Day 7 Hakone

I have arranged a spa trip away from Tokyo because I know we would be tired and aching by Day 7. Tokyo city itself has natural springs, but I was looking for a more earthy and natural setting. For these reasons I arranged a 3 day trip to Hakone, the old fashioned 60's honeymooners destination. Hakone is located at the most southwest point of Kanagawa province. It's quite developed in terms of tourism, so many storekeepers and restaurant waiters understood english well. Hakone was not as big as I thought, so 3 days are more than enough to see everything.

I asked our hotel to hold our luggages until we check in again after we came back from Hakone - communicated that through simply writing out the Japanese sentence I found on the internet - it's that easy. Departing by train from Shibuya, it takes about bit more than 1 hour to reach Hakone.   I have been anticipating a Japanese-style train travel of comfy seats and delicious train bento boxes / rice balls. We bought the "Hakone Free Pass", which included the round-trip train ride, and all means of transportation in Hakone (not including taxi, of course), such as the cable car and the boat. 

Our first place to visit in Hakone is the Gora Park. It was an ok park, some nice greenhouse with exotic plants, not wowed by it. I was more wowed by the delicious chirashi lunch in a nearby restaurant. Big bowl of rice topped with minced tuna and salmon, salmon roe, green onions, sesame, seaweed and egg - a nice shot of protein and iodine. The owner was trying to teach me some Japanese sentences (cute). We then visited the Hakone Open-Air Museum - an outdoor sculpture museum. They had a Henry Moore and a Picasso collection, and numerous other contemporary sculpture. The grass were nicely maintained, best visited on a cloudless sunny day. Overall it was really nice and inspiring and I'm sure it will please all art lovers.

At night we returned to B&B Pension, our accomodation for 3 days at Hakone. It was the most budget choice, bathroom is shared between all on the same floor, but since it's in Hakone, of course there will be public bath! I was not bothered by the shared bathroom at all, there's enough space for everyone. Plus, June is low season for Japan domestic travel, so there weren't a lot of people. We basically owned the whole public bath - thoroughly enjoyable.

Dinner we had at a chicken specialty restaurant called 焼き鳥. They had chicken sashimi which was totally gross...one bite of it and that's it. It's just wrong. Then we got complete drunk when we mistakenly gulped the "grapefruit squeeze" I ordered. I thought it was juice, but it's actually sake with a fresh grapefruit for you to squeeze into the sake. We were thirsty, so we just chucked it down, and laughed our whole way through dinner and the way back to the pension.