Hakone

Went to Mt.Hakone for a short trip. It's in the neighbouring prefecture to Tokyo - but considering Tokyo is huge, it's fairly far away. It took nearly 2 hours to get to the bottom of Hakone from Shinjuku. We then should have just got onto a bus to get to the hotel. However, we were in the Tokyo mindset and just got on the Hakone mountain train line. Taking a train up a mountain is pretty arduous if you don't go around in circles. You have to go up for a bit, then stop while the driver changes ends and goes up a different rail track.

It was a bit of a shock to the system after coming from central Tokyo - where you can find a decent train station with a number of lines within 10/15 minutes. The stations here were few, old and basically deserted. All sensible people in Hakone use cars. After this we used buses to get everywhere as they were more frequent and quicker.

Hakone is mostly famous for hot springs where you publicly bathe and a big, scenic lake formed from some volcanic activity a (long) while back. We didn't want to do the bathing option so went to the big lake instead.

The lake isn't huge when considering the other lakes around the world but its certainly the biggest I've seen. We got a ship across it which took about half an hour. For some reason it was a pirate ship.

After the lake, we got a cable car through the mist up to one of the highest points of the mountain, where there were numerous sulphur vents. We didn't really explore the area as we were hungry but looking at Wikipedia now, they specialise in black boiled eggs, cooked in the vents. Wish we looked around now. On sunny, clear days you're abe to see Mt.Fuji but as always when we go on a trip, it was misty and raining.

After that we explored Hakone some more and saw nearly everything. An enjoyable trip.