Almost immediately after, we grabbed our 2-day Odakyuu passes for unlimited travel on trains, buses, cablecar, and ropeway in the Hakone Area, just like I had done last time. I've been to Hakone once before with my mom and sister, but Kristin had never gone before, so I wanted to give her the same experiences.
After a 2 hour train ride into Kanagawa prefecture towards Mt. Fuji, we finally arrived in the the small town of Gora, which is the gateway to the Hakone Ropeway. Last time I came here, the tofu shop I wanted to go to was closed. This time, I finally got to try what the hype was all about.
The restaurant is called 田むら銀かつ亭 (Tamura Ginkatsu-tei), and they sell various fried foods. Their most famous item is made from a special 銀豆腐 (gin-dofu, or "silver tofu") made at a store just down the street. We first went to the tofu-maker's shop to taste-test the raw tofu served with soy sauce. Then, we hopped down to the restaurant just down the street to eat lunch. We ordered the famous ginkatsu, as well as some fried shrimp and pork cutlet.
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| Fried shrimp and pork cutlet |
After lunch, we took the cablecar up to the ropeway station, and took the ropeway up to 大涌谷Oowakudani. We walked up to the sulfur pools again and bought black eggs at the teahouse at the top. The day was coming to an end and the ropeway was about to shut down, so we left almost immediately and got back on the ropeway to continue into Tougendai.
Last time I came, there was just enough cloud cover to keep Mt. Fuji from being visible. This time, the clouds were even worse, and we could barely even see Lake Ashi below us. Sadly, we wouldn't see Fuji for this entire trip. It would be best to time the trip for a sunny and clear day, but planning that in advance is pretty impossible unless you're spending a long time in Tokyo without a tight schedule.
Upon arriving at the Tougendai station, we immediately boarded a bus towards our lodging in Sengokuhara, the closest town. We checked in to Fuji-Hakone Guest House, which is a small minshuku inn-style building. One of their perks is that they speak English and accept credit cards (Visa and Mastercard ok, but no JCB for some reason).
For dinner, we walked further into town to go to my favorite restaurant in the area, Daichi いなか家大地. They serve home-style Japanese food like しょうが焼き ginger pork or fried tofu, and the open kitchen and dining area is always comfortable and inviting. Very few other places are open in the evening anyways, so Daichi is always my first choice.
After filling up on delicious food, we called it a night and walked back to the inn to take an early bath in their private bathhouse. The milky-white ofuro water was hot and refreshing, and being able to bathe together privately is a nice perk for couples at these smaller minshuku. Clean and sleepy, we went to bed.
The next morning, we went out to try to get some breakfast. As we walked along the street, we discovered that most places in the area don't open until at least 10 am. We made it to the end of the road, so we paid a visit to the local Buddhist temple, 長安寺 Chouan-dera. We wandered here and there taking pictures, weaving through the grassy hillside filled with stone statues, and chasing down small colorful snakes.
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| Small stone island with accompanying place of worship |
After retrieving our luggage, we took the bus back down to Tougendai to catch the pirate-ship ferry to Hakone-machi. The scenery was much greener this time around compared to the winter, but the rolling clouds made visibility low. After landing, we started our walk towards Moto-Hakone, stopping to have some amazake warm sweet rice wine, a few manju red bean buns, and a nozawana oyaki grilled bun stuffed with pickled vegetables.
Halfway to Moto Hakone, there is a large park sitting on a peninsula that overlooks Lake Ashi and has an abundance of various flora. There is a historical building there too, but we weren't interested enough to go inside. We were having too much fun climbing the park's many stairs and taking panoramic photos of the lake.
Continuing on, we walked down the path lined with giant old cedar trees, and found a giant rhinoceros beetle along the way. We didn't stay in Moto-Hakone long, only paying a visit to Hakone Shrine to have a look and eat their famed 五色糯 goshokumochi that I talked about in the previous post. On our way back from the shrine, we snacked on surprisingly good sausages and buttered potatoes at a small wiener house.
For a new twist, we wanted to try the amazake at a teahouse down a somewhat unused road. Since the buses were very infrequent, we tried hiking there up a winding old trail. This trail was "paved" with stones, but the kinds of stones that aren't flat but have jagged edges sticking in every which direction. It was very steep, so walking on it was tiring, and the risk of tripping or twisting an ankle was uncomfortably high. The dirt gutter beside the path was much easier to walk in, so opted to step off the "paved" trail.
Many minutes later (I'm pretty sure waiting for the bus would have been faster), we finally made it to the teahouse, called the 甘酒茶屋 amazake chaya. It's a very old-fashioned building, although I'm not entirely sure if its age. The inside is dim and barely lit, and the wooden stump tables and chairs sit atop a mere dirt floor. There is a large outdoor seating area as well, also furnished with wooden stump amenities. The place was filled with people, and the waitresses were busy delivering the many cups of amazake the patrons ordered. Most people were buying iced amazake served only in summer, so we decided to try that. It was a poor decision... cold amazake tastes much worse than having it hot (kind of like coffee), so we had trouble finishing the glass. We ordered a hot one afterwards to wash the gross taste out of our mouths, and that one tasted much better.
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| Amazake Chaya |
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| Hot amazake and sake pickles |
We rode the next bus onwards back towards the civilization of Hakone Yumoto. Yumoto 湯元 means "source of water", which is appropriate because Hakone Yumoto is a famous hot spring town with many onsen to choose from. We stopped at a hot spring spa called 天山 Tenzan to take a nice bath. This outdoor hot spring onsen is nestled in the mountainside and has many pools of different temperatures to choose from (even a bubbling ice bath!). There are also smaller rock pools at different heights along the mountainside that you can climb stairs into.
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| Large lower pools |
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| Boy enjoying the uppermost pool |
This was one of the nicest onsen I've ever been to, but it was made somewhat less pleasant by the crowd of people I had to share it with. Needless to say, we spent a long time relaxing here, and we missed the bus we had planned to take. After more than an hour of soaking, we took the next bus back to Hakone Yumoto station and finally took the train back into Tokyo.
Luckily, even though we had to catch a later bus, we still had enough time to grab dinner and ride the last train to the airport. That night, we stayed overnight in the domestic departure terminal of Narita Airport awaiting an early morning flight to Osaka. Now you see why we planned a trip to the hot spring bath, right? Anyways, thanks for reading this far, although it may have been repetitive for those who read about my last trip to Hakone. Next time, I talk about my first time in my favorite region in Japan: Kansai!
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