My kid asked me if I want to go with him to Japan. “Sure !” I replied.
Since this was a long vacation, I break my trip report into small segments, as not to inundate readers with too much info.
We used Zipair, a budget airline where customer can choose what is needed like in-flight meals, check-in luggage. It is truly a budget airline. There is no free peanuts, soft drink or in-flight movies like other airlines. If one wants a meal, one has to order in advance. One has to pay for check-in luggage. Carry-on is allowed with weight limit of 7kg. When my chicken and rice meal came, I could see why the airfare is so low (150780 Yen – 1033 USD) yet they charged me about 12 USD (1700 Yen) for the tiny meal. My guess is they make extra money with check-in luggage and in-flight meals. No wonder many other travelers brought their own meals and water. Well, I am not complaining. I could forgo free peanuts, meals and movies. This airline does not shrink leg room to get more customers.
After hours of sleep, I woke up to the coast of Japan.
From what I could see this area is mostly farm land. Further in I saw tall buildings and several golf courses. Soon we came in to land. Going through passport control was a breeze. The only hick up was at custom when I declared I had some nuts and fruits (I always packed snack on travel). The custom guy sent me to a food inspector about 20 seconds of walking. The food inspector spoke English fairly well and said everything is ok. And that was it. No stamp of approval or anything on my declaration form. I came back to a different custom guy and told him the food inspector said ok. He just waved me through after collecting my declaration paper. I think Japanese expect honesty from everyone.
I exchanged 100 USD for the Yen, just to see what the exchange rate was and also need some money for train to Tokyo from Narita Airport. And then my first train ride in Japan. The train arrived, everyone got off and I tried to board but was told not to (in Japanese). Luckily another rider told me in English that they were cleaning the train and it would take a few minutes. I had a quick look around and saw that the station is not new, but not that old either. One thing for sure is that it was clean. There are gates separating riders from platform and the tracks for safety.
Soon we got on board and and more than one hour later we arrived at our hotel in Shinjuku city. It was very hot and humid when we got off the air conditioned train. Luckily, the hotel was only 3-4 minutes of walking from the train station.
We used automated check-in station to scan our passports and were issued key cards. The hotel is very modern and situated in a very busy area full of shops, restaurants, convenience stores. Room in this hotel is fairly large (compare to other hotels I stayed in Japan). It has all the comfort we need like fridge, pot for hot water, very comfy beds with outlets nearby. Electrical outlets are same as in US, but at 240AC. However all our USB chargers can run at this voltage.
It was time for dinner (even though our body clocks said otherwise). I changed from hiking boots to my well used sandals, it was too hot to wear boots. And put on my shorts instead of blue jean. My son picked out a small restaurant few minutes of walking from the hotel through narrow streets that one may call an alley in USA. Even though streets are clean and free of trash, every now and then I could detect sewage odor from the gutters. I guess summer heat brought this out.
The restaurant was quite small maybe about 12 seats. It was full so we just waited outside. One of the waitresses came out and indicated that we should wait on the side of the restaurant, where there was a big rock holding out the menus on the shelf of the side window. Soon there were other customers lining up behind us. We went through the menu and use Google Lens to translate the menu. This app was very useful to me.
Once inside the tiny restaurant we ordered Tonkatsu ( a delicious Japanese dish made of juicy, tender pork coated in crispy panko breadcrumbs and fried until golden brown – source: https://drivemehungry.com/tonkatsu-pork-katsu/ ). It came with rice, thinly sliced cabbage, pickled veggie, miso soup and in this particular restaurant, a small chunk of head cheese.
The head cheese came first as an appetizer. I forgot to ask for the Japanese name. I talked to the chef later and he claimed that it was his invention. I think he copied it from some where then modified it (he spoke English quite well). It was good. Mild taste with some nice herbs. This was my first taste of head cheese. Since I was little I did not like the look of head cheese (my family ate this quite often). But after a short stint in refugee camp, my taste for food had changed quite dramatically. I can eat almost everything there are, bad or not.
I ordered an Asahi beer since it was pretty warm in this restaurant. The chef/server showed us different sauces to go with our dish seeing us as tourists (we were the only foreigners there). One was dressing sauce for the cabbage and one was for the pork. Again, I forgot to ask for the names of these sauces. Rice were short grains, but not sweet rice, even though they were quite chewy, but not sticky, and not dry like Basmati. The pork was a little bit light pink. I guess Japanese prefer pork this way. It went well with Japanese yellow mustard and soy sauce. The menu selection for this meal was quite simple. Bigger the piece, higher the price. Since we did not really know how big a piece was base on weight, we ordered the medium size, which was more than enough. I don’t recall this restaurant offers free rice refill or not, but some others do offer free second refill. However, one bowl of rice was enough for me. Most other patrons ordered same dish we did. One group next to us who was there before us, kept ordering more and more pork. They were kind of loud, but then they were drinking and enjoying themselves. They were still there when we left. I was not nosy, but I wanted to see how Japanese handled food and drink the proper way in this type of setting. Like, don’t point with your chopsticks, don’t stir up you miso soup, loud slurping is ok. Google is good, but I still wanted to see how real people do it.
The meal was excellent and filling. One thing I started to notice that whenever we leave a restaurant, the staff (chef and/or waiters, waitresses) would say thank you. And they always say irasshaimase ‘welcome, please come in’ when we entered their place.
We took a walk around this huge city to get our first glance of this part of Tokyo. It was Friday night, so streets were filled with people out seeking fun. The picture below now reminds me of the movie Blade Runner (the woman on big screen). Lot of foot traffic.
We walked through small alleys and wide streets to big city center and shopping mall. There was a band playing some tunes in the square in front of a huge shopping mall. I was not sure if they were street performers since there was not any “collection pot”. It was long after sunset, yet the heat and humidity were still there. Along the way we stopped at a local pub to check out the scene. The pub was very noisy with people eating and drinking. We were still full, so I just ordered a beer to quench my thirst and to have an excuse to observe a Japanese pub. People were drinking mostly beers (that I could see) and eating grilled meat on skewers. I think this was a modern “Izakaya” serving variety of beers and spirits. Iazkaya is a kind of bar but alos serves snacks, especially grilled meat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izakaya.
We headed back to hotel for we were leaving for our next destination next day. Sleep came easy after more than a day of travel and lot of walking about. However, I still woke up around 5AM local time, and this went on for almost the entire time I was in Japan. For sure it was not jet lag, maybe because I was too anxious to see what a new day would bring.
We located a local coffee shop which opened quite early (as compare to those in small town, more on this later). It had western style breakfast, toast with jam or cream cheese, coffee, etc. I ordered toast and cream cheese with red beans, and a big black coffee. The coffee was not some thing I would remember, but the cream cheese with red beans was quite a treat. Mildly sweet, it went well with toasted (mildly sweet) bread and bitter coffee (I take coffee black).
The coffee shop was filled with early risers. Most were engrossed in their newspapers or laptops. Only two of us were talking in this tiny shop. Soon we were out walking the small alleys to see more of this part of city. Again, streets were narrow, very clean and full of small shops. 7-11 stores are quite popular here. There was one in every few blocks, even in small town.
We got a train to catch, so we went back to our hotel to pack our luggage and check out. Not that we had much to pack. Between the two of us, there were a backpack and two small suitcases. The only heavy items were cameras, lap top and an Ipad (for movies on flights, which we never used).
Our next destination was Hakone. It was an important city back in the days. Now, to me, it is a quiet, sleepy, mountainous town, with nice scenery and good places to eat. It took 1:19 minutes of express train ride, to Hakone locates about 84km south-west to Tokyo. Google timeline kept track of my travel. It is very convenient to see where I have been. I captured many pictures while on the train, but nothing really stood out. As soon as we got out of city or towns, there were many fields of rice plants. Along the tracks some sections were full of solar panels. Small houses from a small hamlet dotted the landscape. The train would slow down when passing through town then speed up again. At some places houses were mere meters away from the track. I don’t know if the noise would be problem for those who live there. Room on the train was very spacious and clean. Large windows allowed me to view country side of Japan. There were food and drink available for riders in another compartment.
Soon we arrived at town center, but our resort was a long bus ride up the mountain along steep winding roads (36 minutes). In this part of Japan the fare of the bus depends on how long the ride is. In other places like Tokyo, bus fare is flat fee. But for us, the bus fare, gondola fare was already included in our package we got. All we have to do is to show the driver our tickets on our phones. Quite convenient for us. In small town like this buses are the main public transportation. There a trains, too, but they were mainly for flat terrains.
One thing about buses in Japan, riders usually boarded at rear doors, and then made their way up toward the front to pay for the ride at their destinations. Buses were very small. Some had sign encouraged people to use luggage services or trains. We did not know about that, but then our suitcases were very small and we could keep them between our legs while standing. In the town like Hakone they charged about 10USD to bring a piece of luggage from train station to hotel. Some buses had small platform for small suitcases.
We arrived too early to get to our room, just a bit before noon. However, we proceeded with check-in process. The host asked if he could copy our passports and we agree. I wonder what would happen if we say no. It was the same with other hotels (except one with automated check in, where a machine would scan our passports). We left our belongings with the host and headed out for lunch. I wanted to try bento box lunch, but the place was closed. We found a sushi place but skipped it for looking too “touristy”, then we settled for a very small rustic family run restaurant.
It has only 3 tables for 12 people and a counter for 5 more. We got the last table and the owner/waitress pulled down the sign which probably says OPEN. But this did not stop some tourist from coming in and looked for a table. A group of tourists came in and asked in English if they could sit at the counter and the owner agreed. The owner spoke a little English.
About small town restaurants here in Hakone, many open late like 10AM. Some closed between lunch and dinner (2PM-5PM). Some would not accept credit card.
This was a one chef restaurant, so we had to wait a bit while the cook prepared our meals. I got chicken and tuna (both coated with panko and deep fried). The meal included rice, some noodles, miso soup, shredded cabbage. I ordered a side dish of fermented soybeans. My kid did not want it. I was bracing myself for ammonia smell of this particular dish but it had neutral taste and no smell at all. Perhaps she gave me the tourist version of Natto??? From what I saw on TV, later on, natto has very stringy mucus like stuff which covers the beans. They did some test on a TV show and the string of its “mucus” stretched out for almost 2 meters. My kid decided to try after my assurance, and finished his dish.
Here is what real natto looks like. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natt%C5%8D
Upon paying our bill the host apologized for serving two natto orders, instead of one. We told her it was okay with us. But she kept on apologizing.
With lunch finished, we went to Hakone Open Air museum. It has many sculptures outside on nicely kept lawn. It was a good way to walk off a meal.
This museum required a lot of walking. It had a place where visitors can soak their sored feet in natural hot spring. At that time I did not know there was an active volcano in Hakone, which was the source of hot springs.
It also housed a good collection of Picasso’s work. Few of the works toward the end of his life were of naked women, a lustful look at women yearning for youthful time through his old eyes (according to a description in the museum. No camera allowed in Picasso museum, it was from my memory). So, Picasso had turned into a dirty old man. Kidding aside, I learned a lot about Picasso in this visit. His work was not only limited to painting. He did many sculptures in clay and bronze. And this museum had a good collection of them, too.
Beside Picasso, there were works of other artists from all over the world, too. Since cameras were not allowed, I did not record any of the artists’ names nor works. Here are couple pictures from their website
For more info, please use their website https://www.hakone-oam.or.jp/en/.
There is one part of museum that allowed kids to play on some wooden sculptures. Quite unique.
I am not into arts, but I really like this museum and strongly recommend it.
After the museum we took an old fashion looking train to a cable car (similar to Angel Flight Railway in Los Angeles, but with many stops along its straight route), then to a gondola up the mountain. Only then I realized we were passing over an active volcano. The reason was yellow sulfur dust on the ground, steaming vents and rotten egg odor in the air.
Speaking of eggs, we forgot to try “black eggs” (which were boiled in sulfurous water) which are well known in this region. See this link for more detail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Cwakudani
We then took a different gondola down to lake Ashi. Here we just wandered along the shore a bit and saw this ship, which would be for our trip the next day.
After a bus ride back to our resort where our host had already brought our luggage up to our room. He showed us which slippers to use in hallway, which were for bathroom, and where to store our street shoes at the front door of resort. We went out for dinner at a fancy restaurant, a few minutes of walking away. I call it fancy because this restaurants had waiting room, shelf of red wines, and spacious dining hall, which could accommodate 30 or more patrons, with some western music playing. And a huge parking lot in front.
Again, we used Google Lens to translate the menu. First order was a local beer.
Then I picked a combo dish of duck, rice and soba noodles in hot broth. It came with slimy fermented soybean thin paste (lower right bowl).
…and side dishes..
The soybean was almost tasteless, but went well over rice. Duck meat did not have gamey flavor at all. The noodles and broth was excellent. This meal concluded our first day in Hakone.
Sunday July 23. Woke up about 5AM. Brewed some coffee and waited for my kid to wake up. Today’s mode of transportation was a pirate ship on lake Ashi. We got tickets for first class, which meant we stay on the bow of the ship. They have a little crow nest from which I took picture below. It was a short ride from north of the lake to the south. Sky had low clouds, so Mt Fuji could not be seen on this day. Not much activities on this lake beside couple fishing skiffs.
Once we disembarked, Google map guided us to Hakone Checkpoint which is a National Historic Site since 1923. It was an important checkpoint / choke point in Shogunate era.
Excerpt: “The Hakone Barrier (箱根関, Hakone Seki) was a security checkpoint which was established by the Tokugawa Shogunate on the Tōkaidō highway connecting the capital of Edo with Kyoto in Edo period Japan. In 1923, the site was recognized as a National Historic Site…..”
“….However, the main purpose of the Hakone Barrier was security, especially the enforcement of the shogunate’s regulations on transportation of weapons into Edo and the travel of women out of Edo. As the wives and families of the various daimyō were required to remain in Edo as hostages to the shogunate, this latter regulation was strictly enforced. Out of the staff of 20 people manning the barrier, several were women who performed a physical examination female travelers to ensure that no woman of rank was attempting the leave the capital without permission…..”
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakone_Barrier
We got our tickets then went to see a re-enactment. We had no idea what it was about. There was a lot of shouting from the guy on the left.
After this short drama, visitors were allowed to go and see how people had lived at this important check point several hundred years ago.
The left statute was staring at me ?
We climbed up the hill to the watch tower. Here one could see far across lake Ashi.
From here we hiked along the shore and visited Hakone Sekisyo Museum. Our tickets also included this museum. Like many other museums, no camera was allowed. It displayed more things about life back then at this area. It mentioned a story about a Chinese merchant from Vietnam donated an elephant to the Shogun. The elephant almost died here due to exhaustion and poor diet. However it was nursed back to health with local fruits/grass and continued on to Edo (I presumed). The story did not mention what happened to the elephant afterward.
We hiked further north until it was time for lunch. We picked Hakone Karaage Karatto restaurant. It was full of diners, luckily we got a table by the window, and was given an English menu. I had panko coated fried chicken with special herb/white wine marinade. The meal included “beer bread” (made with flour, sugar and Guiness beer. The menu did not mention yeast used in bread), cabbage soup, salad in a glass, fruits. Chicken paired with cilantro, cherry tomatoes and cream cheese. It was excellent, especially with a cold beer. The special herb was only rosemary. I have never had salad served in a glass.
This establishment allowed pet. There was a house cat and several dogs from customers. When I glanced around at souvenirs display case, I thought how small the bikinis were. They were in fact shirts for dogs, not swimwear, upon closer inspection.
I was full, but my kid wanted to try local bakery across the street. I got a beer and a bacon/sausage bread. While he was paying, I went out side to get a table. I got one, but then realized this table was for people who wanted to soak their feet in hot spring water. Having no interest in soaking my feet, I went and found another table. We ate while watching people went by. My bread was good with a cold beer, despite the fact that I just had lunch. At this area close to the lake, there was light breeze, which really helped in this oppressive heat.
I am not sure how those who wore 3-piece suits felt in this heat. I saw many of them on street during rush hours. Many people carried small battery powered fan to cool their faces. Some used paper fans. My kid went out a bought a compact umbrella since he had only a baseball cap. I always wore hiking pants, long sleeve shirts and a hat with medium size brim.
We hiked toward Hakone Shrine (a Shinto shrine). There were many people in its court yard. The temple looked huge to me (it was my first temple in Japan), until I saw other bigger ones. There were a mix of tourist and worshipers at this place. Tourist looked for places to take selfies, while worshipers bowed their head at the entrance.
We spent some time there looking at things, people, and taking pictures. Prayers would stand in front of altar, drop money in collection box, bow their heads, clap their hands.
Source: https://epic-j.com/j-culture/culture/knowledge-all/o-saisen/
We went down to shore line to see a Torii gate, which we had seen across the lake while hiking from Hakone Checkpoint. There was a long line of people waiting to take pictures. This is the famous Heiwa no Torii. We did not want to wait in line and went on hiking to the south.
From there we hiked back toward the dock of Motohakone Port. Along the way I saw a few fishermen. There were rental skiffs for fishing. We boarded another pirate ship and “sailed” to north shore.
With more than half a day gone, we took the bus to Hakone Venetian Glass Museum. Again, I am not into art stuff, but this is a must see for me. Here is its web page: https://www.hakone-garasunomori.jp/entrance/english/
I took quite a few pictures, but without tripod in low light condition, and reflection from display cases made it very difficult. No flash allowed. Beside the glass display cases would reflect the harsh flash back.
This place also displayed outdoor glass sculptures, which diffracted sun lights into different color depending on angle of viewers.
Below are some pictures I get from its web page. Without the display case, they all look better.
It had modern glass sculptures as well. Here are some from its webpage.
And that was our full day in Hakone. We went back to our place after visiting a 7-11 for some beer and snack. On the way back we stopped by a Buddhist temple which were built in 1300 (according to google). No one was around. The temple was very secluded, and gave visitors an eerie feeling. There were many stone statues dotted the hill side. On the back there was a large cemetery. With low light from setting sun, the whole place looked scary, especially with emotions displayed on faces of many statues.
We were kind of tired from hours of walking, and were not that hungry, so we went looking for a restaurant which sell bento box meals to eat as snacks, but going there twice in two days convinced us that the place was out of business. 7-11 was our next choice for light snacks and beer. My kid tried some kind of fried chicken, I just had ice cream. We ate right in front of the 7-11. Japanese frown on eating while walking. We came back to hotel to relax. My kid was texting his friends who were coming to Tokyo from the US. I just watched some TV while munching on potato chips with seaweed. It was very good, not too salty, and, of course, paired well with beer.
I found wines at 7-11 claiming to be from California. They even had brand like Robert Mondavi with 7-11 logo on the label.
The place we stayed was a residential area with narrow streets and many blind corners. There were many mirrors installed at intersections, drive way for people to see what was coming their way. I don’t recall seeing any speed bumps anywhere. Traffic was very light in this area of town.
I set alarm for 5AM, but woke up before that. The town was still asleep.
We decided to hike to Mt Kintoki, also called Mt Ashigara. I packed my tiny pack with some snack, first aid kit, more than 2 litter of water. The trail was well used, free of trash, but some sections were clearly in need of repair.
On the trail we heard loud crashes in thicket. My first thought was maybe some wild ox, but later we came to a warning sign about local bear. According to the sign, these bears did not like to be shouted at. Just leave them alone.
About 15 minutes in to the hike, my kid said this rock was split by some young boy. Later through internet I found the legend of “super” boy Kintaro who split this rock in half with his ax. Locals had turned it into a shrine (note the string around it with pieces of paper). My kid bought an E-Sim for his phone so it was very fast. My free G3 service was very slow.
And locals had been adding sticks beneath this rock.
We made it to the top after many brief breaks. Even in early morning, the heat was getting to me. On top there was a small tea house. We did not eat there. The toilet cost 200 Yen to use. Paid toilets are fairly common in private places like this. There were already hikers at the top. We just enjoyed view of Mt Fuji. We could also see lake Ashi. On the way here we could see fume/steam coming from the volcano.
It was well into summer here, so there was not any snow on Mt Fuji.
Had we come in spring time, we could have seen Mt Fuji like below.
On the way down I had to use tree roots for support (I did not have hiking poles). The Japanese utilized these hardy roots in many parts of the trail. In other sections there were nylon ropes for hikers to hang on.
We stopped by the Kintoki Shrine.
Excerpt: ” The Kintoki shrine stands at the foot of Mt. Kintoki and is dedicated to Sakata no Kintoki. Sakata no Kintoki was a famous samurai who served Minamoto no Yorimitsu, a samurai in the late Heian period (794-1185). He is also the model for the popular legend of Kintaro.” Source: https://hakone-japan.com/discover/national-park/area-information/highlights/kintoki-shrine/
After the shrine we met Kathy and her daughter on the way to Mt. Kintoki. Chatted a bit about trail condition and paid toilet. She used to live in Napa valley, but now resides in North Carolina. I warned her about the toilet and her daughter laughed, then said she has known about it.
I was really thirsty so I picked up two large cans of citrus coolers. To me it was more like lemonade mixed with beer. I noticed that on top of these cans they imprinted braille.
According to Mr. Reddit it means Osake (alcohol).
With plenty of time left, I took long hot shower, enjoyed my two coolers with chips then packed our luggage and checked out. My plan was to check out at 10. Leave the luggage at resort and to have a traditional Japanese breakfast (rice, soup, eggs, veggie) in a tiny restaurant about 50 meters away. But my son had to meet his friends at the airport soon, so we skipped breakfast, rode back to Tokyo. That was our three days in Hakone.
I wished we have one more day so we can try hot springs, traditional breakfast and black eggs.
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