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[S-series] Tokyo-Hakone Travel Journal Part 1: Arrival in Hakone and Odawara Castle
[S-series] Tokyo-Hakone Travel Journal Part 2: Exploring Hakone 1/2 – Sengokuhara, le petit prince museum, owakudani black eggs (Image-intensive!)
[S-series] Tokyo-Hakone Travel Journal Part 4: Going back to Tokyo, Ichiran Ramen, Cat Cafe Calico and Sensoji!
[S-series] Tokyo-Hakone Travel Journal Part 5: Last day in Japan, The Roastery by Nozy Coffee, Yoyogi Park and Blue Bottle Coffee.
Watch our day 1 vlog here:
Because I’m too long winded like bagpipes.
SIGHTSEEING BOAT FROM TOGENDAI
We left Owakudani and came to Togendai on a bus, because the rest of the ropeway to Togendai was under routine maintenance, our luck is great. But we still get to ride this rather convincing pirate ship inspired sight seeing boat.
That’s a small pier for the local fishing community, no idea why I included this shot.
Here’s Claire, trying to get a nice tan. (Actually, I asked her to do that. My bad.)
It is said we can catch a glimpse of Mt Fuji on this boat. No such luck today. So I took a shot of Mt Komagatake, which we unfortunately didn’t have the time to visit.
HAKONE-MACHI
Arrival at Hokone Machi, and this is the first thing I see, 2 foreigners harassing a local peddler. Wait wait I’m just joking, I think they’re just trying to buy a couple of ikayaki on sticks.
We walked for a good 15 mins, passing the restored Hakone Checkpoint, but we were a little late so everything there is closing. We just decided to walk pass it and look for the Ancient Cedar Avenue.
So here we are, surrounded on both sides by towering cedar trees.
Its like entering another world. Suddenly we’re like hobbits in the land of the Giants. Like Jack and the Bean stalk kind of travel.
How the trees grew so straight and so tall? Something I will never know. Now this is my kind of travelling, surrounded by greens and admired the overwhelming force of nature.
MOTO-HAKONE
Walking along the Ancient Cedar Avenue, one will arrive at Moto-Hakone. Another quiet little town trampled by tourists in the area. Well at least you still see people getting on with their live fishing for dinner.
Our main objective here is to visit the Hakone Shrine. Or more specifically, the Torii gate on the lake. So of course we went straight towards it, and we’re surprised to see a queue forming up in front of it, with people trying to take a photo with it. Its just like the blue boathouse on Perth’s Swan River, a long queue in the rain trying to get a nice shot… Well we just follow the mob mentality and queue meekly all the way to the last spot.
When its our turn, I urge Claire to move forward quickly to pose for a shot. I hate this kind of situation, where there are people behind me waiting for their turn. No matter how patient they can be, the fact that they are waiting put lots of pressure on me…
So when pressured in such a way, my shots became even crappier than they already are.. But the good thing is, as it turns out, there will also be people ready to help you take a photo.
I asked a friendly guy behind me to help us take a photo, after Claire made me do it of course. If you people haven’t already know, I’m hopelessly shy in such situation. The guy who took my shot happened to also be the one who commented about my ‘S’ brand mirrorless full frame camera. Well, dude, don’t hesitate anymore. Sell your current set up and pick up a used one of my camera model for cheap. You won’t regret it.
After all that, since there’s some daylight left, we climbed the little hill (stairs) to the main shrine area. After we ‘purified’ ourselves at the spring back at the base of the hill. Some mutual respect won’t hurt.
We were greeted with this ring of grass. I haven’t any clue what’s this about. But well we are not going to disturb it. Now, in the safety of my own home typing this, I did a quick Google search on this ring of grass. It turned out to be that, by stepping through the ring, its an act of purification to clear ourselves of misdeeds and impurities. Bummer. Should’ve just walked through it.
And this is the famed Anzan-sugi (cedar of safe delivery) of which Claire stood like 3 metres away from it at all times. Well we heard stories of Singaporean people visiting the shrine to touch this tree in order to ensure a safe delivery or even to get pregnant. Not time yet.
I think this must be the kuzuryu fountain, because I counted 9 heads. Apparently there’s also a superstition about floating a piece of paper on the water to pray for something. Kinda forgot the details, you guys just have to go there to find out.
Its quickly turning dark now so we beat a hasty retreat back to Moto-Hakone town.
HUNTING FIREFLIES AND THE WALK TO KOWAKIDANI STATION
Here comes the boring part.. We took a bus to Kowaki-en where there’s a park in/near the Hotel that always have fireflies during summer. Its early summer now, means its summer right? So we went there to hunt for the glowing bugs.
Little did we know, the bus we took to the area was the last bus. And we were blissfully ignorant of that fact, went on walking one big round around the perimeter of the hotel because we don’t know whether or not can we trespass the hotel premises without staying there. I followed my map and found a park after 45mins of walking. The sun has set and oddly enough, the park has lots of lamp posts but only 20% of them were lit. It was deserted save for 2 couples we encountered on our way in…
Then we saw a signboard saying ‘fireflies sighting area 2’ and knew that we came to the right place! I did a Google search about the fireflies and read that they were most active around 8pm. It was 6.30pm. So me and Claire, we stood there and waited till 9pm. Catching nothing but mosquitoes… What a disappointment!!
During that time we did walk around and there were many more people also trying to look for hotaru (fireflies). In the darkness, one Japanese guy even asked me something in Japanese, I heard something like ‘mieru’ and ‘desu ka?’ I’m like ‘Sorry I can’t speak Japanese.’ And he went silent mode.
So in the end we just decided to leave the park and walked towards a nearby building, which so happens to be Kowaki-en, the hotel we didn’t dare to intrude.. Well no one stopped us and everyone seems welcoming enough. Even the nice toilet which I used has warm seats for me to facilitate my bowel movement. We then found out at the bus stop that we’ve missed every bus that service the area.
We walked about 50mins to the nearest train station, stopping at 2 konbini (24 hrs convenience store as it is called in Japan) for snacks to fuel the walk along mountain roads. When we finally see the station from a small cliff, it was salvation.
But little did we know after the train brought us to Gora, we have to walk the horrible short cut back to our bnb. I decided to walk along the road because the short cut was a little too dark and Claire was getting a little jumpy now. So I thought the road will be better.
The roads here winds a lot and when we cleared a bend, there’s a good 100m of unlit stretch. Its almost 80% darkness, if you can calculate darkness like that. I sense Claire’s fear because her palms were getting a little moist now. I dug out my headlamp, I have lots of stuff in my bag; I’m Dora-simon, and started shining the light on us. Why you might ask? My biggest fear would be a speeding car mowing us down along this narrow mountain road you see, although I love Japan so much I wouldn’t mind dying here, but I would prefer it to be a death of natural causes. So we have to make ourselves visible.
It is here, half way along this dark road that we saw a single firefly. No people I’m not making this up like a publicity stunt. We saw it, its giving off an intense, slightly greenish glow. Maybe its dark here so I thought it was intense, but yeah it flew pass us and then turned off its light, its gone just like that. I have to say, its kinda mesmerizing when it flew slowly, almost deliberately towards and pass both of us like that. Claire love it, got real excited and her palms sweat even more.
And you think I’ll end the story here? No chance. We continue on to light, and saw the stairs that comprises the 2nd half of our beloved short cut. We decided to continue that way because its lit by a few lamps. Claire was still a little jumpy at this point, and when she’s like that… Her reflexes and stuff will all go into shut down when she trip over something. That’s what happened.
When we got out of the short cut, there was a 10cm tall step. At the moment right before she got to the step, I talked to her. So she got distracted and missed the 10cm tall step. Her foot landed in a bad position and she sprained her ankle. Dang it. My bad.. She said when she missed the step, she just frozed in shock and let her foot land in whatever posture she was in at the time…
So i apologised profusely and helped her walk the rest of the way back to our bnb. Back in the bnb I made her ice her foot.
Lousy end to our Day 2. There’s still Days 3 and 4 and she have to do all that with her bad ankle. That sucks.
To be continued.
Simon Tey
