Day 2

Although I was more than happy to wake up early to meet Dad and Barbara and have a longer day, it meant waking up at 6:30, uuurgh… However, it marked my return to Hakone, which was a very exciting prospect.

Barbara’s main aim was to ride a Shinkansen (bullet train) and see Fuji. Kyoto was near impossible due to time and price constraints, but I had a brain wave; the Shinkansen stopped one station from Hakone, which meant a decent hour ride each way. And not so expensive, at about £20 return per person.



A huge bonus was that the weather was beautiful and Fuji was more clear than I’ve ever seen it. These were taken from a) their hotel room and, b) from the Shinkansen.

The route around Hakone was pretty much the same as my original, so I won’t go into great depths about what we did and in what order. However, it involved a switch-back train up a mountain, a cable-car further up, and a ropeway.



This took us to Owakudani; the “hell valley” which smelt of sulphur. The first time I went there was quite cloudy, so it took me by surprise how visible and near Fuji was; I had no idea before. One of my favourite moments was in the ropeway capsule, when half the people looked to one side and saw the steam rising from the sulphur springs and said ‘Sugoi!’* and the other half saw Fuji and said ‘Sugoi!’, then everyone looked to the other side and said “Sugoi!” again.





Special mention to Dad for his Eminem impression:

This is a close-up of the summit, which takes an hour to walk around. Craziness.

And onto hell valley:


A lot of photos later, and explaining to Japanese people that I’d climbed it a few months back**, and we went to eat some black eggs. Delicious!



The autumnal red leaves were stunning.



A pirate ship across Ashinoko took us to the shrine with the red gate ‘floating’ in the water.




And as the sun set, we walked along the bay, watching Fuji slowly disappear into the night sky.

Unfortunately, the last leg of the journey was on a bus which, thanks to a traffic jam, took a lot longer than expected, but the comfortable Shinkansen more than made up for lost time.

I watched this video on the bus, and it was proof enough that the slow ride was worth it:



It was a great day and I’m glad that Dad and Barbara got to see as much as they did. As they noted, it’s not the easiest country for foreign tourists as it’s not designed for tourism, so without me they would’ve only seen a fraction of the sights I showed them. Just call me “Phil-san, tour guide extraordinaire”.

* Sugoi = great/amazing
**Seeing Fuji so clearly made it seem so strange to think that I’d climbed it. I think if I’d seen how huge and steep it was in this light, I might’ve not attempted it.