Freedom!!!

After getting up and having a leisurely breakfast, my new touring buddy Fernanda and I headed to the train station to start our whole free day of sightseeing. We had agreed to try to visit the Hakone National Park where we hoped to see Mt Fuji and swim in hot springs! Our sightseeing journey began about an hour’s train ride from Yokohama, and we wound through the suburbs of Yokohama/Tokyo and into the hilly green countryside west of the cities.

We arrived in Odawara, where we were attempting to buy our Hakone “Freepass,” which according to the guidebooks allowed us to travel around the areas surrounding the national park. We found a super-informative English speaking information office, and got a map and tons of information about where we were planning to go! This was possibly the most helpful/understandable interaction I have had with anyone Japanese thus far!

We found the ticket office, paid 3900¥ (almost $50) for our travel pass, and got on the train that was supposed to lead us to the start of the park. Hakone is popular because there is a large sightseeing loop that involves first a switchback train up the mountains, then a cable car, then a skytram/gondola/ropeway–thingy, and concludes with a boat ride across a lake and then a short bus ride back to where you start. From several points on the journey you are supposed to have amazing views of Mt. Fuji and there are both swimmable hot springs and natural geothermic boiling pits on the volcanic mountainsides.

We got off the connector train and were instantly surrounded by THOUSANDS of Japanese tourists – not only were we the only westerners in sight, but most people were being lead around in huge tour groups. We were herded through the station, out the back, and into a seemingly never-ending line of people in the parking lot waiting for the supposedly scenic sightseeing switchback train. The prospect of actually getting on a train or seeing anything appeared rather bleak, but as usual, we were pleasantly surprised by the extreme efficiency of the Japanese people.

After less than 10 minutes waiting, and after only one train arrived, we were miraculously back onto the platform and in line for the train! One arrived a few minutes later, and while we were a bit crowded on the train, it wasn’t uncomfortably full and we were on our way! The cute little train chugged up steep hills while passing through thousands of flowering hydrangeas, which I assume were helping to draw the huge crowds of Japanese tourists.

Every few minutes the train would stop, the tracks would be switched, and it would begin moving in the opposite direction but climbed further up the mountain. It was a pretty ride, and the tracks hovered on the edge of steep verdant valleys with small streams and waterfalls running through them. We decided to get off one stop before the end of the line (where we expected all the other tourists would pour off the train) and try to find a hot springs in Fernanda’s book. We squeezed ourselves out of the train and into the cool fresh air…but there appeared to be almost NOTHING outside the station.

After our soak :)

We walked up and down the road around the station, but there were absolutely no sign or maps with anything even close to English, and we had no idea where to find the springs. We went back into the “station” (think platform with a wall around it), and tried to ask the ticket guy. I believe he tried to explain to us that there were no close springs for swimming, only one where we could soak our feet….so we gave up and jumped back on the next train that came by.

See Mt Fuji?! Me neither....

By this point we were hungry, but of course, we were not alone. When we got off at the end of the switchback train line, every restaurant was not only packed with lines of people out on the sidewalks, but we couldn’t find anything with a picture or English menu.  I tried some street food, but what I thought was going to be a sweet dessert-like thing  (it looked like a funnel cake, but the Japanese man making them on the street was grilling it over hot coals), got dunked in a bucket of soy sauce before being handed to me. It had the consistency of a gigantic desiccated teething biscuit that tasted like soy sauce and seaweed. Needless to say, it didn’t exactly hit the spot, but we gave up and tried to find a hot spring to soak in.

This time, the “information” office was much less helpful. The woman behind the desk had a list of frequently asked questions written out on a piece of paper in English: when I pointed at “I just want to take a hot springs” (haha) with the Japanese characters written underneath, she began rapidly chattering back to me in Japanese. As you can imagine, we just looked back at her with blank faces, and were eventually handed a map of the town with a circle around something, told the word “bus”, and were pointed east. Luckily, she also handed us a brochure (in Japanese) that had a picture of a hot springs bath house on it and told “one thousand yen,” so we thought we might be close to the right place.

We saw no buses, but the soy-sauce-teething-biscuit salesman took at look at the map and pantomimed directions to us.  I held the brochure out in front of us, and just tried to start matching storefronts or symbols with any of the signs we saw. Miraculously, I matched the three symbols on the front of the pamphlet with a sign, and we found the totally nondescript bath house!

Guidebook said the view would be great!

We went inside, removed our shoes, and rang the bell at the front desk. We were told 1000¥ for a shared room or 3600¥ for a “private” room. We chose the cheaper option, although we were a bit nervous about the possibility of being forced to remove our bathing suits which we were hoping to keep on. We were given slippers, lead to a changing room, and showed how to use the small lockers for our valuables. We were handed “towels,” which were about the size of a hand towel, showed where to leave our clothes, and then left without any other instructions.

I had read that we were expected to bathe naked if it was a gender-specific area, and I peeked into the room which contained the pool. I saw one rather annoyed-looking,  naked Japanese woman, and quickly shut the sliding door again. We still decided to try to use bathing suits (you would think a Brazilian and an American would be bigger exhibitionists than Japanese women!) and changed. We braved the steamy room and entered to find a smallish, in-ground pool with a wall of showers on one side. I had also read that you were expected to shower before entering, and we lined up next to the lone annoyed woman, who was showering. We soaped up and rinsed off, and by the time we were ready to get into the water, she left the room and we were alone.

I grabbed my camera to try to get a picture, but it was so steamy that it just kept fogging up my lens! I gave up and got into the water – it was great! I hadn’t realized how tired I was, but we had already done a lot of walking and had taken about 2.5 hours of public transport, most of which was standing. It felt so nice to soak in the warm water, and it was just like a huge mineral hot tub! We alternated floating in the water and lying on the cold tile stairs for a while, and it was really relaxing! We knew we had a lot more to see, so we eventually showered off and got dressed. The place was really nice, and they provided soap, hairdryers, etc.

When we were all put back together, we went back to the station to find a snack and catch the cable car further up the mountain. We didn’t find any open snack options on the way to the station, and as we got there the cable car was leaving, so we rushed to catch it. It was a short ride, but for the whole 10 minutes we went straight up the hillside!

Sulfur boiled eggs

At the top, we were greeted with a view of the valley below – it was pretty, but there were a lot of hazy, low hanging clouds, and we didn’t have much hope left for seeing Fuji. There were no buildings or restaurants around save the station, so we went back in and caught the skytram/ropeway. It was hanging gondola-type thing, and we were lifted into the air on cables and silently whisked further up the green hills! About 30 seconds into the ride, the gondola was completely engulfed by the foggy clouds, and we could see nothing for the rest of the ride!

We got out of the gondola at the area named Owakudani, and were immediately struck by the strong smell of sulfur. Owakudani is known for the boiling sulfur springs found around the area, and the mountain is actually an active volcano. We were turned away from the two tourist restaurants near the station (apparently the don’t serve any food after about 2pm and we missed our opportunities for a real lunch) and grabbed some noodles from a little food stand. They were less than delicious, but we were starving and had no idea when we would find food next!

We followed the parade of tourists to the start of the “nature trail” and hiked the paved stairs up even further. There were signs all around telling up not to “linger” since many of the sulfurous gases around us were poisonous! We crossed a small hot sulfur stream and at the top of the stairs found a small collection of boiling pools: these pools are famous because they actually hard-boil eggs in them. These eggs, after about an hour of boiling, turn completely black on the outside due to the water. 5 eggs costs 500¥, so we shelled out our money like everyone else and tried to stand upwind of the sulfur vents while peeling our eggs.

These black eggs are supposed to confer 7 years of longevity, so we gathered our courage and dug in: amazingly, they tasted pretty normal with a bit of salt! There were tables laid out in rows and we stayed for a few minutes watching them fill with layers of black shells before snapping a few photos and heading for fresher air!

From there, we were supposed to be able to take another ropeway with “spectacular” views of Fuji, but not only was the ropeway closed for maintenance, but it had begun to drizzle. We found a bus, and aimed for the lake that was supposed to complete the day’s travel loop. Once we boarded the bus, I took a quick look at one of the booklets the helpful information lady gave me and realized that the last boat of the day left at 5pm…..it was 4:40pm and we had NO idea how long the bus ride down the mountain was!!!

Just as I started to freak out that we were going to be stuck 3 hours from Yokohama with no place to stay on a Sunday night, we arrived at the dock and ran for the boat. We boarded with about 3 minutes to spare and were truly amazed at how accidentally lucky we were – we hadn’t even thought to check when everything closed, but we were on the last boat that connected to the last bus back to the train station!

The boats were beautiful! There were two huge ships that resembled Disney’s interpretation of a pirate ship: bright red and teal boats trimmed in gold with tall masts floating on the aqua water. The scenery was also breath taking, and the spring-fed crater lake was surrounded with green hills capped by the eerie hazy clouds.  We went to the top deck and enjoyed the chilly but pretty 30 minute ride across the lake.

Again, from the middle of the lake you are supposed to have yet another fantastic view of Fuji, but today just wasn’t our day, so we gazed at the shrines, temples, and hotels on the shore as we floated past. It was really cool!

Once we docked, we walked to the bus stop – we were hoping that we could take the last bus (it was 5:30 and the last but was listed at 6:30)…but the last bus on the posted schedule had an asterisk next to it followed by a bunch of Japanese characters, and I was afraid that meant something like the bus didn’t run that late on Sundays. We really wanted to go explore around the dock because there was supposed to be a lot of historical/cool things to see (a shrine, a cedar lined historical road that looked really pretty in pictures, and a few other Shogun-built buildings),  but we were unsuccessful in communicating with the locals for information on the last bus timing.

Since we didn’t want to get stuck, we stayed at the stop, skipped the sightseeing, and waited for the bus. It came a few minutes later, but we were got stuck in traffic the whole hour+ down the mountain! Ultimately, we made it back to Odawara, took the hour-long train back home, and arrived back to the hotel. We hadn’t had a real meal all day, so Fernanda and I dropped our bags, freshened up, met up with some other students, and went for sushi.

We were the only 4 people in the sushi bar when we walked in at 9pm save one local, and we seemed to be quite the spectacle. The two sushi chefs and the other patron appeared to be chatting and laughing about us throughout our whole dinner, but the sushi was yummy, the beers were cold, and we traded fun sightseeing stories with the two guys who came to dinner with us.

Like every night so far, we grabbed an extra beer at the convenience store on the way home, hung out in the lobby for a while, and then headed to bed to prepare for a LONG day of science tomorrow!