4/30 Hakone Guest House
To our bad luck, it was a raining day on 4/30. It rained pretty much all night from 4/29. Despite the rain, we decided to go to Lake Asi. We took a bus there. It was only a 10 minutes ride. As it was raining and foggy, we could not see much along the way and at Lake Ashi. Of course, we could not see Mt. Fuji neither. It was a major disappointment. During nice days, a pirate ship will cruise on the lake. We did not have the chance to get on it but just took pictures by it.
Leaving Lake Ashi, we decided to hike to Owakudani. It was a long way up there from Lake Ashi. There were sky trams available if you prefer not to walk for an hour and half uphill. Owakudani is a volcano valley. It is a rocky valley with smoke coming out. It is actually quite interesting place to visit but it is suggested not to stay there too long ‘cause of the air is toxic to people. Beside the scenery, you can also try the famous Hot Spring Black Egg there. It is nothing different from regular boiled egg but the black egg shell. It should be good for health, skin, etc. I tried it before when I first visited Japan 10 years ago and did not want to try it again this time. By the way, if you see a Land Buda in front of Owakudani. You will find hot spring water running from IT and also a ladle by the side. PLEASE DO NOT DRINK THE WATER. The ladle was only for you to wash your hand. The water is not drinkable. More important, my friend tried it and it tasted awful.
On a raining day, it can be very cold and windy at Owakudani in the month of April or even early May. The wind blew so hard and we could hardly stay outside. As it was so foggy too, it was also difficult to take pictures. We had to wait for moments when the fog/clouds cleared out for few seconds and used the few seconds to take pictures. If you go there at the same weather, be patient and wait for the cloud to clear up and you can see the beauty of Owakudani.
After Owakudani, we decided to take the Sky Tram down to Gora. Actually, we had to change to cable car at Sounzan to go to Gora. The view from the Sky Tram from Owakudani was spectacular. Though it was a bit expensive to take the tram, the money was worth it. As for the cable car from Sounzan to Gora, it was not impressive to me. You can actually choose to pace yourself and enjoy the view while walking your way down instead of taking the cable car. Along the way from Sounzan was quite beautiful. If you are not in a hurry or too tired, it can be a very enjoyable little walk and the beauty is that it is downhill all the way!
After stroking a while in Gora, we took bus back to our hotel, the guest house. One of us decided to visit et du Petit Prince museum. As for us, two guys who were not really into the cute Prince, only took some pictures at the entrance. We preferred hot spring, what else I can say. According to our friend, Deborah, the museum did not really meet her expectations and it was too pricy for what you can get from the museum, 1500 yen (1400 yen if you have a coupon). In other words, it seems that we made a right decision of not going in there.
For the last night there, Frederic and I decided to find a good restaurant for dinner. Mmm, I mean at least more genuine Japanese food. After some searching, we ended up in a sake house run by a cool looking guy. We wandered a little before going in. We were a little concerned that it would not be a right place for foreigners and especially we two could not speak or read Japanese. We went into the store and we first found no one. We tried our terrible Japanese “sumimasen” to get out a guy, the owner and the chef. He kind of stared at us and we stared back. We tried to get a menu but there was no menu, expect some hand writings on the wall. He did not speak any English and we knew pretty much nothing about Japanese. With some phases and body language, we somehow got a pretty good meal and two glasses of beer. Trying to communicate pretty much with only body language and hand gestures is quite a unique experience and the guy was kind enough not to throw us out due to our inability to talk with him in Japanese. He even brought up the name of the famous singer Teresa Teng as his friendly gesture to us. Again, after the beer and ramen, we walked our way back to the hotel with a big smile on our faces.
There was coin laundry service in the guest house. Therefore, it was convenient for us. It costs 200 yen to use the washer and 100 yen for 30 minutes of drier. In other words, it costs about 400 yen to a load of laundry.
5/1 Kashiwaya-Ryokan, Gunma (Shima onsen)
Very luckily on the last morning in Hakone, the sky cleared up. It was sunny and bright, a very beautiful morning. We took the last chance and went to an observation point overlooking Mt. Fuji. When we saw Mt. Fuji, we could not help but dazzled by its beauty. It suddenly made sense to us why it is such a sacred place to Japanese. The shape is just perfect, and with some snow on the top made it even more beautiful. It was the first time I felt that I was really in Japan after being there for almost 5 days. To some extend, Japan has some similarities to China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, especially Taiwan. But the view of Mt. Fuji made all the similarities disappear.
As our next stop was Gunma, we had to get back to Tokyo and take Joetsu or Nagano Shinkansen to Takasaki and then JR Agatsima line to Nakanojo. Again, we had lunch boxes on our way to Tokyo and changed train to Takasaki. This time, the ride was about 50 minutes and then another 50 minutes of train ride to Nakanojo. To Shima, we took a 30 minutes bus ride to our hotel, Kashiwaya-Ryokan.
Kashiwaya is a Japanese style inn. It is in front of a creek. We loved it when we set eye on it. The person who received us was Masuo Kashiwabara san. Masuo san was the manager and also the son of Kashiwaya-Ryokan. The rate was about 12,000 yen per person per night, including two meals, dinner and breakfast. As we arrived late, we decided to check out its outdoor hot spring bath first and then have dinner in the room.
There were total three outdoor hot springs in Kashwaya. One was rock style, one was wood style. One of the two is for men while the other one for women, and switch the next day. Therefore, for everyone who stays there more than one night can enjoy both. The third one was barrel style and it required reservation and it costs 1400 yen.
The hot spring was very smoothing and the hot bathes were very nicely decorated. I have only two complaints about them, first they were a bit small and second the walls were too high.
After taking hot spring bath, we changed to Japanese rope and got ready for dinner. The dinner was served in the room. After spending 5 days in Japan, we had our first fancy feast in Japan. The food was very nicely presented and tasted very good (o-yi~~~~~shi in Japanese). The dinner was in great varieties, served with cold, warm and hot dishes. Moreover, the famous Japanese rice was cooked at sight. It was carefully planed that the rice would be done after we finished all the main courses. After enjoying our soup, sushi, etc, having a bowl of rice brings a perfect ending for the dinner.
After the dinner, we decided to take a walk so to burn some extra calories that we took in. As we were deep in mountains, we could see stars clearly. For people who spend most of our time in cities, it was a great opportunity to be reminded how beautiful stars could be. One spooky thing happened to our little walk, though. While we were walking on deserted street, we met a Japanese woman in kimono. She bowed to us as she passed by us. When I turned my back to see her, I saw her stopped at the stair way and bowed. I thought someone would come out from the stair way but there was no one…I could not help but wonder who she bowed to…
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