Today was our overnight trip to HOKONE.
We took a couple of trains to get there (of course)! This time we were able to "upgrade"
to a train that they call the romance car.
This train has reserved seating and the seats face forward instead of
along the sides facing each other. As we
were getting there Mt. Fuji came into view.
Apparently many people don't get the opportunity to see it because of
cloud cover. It was this huge
snow-covered peak. We took a bunch of
pictures.
When we got there (about an hour away) we started our day
of lots of different transportation. The
first thing we did is we got on another train that made 4 switchbacks.
It went up a mountainside and all of a sudden
it stopped and the conductor got off and went to the other end of this 2 car
train. Then we started up going on
another track in the opposite direction.
It was a really interesting way to get up the mountain.
Once we got up we switched to
a cable car. This went up a 20%
incline the whole way.
Then we got off of that and got on
a gondola (like a sky ride) that continued to take us up the mountain. It was very windy and Kyle is afraid of
heights. However, he did really well and
if he hadn't said anything we never would have known.
After we got off of that we were at our
destination. Here there were sulphur
springs.
What they do is take eggs and
submerge them in these hot sulphur springs and the shells turn totally
black. Apparently black eggs are good
luck in Japanese culture. Of course they
had a little shop selling these hard boiled eggs, so we bought some to
eat. It was soooo cold up there. The wind was really blowing and we had to
take quite a hike to get up to the eggs.
We could also see Mt. Fuji there as well, but we couldn’t get the
pictures to turn out because of the sun and the snow on the mountains.
Then we walked back down to the gondola area and ate lunch in their shop. After that we went on another gondola that went the other direction and took us down to Lake Ashi. Here we boarded this large ship that was really ornate and had huge sails (which were closed). This was a 30 minute cruise across the lake.
We ended up in a town
(Motohakoni-ko) where we got off the ship and walked up to a shrine. Of course it was once again up a steep hill
and then up a lot of stairs. I can't
begin to tell you how many stairs we have climbed. It seems that we always need to go up tons of
stairs to get anywhere. I'm beginning to
understand why the Japanese are so skinny.
They walk everywhere and climb lots of stairs.
Then we took the ship back to where we started and took a
bus to the place we were staying that night.
This place was a very traditional Japanese guest house called a
ryokan. When we arrived we had to take
off our shoes and leave them there. Then
they took us to our rooms.
Sheila, Kyle
and I were in one room and Steve and Lydia in the other. The floor of the room was covered with tatami
mats. The size of Japanese rooms are
measured in terms of how many tatami mats.
In our room were 3 beds which consisted of a futon, a sheet then a thick
comforter. There was also a small square
table, low to the floor and 4 cushions to sit on. The windows had sliding paper and bamboo
panels that closed shut for privacy.
There was a shared living room and bathroom areas. I don't think I've mentioned before that they have heated toilet seats everywhere. Also, in the bathroom are plastic slippers that stay in the room but you are supposed to wear them when you are in there.
Every room had yokatas, which were Japanese robes. Everyone was walking around in these. We used
them like robes over our pjs.
They had a tv in the room that played only Japanese shows. There was a game show we could kind of follow, but other than that we couldn't understand anything.
The most unusual feature of this ryokan, is their bathing habits. This is called an onsen. This one had a private onsen, but what you do is disrobe and then you have to sit on this stool by this hot spring and scrub yourself down and then go into this hot spring - which basically looked like a hot tub to us. So people signed up for times to do this. They had an indoor and an outdoor one. They were private, but too out there for us to do – except Kyle tried both the inside and outside ones. Apparently they usually have big onsens that are either male or female and a bunch of women or men are doing this at the same time.
We did sleep pretty well however. Of course Sheila and I were awake by 5 am.,
and Kyle put a pillow over his head. The
sun comes up at about 4:30 am, and goes down about 6:30 pm. So it's hard to stay awake late and it's hard
to sleep in.
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