vacation, in a vacation.

June 14, 2013

We got up this morning at 6:00am to finish packing our bags and get organized for the day. Toyo had prepared us a bento box so we could eat our breakfast on the train.

 Taso, Toyo, and Lucy even walked us to the trolley station to bid us farewell. We ended up leaving even earlier than we had planned, but that just gave us a little more time to not feel rushed for the train. Also we were a little ahead of the morning rush, so the trolley and the train to the main station weren’t packed, which was nice. We ended up catching the Shinkansen at 7:37am bound for Nagoya and didn’t bother reserving seats (mostly because we got on the Nozomi train, which is more direct and has fewer stops, but isn’t covered by our JR Rail pass, shhhhh). We did get seats together and now Ben is napping with his mouth open.

At Nagoya station we changed trains to one that stopped at more of the smaller stations. Conveniently, our next train arrived on the same track that our last train was on, so we didn’t have to rush to another track with only a few minutes to spare between trains. We arrived at Odawara Station at around noon and we still weren’t completely sure how we were going to get to Hakone from there. According to Google Maps, we had to take a bunch of local trains and then a taxi to get to our guest house, but we found that we could take one bus directly there. We ended up getting a two-day “Hakone Free Pass”, which allows us to take all the transit we want in Hakone. However, after getting on our bus we realized that we really should have gotten the three-day pass because now we are going to have to pay to get back to Odawara Station on Sunday (the bus drivers don’t even really look at the passes so we might try to sneak on with our two-day pass, shhhhh).

We arrived at our guest house in the early afternoon and our room was exactly as I was hoping it would be: tatami mat floors, futons, and paper window coverings. 

Our guest house also has a private hot spring bath that you can reserve (as opposed to the public hot spring baths, which are separated by gender, but you are still in there with a bunch of naked people, also no tattoos allowed, not that Ben would have gone in anyways). The front desk staff was nice enough to reserve a time in the evening for us earlier in the day as the evening spots fill up fast. Our room also came with Yukata, which are basically house coats that, according to the booklet in our room, people wear around at the guest house and also in town. 

They are only thin cotton, so I’m not sure that I would wear it around town, also it looks like pajamas… It is very quiet here, there are pretty much no one walking around on the streets and all the businesses look like they are closed. We went for a walk to find food in the afternoon and ended up just getting some snacks at the 7-11 (again). But it is rainy season, so that is probably why this place isn’t bumpin’. It is very beautiful here, it reminds me of home because of the mountains and forest. Our room looks down on a creek and when we have the window open all we can here is the trickling creek and chirping birds; we have been calling this our vacation within our vacation because we have been so busy and now we are just relaxing.

Since we had all afternoon to kill, we took a bus down to Togendai-ko, which is on the shore of Lake Ashi.

 Again there weren’t very many business that looked like they were open, but we did find one store that had a vending machine that sold hot dogs and another one that sold little jars of milk. 

We also found blueberry cheesecake Kit Kats! We planned on doing a whole tourist day on Saturday, so we didn’t bother going to any of the other little towns and instead came back to our guest house to relax. We watched a show that Ben had downloaded and then I fell asleep for probably an hour; I was so comfortable and relaxed….so nice…then it was our scheduled time in the onsen, which was super hot so we didn’t stay in for very long, but it was also very relaxing.

 After my nap and the hot bath, I was pretty much done. We watched another show and went to bed at about 10:00pm.