Hakone

We left Kyoto early on the Shinkansen (bloody amazing trains) with the idea of visiting the area of Hakone. It is a popular tourist area here being only 1/2 hr out of Tokyo. It offers a circuit that include switch-back train up to around 400m, cable car up to around 900m, rope car (enclosed chair lift) up to around 1000m before it takes you down to the lake on the other side. Then you can take a cruise along the length of the lake and finally a bus back to where the switch-back train gets you back to the start. One of the reasons we chose this was it seemed a relaxing way of seeing amazing scenery including lots of views of Mt Fuji and the lake.

All around the area there are many things to see and do. More than we expected. The switch-back train had several stops and we were keen to get off at the Open Air Museum. We had read about it and were not disappointed. This museum also had lots of fun sculptures that were also kids playgrounds. This one was huge. If you look carefully you can see people inside this wooden structure. It also had an amazing woven suspended sling that the kids could climb into and run around on. It was probably 20m across at least.

There was a footbath with hot spring water feeding through it. It was a trough of about 30m long. This is us at one end of it and it was full of people enjoying the 65C water. There were also river rocks set into the bottom of the trough to stand on to massage our feet. We werent planning to use it but a Japanese man coaxed us into it extolling the therapeutic values of the water. We were happy he did. It eased our feet.

Some of the dozens of sculptures throughout the park. People in the bottom of the pic for scale. The surrounding mountains provided additional background scenery.

A very large mosaic approx 5mx10m with our favourite being the bronze person lying in the grass in the foreground.

A very large perspex or acrylic sculpture the kids were climbing through. You can see a couple in there. You had to be under 13 to enter so we stayed out! The timber boardwalk below it that you can see a little of was really well done. It followed the contour of the hill in a seamless flow.
A rainbow of squares running down the hill. The kids were loving running through it.
One of 2 egg seats. It was big enough that at least 20-30 people could sit around it.

Kathy - you did tell us it was very popular and to look out also for the swan paddle boats when we got to the lake. Alas the reality of our decision to visit this area on a Sunday in the middle of a long weekend soon hit us. After visitng the museum we joined the ever lenghthening queues to head for the cable. We waited 15 mins for the cable car and then when we got to the 900m stop we saw the queue for the rope car was over 100m long. I asked someone if it was moving fast and they said it would take only 10 mins. After 30 mins we thought we were just about there when we realised what we thought was the front of the queue was just a break in it and it continued for another 50m or so. At this point we looked at each other and jointly agreed to cut our losses and head down the hill rather than further up. We could see it being a rather LONG day if we didnt. Also there were so many people that once you got into a train or alike it was so crammed you couldn`t see much anyway.

We headed for our hotel in Tokyo and were happy to be here by 4pm. We stayed the night in a hotel we had been in before and it was a thrill to know where we were going and it felt like arriving home for a change. This was always our plan to stay one night for now and today we head up to Yamagata. It is a 3 hr journey so we are enjoying a laptop in our room again and relaxing morning.