Day 3 - Hakone

We left Asakusa this morning at about 7 and headed to tokyo to get the shinkansen to Odawara (non reserved was very easy thankfully as the reserved carriage was already fully booked) 35mins later we were in Odawara. We waited a few minutes for the free pass ticket office to open and got the tickets for 4000yen adults and 1000yen child, plus we each got gifter chopsticks - very glad i didn't use the ticket machine. Weather was cloudy, no fuji, and possible rain...our accommodation was waiting...so off we went. We rode the local train to Hakone-yumoto, then the scenic train that does a number of switchbacks climbing the mountain until reaching Gora. Then we took the funicular cable car train to near our hotel - Kanon, where we dropped our backpacks (having taqbin our bags to namba already). We then continued our journey up the cable car to sounzan. The ropeway was out of action for the first part and replaced by bus to the next station where we saw the black eggs, volcanic gases and evem some snow piled. It was very windy. We then caught the ropeway to Lake Ashi and got on the pirate ship (much to the children's delight). We stayed on until Moto-hakone where we got off, had some lunch, then walked the cedar forest to the shrine and down to the tori in the water for a photo op. The walking back to moto-hakone we decided to re-use the ship and ropeway, rarher than ride a bus back to Gora. So we did. It then started to lightly rain once we were back in Gora. We decided on an early dinner and went searchimg for somewhere at 5pm. This was difficult and we stumble upon the most interesting (read weird) place. The food was terrible, the decore was like a clutterbig granny's lounge room, even the loo was full of stuffed toys, i mean full!! The kids loved it and the man who ran it was so fum with the kids it kind of made up for the bad food. After that we headed to our hotel where we had our first onsen (private family one) and tonight is our first time sleeping on futons im our japanese room. Bit this place has free ice creams!!.Read more