Japan - Hakone - Day 6

- Tuesday, October 6th 2015 -

We got up bright and early, having bathed that morning and munched our tasty breakfast.  The company at the table never got the hint to leave this girl alone.  What kind of question to a clearly Asian woman is "Do you speak Finnish?" out of the blue?  Why would she speak Finnish, leave her alone. Her short replies generally mean she's not interested.  Men!

Our bus stop (Sengokuhara) had some others from our accommodation at it.  They'd done everything we were planning on doing today, yesterday, so we went ahead and followed them down the mountain.  Making sure to get on the right bus that way and being pointed in the right direction to where we wanted to go.

Our first stop was the cable car, which sounds like a gondola or a tram out west, but it's not.  Much more like an incline I suppose.  I didn't get many pictures from the car as the windows kind of warped things and it stopped frequently, a main mode of transportation apparently.

Unfortunately, Mount Hakone was acting up and the rope way (actual cable car/tram/gondola) was closed due to it.  Though, I do like the story of "I couldn't go on it because a volcano was having a hissy fit".

At the top of the cable car, there was a substitute bus running to take people back down to where the ropeway would've let you off.  It smelled strongly of sulfur.  The scenery we drove past was pretty neat.  An area covered in smoke that we could only guess what was causing it.




Where we were dropped was the Pirate Ships.
Well.  They're not REALLY pirate ships, more like ferries that are decorated.  Still, it was a beautiful view and a little fun.  Short trip.

 

Our lovely view while waiting for our ride.

Mega healthy lunch of curry bread, milk tea for me, CC Lemon for Emma, a croissant and a  rather unsatisfactory cake for me.

 

There's our ship!

Follow the cut for the rest of the day ~

There were some fake Asian Pirates dressed up doing tourist pictures.  The amount of times I had to deny getting in the photo was mildly amusing.  I didn't want to pay a tourist photo, I can just snap one with Emma and be happy enough.

or if I REALLY wanted pics of us on the boat, do awkward selfies with wide angle DSLR's!

Just some pretty photos from the boat ride.

Coming in to port.

Once off the boat, I had a shrine marked to go to by our hosts at the inn and someone else had mentioned going there.  This was the main day we realized Leanne cannot navigate.

After walking for awhile we turned down this street.  Investigating the paid for thing at the end and picking up some snacks.  There was also a map, and a much needed ladies room.  I do believe this was my first time using a squat toilet...which...was kinda weird but worked better than I thought it would.  Anyway mainly this is just because this place helped us with a map!  So we were on our way again.  I honestly don't remember what the temple/shrine we were looking for was even called.  I probably have it circled somewhere in my maps.... perhaps will edit it in later.

We walked for a long time.  Eventually I had squatted for photos and Emma walked away from me.  This was taken from me calling out to her, and her threatening to leave me if I didn't get up.  Mean travel friend! hehe.

During our walk we unexpectedly came across Mount Fuji.  Lovely view of it off in the distance!  It's made us both want to read up on some folklore.  Tales of Japan's history (not the legit thing) are so interesting.   The legit thing is as well, but I do love me some mythology.

Random doggies!  Super friendly, tied outside a store.

O hi, we saw you from the boat!

Somehow we ended up walking towards the Old Hakone Highway.  Which wasn't on our list of things to do, so we ended up taking a detour down towards what looked like a shrine.

Turned out to be the Shrine we were sent to see.  It looked very lived in/in use so we didn't spend much time there.  Not wanting to bother any of the locals using it.

We proceeded to get a little lost, wanting to head towards a onsen/hot spring at that point and not knowing how to get to one.  We took a bus to Miyanoshita, where I had read up that there was some really nice onsen, one in particular that I had in mind.

That we couldn't find.

But this really nice lady at the tourist information center gave us a leaflet and sent us on our way.  Appreciating her gesture, we gifted her with some Tablet.  While we were faffing about getting drinks for our upcoming hour long hike, she came out and presented us with notepads and a cute little fan as gifts in return!

The path didn't look so bad.  I could totally walk an hour on that.  A couple coming up commented "bring water!" of course you silly people!

Our walk had plenty of these guys.  Japanese Orb Weavers. Beautiful things, I'm quite glad I didn't get bitten (I don't think.  I did have some epic swelling in my ankle that day... positive it was just a flying insect bite though!) 

The hikes trail had lots of steps down, which we knew would mean a lot of steps up.  Still, walking down into a gorge was pretty neat, and beautiful!

Sometimes the trail looked a little sketchy.

Yup, that's still part of the path.

Random waterway! Er, uh, electric plant I think.

Towards the end we got closer to a bridge, and the water was so pretty. 

Bridge was covered in Orb Weavers, and it was bouncy.  I'm pretty sure spider-san didn't appreciate the ride. 

here we see Emma's hiking attire.

View from the bridge of the waterfall.
After crossing the bridge, a team of tourists and what looked like maintenance workers came down...  good thing they didn't see us bouncing like children on the bridge.  Oops.
As we predicted, there was a nice long hike UP a hill to get out, but the view looking down was pretty as well (and covered in spiders.  Note, do not hike in Hakone if you have a fear of spiders.)

Oooo, viiiews.

After we stumbled out of the doom steps, we were greeted by the Onsen we were suggested to go to.

Hakone Tenoyu was sitting right across from the exit, and was very easy to get into.  Just took the elevator up, were given bracelets and towels, and sent on our merry way.  At least we'd gotten the first bathing together thing out of the way, but we did loiter in the locker room to see how it was done by the locals.  When to strip, which towels to use, at least we knew how to bathe ourselves efficiently!  Sitting on the stools and lathering up.  There were several different outdoor springs at this one, a variety of depths and temperatures. I liked the hotter ones while Emma liked the simply warm ones.  We spent about an hour in there before heading out and rinsing off, drying off, and redressing.  The cost really wasn't bad, I believe around 1600 yen each, which is only about $16.

By then I was hungry, so we proceeded to walk around looking for food... with no luck.  We did have minor snacks but I was craving a real meal.  So I sat and munched on my snacks, while Emma waited on the Bus.  Eventually we got a ride home.  Setting out to dinner at a... I do believe it was another Japanese BBQ place.  Sat on seats that were recessed in the floor.  Paid an excessive amount of money for a very small amount of meat (and $4 a coke, eek!).  Emma bought the meal, she saw me being fussy about cost and offered to purchase it.  I still didn't get much meat, I do remember looking for a particular place that evening.  Didn't find the one we wanted to go to, and it was cold, so we settled on one that we found that was open.  Not bad at least! Just not really as much food as I like (so we got more rice, woo!).

That was the end of that evening!