Our morning started off early once again; my travel buddies went for breakfast while I stayed to eat my leftover Coco Curry. I was determined to pay a visit to Ippodo again to stock up on more teas for souvenirs, and made my way across the city, with the aim to arrive right at opening.
There are absolutely zero photos from this morning. One reason being my phone died on the way to Ippodo (thankfully I managed to find my way there and back), thus missing the beautiful photos as I skipped across the rocks over the Kamo River.
We met up again at the hotel, and quickly packed our bags and headed towards the station. We made it to the station with little time to spare, but quickly realized we were unsure of where to board the train - the train we were taking was a Shinkansen, so we were looking for the tracks, but when we asked staff at the station, one of them directed us to the JR local lines instead. After wandering with our luggages, I mustered the courage to peek at my watch, and realized we had five minutes left until the train departed, with no clue as to where the tracks were.
Ranee and I had large luggages with us, so we decided to take the ramp instead of the stairs at one point, which split us from Dan. We realized we would need to go up back to ground level to another building, where the Shinkansen lines were. This train only ran every two hours, so we knew if we didn't catch this train, we wouldn't get to Hakone until the late afternoon. We proceeded to pick up our luggages to the best of our ability and ran up and down the stairs to the platform. We saw the train in the station with one minute left until departure, and instead of finding our cart, we quickly hopped onto the first available door.
We stood there, panting and drenched in sweat, too tired to even speak a word for a good few minutes, as the train doors closed. We were hopeful Dan was on board, and after hydrating ourselves, we wheeled our luggage past carts of people.
Thankfully, she was in her seat, having gone through an adventure herself and nearly missing the train as well. We swore to never make ourselves go through this type of panic again.
The ride to Hakone was relatively smooth, and we found ourselves at Odawara Station, waiting for the old cable cars that would bring us up to Gora.
We dropped our things off at a hostel and then went in search of food. Ranee found a decently-rated katsu place, but when we arrived, there was only a machine to get a number, but everything was in Japanese, and we were unable to figure out how to order. Also unwilling to wait with the crowd of people, we decided to continue walking, and I spotted a small shop next door with the same characters as the restaurant - lo, and behold, it was the mini supplementary cafe.
There are absolutely zero photos from this morning. One reason being my phone died on the way to Ippodo (thankfully I managed to find my way there and back), thus missing the beautiful photos as I skipped across the rocks over the Kamo River.
We met up again at the hotel, and quickly packed our bags and headed towards the station. We made it to the station with little time to spare, but quickly realized we were unsure of where to board the train - the train we were taking was a Shinkansen, so we were looking for the tracks, but when we asked staff at the station, one of them directed us to the JR local lines instead. After wandering with our luggages, I mustered the courage to peek at my watch, and realized we had five minutes left until the train departed, with no clue as to where the tracks were.
Ranee and I had large luggages with us, so we decided to take the ramp instead of the stairs at one point, which split us from Dan. We realized we would need to go up back to ground level to another building, where the Shinkansen lines were. This train only ran every two hours, so we knew if we didn't catch this train, we wouldn't get to Hakone until the late afternoon. We proceeded to pick up our luggages to the best of our ability and ran up and down the stairs to the platform. We saw the train in the station with one minute left until departure, and instead of finding our cart, we quickly hopped onto the first available door.
We stood there, panting and drenched in sweat, too tired to even speak a word for a good few minutes, as the train doors closed. We were hopeful Dan was on board, and after hydrating ourselves, we wheeled our luggage past carts of people.
Thankfully, she was in her seat, having gone through an adventure herself and nearly missing the train as well. We swore to never make ourselves go through this type of panic again.
The ride to Hakone was relatively smooth, and we found ourselves at Odawara Station, waiting for the old cable cars that would bring us up to Gora.
We dropped our things off at a hostel and then went in search of food. Ranee found a decently-rated katsu place, but when we arrived, there was only a machine to get a number, but everything was in Japanese, and we were unable to figure out how to order. Also unwilling to wait with the crowd of people, we decided to continue walking, and I spotted a small shop next door with the same characters as the restaurant - lo, and behold, it was the mini supplementary cafe.
After checking in to our first shared room, we walked through the area, towards Hakone Open Air Museum.
I had briefly heard the open air museum being mentioned on our way up on the cable car, linking it to airplanes, but agreed to go as our hiking plans wouldn't be possible at this time. After grabbing our tickets, we headed up the escalators, and I started to understand what an open air museum was.
There were some interesting sculptures, some odd ones, but plenty of greenery and beautiful flowers.
From the top of the stained glass tower, you could see the foot baths below.
We made that our next destination, and despite it being humid, it was bliss. The hot water helped relax the legs that had undergone a severe beating from the past week.
A quick visit to the gift shop for magnets and postcards, and a much-needed AC break.
We were a little bitter that the best installations were only for children; understandable, but another negative about growing up.
These type of places are the hotspots for mosquitoes, so we quickly powered through the area.
We only had about an hour and a bit to explore the museum, but we managed to finish the express tour of all the exhibits.
As we were leaving, we found an indoor portion that we had not been aware of. After some fun with motion capture art, we left with one minute left until the museum closed.
We had seen the Kirin Lemon drink in pretty glass bottle the day before on our way up Fushimi Inari Shrine, and after finding a vending machine of Kirin-items, we decided to try it - it was essentially Sprite.
After another unsuccessful attempt at more souvenirs and volcanic eggs, we headed back to the hostel to grab our things for the onsen.
We were in a bit of a daze heading down the mountain towards the onsen, and once we arrived at our stop, the doors opened, and a heavy rain was furiously pouring beyond the safety of the cable car. We braced ourselves and ran towards the stairs, before the conductor ran out to yell at us - we had just run past the tap off machine, hidden from us in the dark, rain-fuelled run.
We were all thoroughly soaked in those two minutes, and decided to reconvene under the awning of a closed counter. We saw the onsen located in the middle of the mountain, and collectively decided to run to it. The way down consisted of wide stone steps, with few lamps lighting the otherwise forested path. We flew down the steps, all the while screaming "step! puddle! be careful!!", adrenaline pumping through our veins.
When we finally reached the bottoms of the steps, we found ourselves facing a road, not sure in which direction the onsen was. We had passed a few stairs leading to other directions, but the slowly-loading map had us continuing onwards. Time was ticking away, with less than two hours left until the onsen closed, and we wandered a little before deciding to take shelter once again to look at the map.
Lo and behold, we had gone entirely off course, and the onsen was located somewhere on the path we had just ran down. We decided to run back up, and when we passed one of the stairs we had passed on the way down, I called out to stop, and we pulled up the name of the onsen in Japanese to compare to the sign, and voila, we had a match!
We were in a bit of a daze heading down the mountain towards the onsen, and once we arrived at our stop, the doors opened, and a heavy rain was furiously pouring beyond the safety of the cable car. We braced ourselves and ran towards the stairs, before the conductor ran out to yell at us - we had just run past the tap off machine, hidden from us in the dark, rain-fuelled run.
We were all thoroughly soaked in those two minutes, and decided to reconvene under the awning of a closed counter. We saw the onsen located in the middle of the mountain, and collectively decided to run to it. The way down consisted of wide stone steps, with few lamps lighting the otherwise forested path. We flew down the steps, all the while screaming "step! puddle! be careful!!", adrenaline pumping through our veins.
When we finally reached the bottoms of the steps, we found ourselves facing a road, not sure in which direction the onsen was. We had passed a few stairs leading to other directions, but the slowly-loading map had us continuing onwards. Time was ticking away, with less than two hours left until the onsen closed, and we wandered a little before deciding to take shelter once again to look at the map.
Lo and behold, we had gone entirely off course, and the onsen was located somewhere on the path we had just ran down. We decided to run back up, and when we passed one of the stairs we had passed on the way down, I called out to stop, and we pulled up the name of the onsen in Japanese to compare to the sign, and voila, we had a match!
We still had to eat dinner, and with one restaurant still open at the osen, we bought the dinner & hot springs combo ticket. We ate enough to keep hunger at bay, quickly enough to maximize the time in the onsen but not enough to get a stomachache.
There are absolutely no photos of the hot springs for obvious reasons, but it was a pretty scene, mostly deserted except for a few people who left soon after we entered. There was one other foreigner with us, and we pretty much had the run of the place. The unanimous favourite was the personal-size tubs full of water that overflowed as soon as you entered - a very satisfying feeling.
At the station, waiting for cable car, Dan was video-chatting when the woman from the onsen came up to the station as well. She introduced herself as a dance teacher from Chicago, and we had lovely chats about travel and life in general. We didn't even realize we had reached our station, and we said our goodbyes after giving her one of the four eggs.
Once back at the hostel, we decided to make tea and headed up the one of the lounges on the top floor to eat our eggs. We had a long chat about high school life, and once quiet hours were in effect, we decided to head to bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment