When we were first planning to come to Japan, Saf had made a preliminary plan to go skiing in Hokkaido after we left Tokyo. However, logistically and financially this didn’t work out to be practical, so we instead decided to make a pit stop at Hakone to take a quick tour of the Hakone Loop, before continuing on to Matsubara for the Sumo tournament. We packed up and left Tokyo, and were in Hayakawa in less than two hours, in a charming air bnb right by the sea. Having dropped our bags, we did a quick turnaround and left for Hakone-Yumoto to start the loop.
The Hakone Loop is a circle around the Hakone area, and buying a 2 or 3-day pass enables you to journey round the whole circuit via five methods of transport: train, cable car, ropeway, pirate boat (their words, not mine, I swear) and bus. It takes you via a volcano, several locations, museums and places to see, however sadly we were in a rush as we only had the one afternoon, so we pretty much just stayed on the transport the whole way round.
It started off easily enough, with a train to Gora where we got onto the cable car. This took us to the ropeway, which carried us up past the site of a volcano. The aim of the game here is to spot Mount Fuji (spoiler alert: we didn’t, although we had spotted Fuji-San on the train to Odawara earlier in the day) but the volcano site was pretty special, even if it did smell of sulphur.
Here’s where common sense (yet again) failed us. See, when we had left the air bnb, it was baking hot sun, and I had changed out of my jeans and t-shirt into culottes and a crop top because I couldn’t take the heat. So when Saf asked me if I was taking a jacket, I told him of course not. Why the hell would I?!? (In my defence, he didn’t take one either). Being jacketless was obviously not a problem, as we could just bask in the beautiful sun. HOWEVER, as the eagle-eyed among you might have realised, we were visiting a volcano, and as it turns out, being hundreds of metres above sea level isn’t necessarily going to be as warm as by the coast. In fact, it was fricking freezing. Somehow everyone but us received the memo to wear a coat, scarf and maybe some gloves. Therefore while everyone else was wrapped up warm, we looked like this:
I can tell you, we got every look under the sun (or I should say, clouds) that day, ranging from pity to ‘are you insane??’. By the time we made it down to the lake, we were pretty much ready to give up on the whole day.
The boat ride was lovely though, the Hakone scenery is absolutely stunning, so we were able to warm up with an amazing view.
When we got to the other side, I had planned to visit the Amazake-Chaya teahouse, which was just a five minute bus ride from the dock. Sadly, since it was a Sunday, the next bus to arrive was going to be the final bus of the day, so we wouldn’t have been able to return to the station had we stopped there. Instead, we had to huddle along with all the other, sensibly dressed passengers waiting for the next bus to Hakone-Yumoto station. We probably only waited about fifteen minutes or so, but in that cold with no shelter, it felt like hours.
After a long bus and train journey home, we planned to go out for dinner somewhere around the air bnb, but again found that, since it was Sunday, basically nothing was open. We walked around for a bit, till we found the one single open restaurant, which HAPPILY cooked some of the best fish we’ve eaten since we’ve been in Japan. Simmered red snapper and tuna cheeks, delicious.
The next day was a travelling day as we were heading to our next air bnb in Matsubara. We took the bullet train there, and had to navigate the tricky waters of taking a bus in rural Japan. Our host, Taru, met us and showed us the apartment. He explained that he had lived in Sakai-shi for the last 70 years and had seen drastic changes in this time. We walked to a local park, while Saf went for a run, I tried to take a few pictures of the cherry blossoms to do them justice. As I was having a look through them, a Japanese woman sat next to me (with a cat in a backpack, btw, not 100% sure why) and we saw the evening in.
That was pretty much it for day 6 & 7, we’re getting ready to go to a sumo tournament tomorrow, so excited!!!
Claudia Bow 