Hakone

Back to my Tokyo trip! The next place we visited was Hakone, a city located a couple hours away from Tokyo by train. I really enjoyed this city, and I would definitely like to return there. It is known as a mountainous area with hiking, a gorgeous lake, onsens, and excellent views of Mt. Fuji. Unfortunately the day we went, it was quite cloudy, so you can’t quite make out the image of Mt Fuji in the background. We could just barely see its outline through the clouds.
The lake is called Lake Ashi. The ships to sail across the lake were all different, so we were lucky to be able to ride the cool looking pirate ship across the water. We also accidentally broke into the samurai exhibit. I thought we only had to pay to go into the museum, so we walked through the side entrance to just see the outer part, but I guess that was included too. Then we took a picture with one of the samurai before escorting ourselves out before getting caught.
Another famous thing in Hakone is the ropeway car, but they were undergoing repairs, so they were closed. We took an exciting bus up the mountain instead. We visited a beautiful garden that had some amazing flowers and plants. Then we took a small train down the mountain. It would have been a relaxing and beautiful ride if I wasn’t sharing it with 8 million other tourists packed into the tiny train. I realize now that it’s the end of Golden Week that is the busiest.
Even though we just spent the day there, I really enjoyed the “mountain feel” of Hakone, and I would like to visit there again.








I am also including a few random pictures in this blog. The one with the fish socks is in Asakusa on Children’s Day. After that is a wrestling match that we happened to stumble upon. It was quite entertaining, and you can see there were a variety of different wrestlers. And the last picture was of a funny building I saw.