we initially waited in line for the cable car, but then realized that our stop for the restaurant was the very next stop, and that we could probably walk there before the cable car even got to the Gora station, so we decided to walk uphill.

On arrival, I realized my mistake - just because there was an inexpensive lunch didn't mean that the inexpensive lunch had Kobe beef. The Kobe beef started at 100 grams for over $100, of course, and we weren't able to make the mental shift to decide to spend that much on lunch. Instead, one of us got the Hakone beef donburi, while the other got a Hakone steak set (including salad, soup, and a dessert). We were seated at the counter right in front of the steel grill where the chef prepared ours and others' meals, which was quite fun. We marvelled at the beautifully marbled raw beef pieces, as well as the chef's knife and cooking technique. The whole space was beautiful - minimalist and modern, with a wall of windows overlooking the valley below. Given how tasty the Hakone beef was, I can only imagine what the Kobe beef must have been like. Ah well, missed opportunities. We were still very glad we had decided to check out the restaurant, since the beef we did have, and indeed all the food, was delicious.

Lunch over, we resumed our journey, taking the cable car all the way up to Sounzan so we could switch to the ropeway that would take us over the mountains. The views from the ropeway were beautiful, giving us a view of the lake to the east? of the region behind us, as well as the mountains. It also gave us a good view of the sulfuric yellow smoking hills of Owakudani, before we got out at that stop. Owakudani, also known as "The Great Boiling Valley", is a volcanic region where the ground still smokes and the water bubbles, and where they sell black eggs boiled in the sulfuric hot springs that are supposed to add 7 years to your life (we didn't try them - they sold 5 at a time and we only wanted 1). It's also where you're supposed to get your best view of Mt. Fuji...we saw a short stretch of one flank of the mountain through the clouds? I have to admit to being a bit disappointed by Owakudani - everything I'd heard made me think it was larger, and that you got closer to the boiling springs, and everything was more dramatic than it was. Still worth a stop, but don't expect *too* much.

Owakudani seen and over with, we got back on the ropeway to continue our journey down the side of the mountain to the shores of Lake Ashi. Again, there were beautiful views coming down the side. At Lake Ashi, we were very amused to see that the sightseeing ships really were in the form of pirate ships, and they even had a couple people dressed up as pirates to pose for photos. Pirate ship or no pirate ship, it was a nice cruise across the lake, passing the famous red torii gates in the water of the Hakone Shrine. We got off at Moto-Hakone (the boat stopped at both Moto-Hakone and Hakone-Machi) so we could take a walk down the old cedar road towards Hakone-Machi. This was a nice, peaceful walk - or would have been if it didn't run right along the modern highway, so there was a constant sound of cars. We finished the walk in time to catch the express bus back to Hakone-Yumoto (a 40 min or so trip), where we picked up the bags we left in coin lockers at the station, and caught the train back to Shinjuku, thus concluding our tour of the Hakone area.

In Shinjuku, I was hoping to take Scott to see the camera bag I'd spotted the day before in Yodabashi, but to my surprise, it was already sold and gone. The attempt to visit the camera stores and get a view of the Tokyo Metropolitan City Offices was completely defeated by a torrential downpour that sent us scurrying for the subway instead. And the attempt to find a good dinner was defeated by both the rain and Scott's inability to remember which coin lockers in the vast Tokyo Station he'd left his suitcase in. We ended up eating a very late dinner at a ramen joint in the station basement before taking a taxi who had no idea how to find our (very close) hotel and finally getting to our hotel after he pulled over and called the hotel. A rather downspiriting ending to a very nice day.