On A Clear Day ….

Hakone is very much a tourist hot spot, being popular with day trippers from Tokyo, which is under an hour away.

This morning we joined them for the classic tour, which involves a local train which zigzags slowly up the lower part of the mountain to Gora, from where you catch the short funicular railway to Souenzan and the cable car to the top of the volcano from where, on a clear day, you have marvellous views of Mount Fuji.

Sadly, today was not a clear day. It was wet and the clouds so low that you couldn’t see further than the cable car window! It was however atmospheric, in more ways than one. The volcano is still active and the smell of rotten eggs rose up from the steam and smoke of the volcano, merging with the cloud, as the extra shows. You can just about see the cable cars in this one.

The main attraction up the top here, other than Fuji on a clear day, is the black eggs that are cooked in the sulphurous waters here and sold by the box to tourists, who also queue up to have their photos taken with giant plastic versions.

We did sample the other local delicacy, black curry bread (see other extra) which is as described and tasted a lot better than it looked.

From here we caught the cable cars in down the other side of the volcano to Lake Ashi, where you can take a tour of the lake on the kitsch golden “galleons”, as seen in the main blip. Again, the lake affords fine views of Fuji, on a …..

Having done the first part of the boat tour I experienced a minor panic when I temporarily mislaid our tour tickets. I suspect the very helpful young man at the ticket office was just wondering how he was going to tell me that he couldn’t issue replacements (the Japanese are so polite and helpful that they really don’t like to let down or upset visitors) when, much to mine and his relief, I found them tucked away in the dark recesses of wallet.

With that, we did the return journey and were so tired by the time we got back we couldn’t be bothered to go out again and ate in the hotel.