It was a loooong day...we woke up at 5 to make sure we made the 7:30 train to Hakone. If you plan on going, hop on the subway to Shinjuku station and head over to the west exit. Look for the Odakyu lines and head over to the ticket machines. It will be labeled "Romance Car." If you plan on doing a one - three day trip you're better off purchasing the Hakone free pass. I think it was about ¥5500. This includes tickets to to all the cable cars and trains while in Hakone. It also pays for you initial train ride to Hakone (sort of). You also need to purchase a ticket on the Limited Express for ¥800. Weird. None of the websites we saw told us this. You also need to know what station you will be getting off at. We went to Hakone-Yamato. Grab one of the pamphlets at the station also. It's very helpful. It has a big map and all of the scenic points you will be stopping at
It took about 45 minutes to get to Hakone and we needed to transfer to a bus (station 2) so we can hop on a pirate ship to Hakone Michiko. Don't worry about getting lost, just follow the crowd. Note: THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT! If you get on the bus and you notice that there are no seats left, then turn around!! Get off that bus and wait for the next one. We made the mistake of staying on and I had to stand for about 40 minutes on a windy and bumpy road. Good thing I was by a step in the bus because by half way I had to sit down. I thought I was gonna hurl. The bus kept stopping to pick up more and more passengers. I wanted to get off but we were in the middle of the bus and it woulda been a bitch getting off. I wanted to kiss the ground when we finally reached our destination.
Since I was feeling like crap we decided not to hop on the first boat and just walk around the town for a little bit till I felt better. Good thing it was a cold morning cause I was sweating!!
We hopped on this ship for about 20 minutes to Obako, where we jumped on a cable car. Unfortunately there was volcanic activity going on so our cable car ride was cut short and we had to jump on a bus instead. This time I got to sit down :)
There wasn't much to see from the boat so I didn't take any pictures...these are from the cable car
When we got off there was a lookout point where we could see Mt. Fuji...
couldn't help it. I'm a sucker for these things
Waiting for the bus...
You could see the sulfur coming out from the mountains...
When we got to Sounzan we jumped on one last cable car to Gora
From there you could either take the train back to Hakone-Yamoto to head back to Shibuya but Randy and I went to the Open Air Museum instead. It was a quick 10 minute walk from the station. Normally it's ¥1600 to get in but if you have the Hakone free pass then it was ¥1400
This place was pretty neat
I was waiting for these kids to move out of the way so Randy could sit down but they wouldn't go away!! >:( hahaha!
The Picasso museum was really cool but I wasn't able to take pictures inside...
This was me by the end of the day...
I totally passed out on the train coming home. We were too lazy to go out to eat so we went to the department store at Shinjuku station and picked up some food to bring back to the hotel
This tofu was AMAZING. Very pricey, I just had to see if it was worth the price. It was. Totally.
Yawn! Only a few days left here, not sure what's in store next...
7 comments:
Very, very cool day!!!! 💟 looooved the museum!!!
oh, this is great! I'm going to Japan in October and plan to do Hakone/Fuji so have been researching the pass. Thanks!
V
Yah Jalna it was fun except it was a lot of hopping on and off of stuff but not much else. Randy wouldn't let me stop at every gift shop :(
v - It's worth it. At first I thought it wouldn't be since we were only going for one day but the guy at the station said it was a better deal. Hopefully there won't be any volcanic activity when you're there so you can take the cable car all the way through
What a full full day! I am tired and will sleep well for you.
yah, good thing the train ride from the open air museum back to Hakone-Yumoto was long because I probably woulda missed my stop!
I just hopped over from Jalna's blog. Couldn't resist, especially since you have such amazing photos of Japan. We haven't been there in a couple of years and I'd totally like to go back again soon.
Kay - you should go back! We always have a good time when we go. It's getting really crowded with toursits, more than usual. Kind of frustrating at times (they tend to be very pushy...) but it's still worth going.
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