Sun Hatoya Ito

... br>While we were out Wendy had been in touch with JAL and Maria's luggage was finally on its way to Tokyo. We were told it had been unable to leave Beijing due to the bad weather brought on by a faux pas from the Beijing Weather Modification Office (although we discovered later it had inadvertently been sent to Kuala Lumpur - thanks Air China!). So, only two days late - it arrived by courier at around 11pm. Yay.

... about the "black eggs". Supposedly if you eat a black egg which had been cooked in the sulfur springs you will have 7 years added to your life span. So Jeremy and I said that sounded great. The eggs are put into little baskets and dropped into the sulfur springs to boil. Talk about stink - the springs were awful, and the eggs made it worse. Anyway, when they come out the shells are totally black ...

... its way back down the mountain to Hakone-Yumoto. Making our way back to Odawara we had another ride on the bullet train – this time a super express over to Kyoto (an ancient capital). A kind gentleman on the train pointed out Mt Fuji again for us (they take such pride in this majestic mountain).

Finally arriving at Kyoto we had a short walk to K's House, our hostel. More like a small motel than your average hostel, this ...

... wondered if it was going to be a built up area all the way to Hakone. Eventually though, the cityscape began to turn into green spaces, farm lands and speckles of forest; and for the first time all week we actually saw a horizon that was not buildings... The mountains here make our mountains back in Australia look like hills really.

Sooner than we anticipated we arrived in the small city of Odawara, a regional hub connecting us with the Hakone area. We ...

... 261; własne niewielkie onseny, które mogą być wykorzystane prywatnie (co jest praktycznie niemożliwe w dużych hotelach). Właśnie z takiego tradycyjnego zajazdu - ryokana skorzystaliśmy. Dzięki temu mogliśmy zakosztować kąpieli pod gwiazdami bez towarzystwa innych ludzi.

Właściciele polecili nam jedną z pobliskich knajpek. Różniła się nieco od tych, do których na co dzień chodzimy w ...

... We made decent time until we turned onto the mountain road to the station – red lights as far as the eye could see. The car park at the station was full and it took about 20 minutes to get the buses maneuvered around the line of cars and up to the station. We stepped off the buses around 10:15pm amid a throng of people with the same goal as us – climb overnight to reach the top at dawn.

Some background – there are a number of ...

... to the thick mist (which is apparently very common) we couldn’t see a thing and had to settle with the picture-perfect postcard we were given on arrival. Our trip finished with a boat ride across the huge lake which was really beautiful. We caught a bus back to Hakone train station, collected our backpacks from the storage lockers we’d hired for the day and boarded the Shinkansen to the small mountain town of Takayama, where we would be spending the next few days.

... that one bathes in the NUDE! Luckily I had my own private in-room hot spring so here I come!!! But the water temperature was a bit too cool ~32degrees so I decided to gather some courage and visit the communal baths. They were of course sex separated. The whole process is ...

... sight of the ocean on the left side, a clear blue-green, and lush steep hills on our right. It was awesome. There were people there, but on a much more comfortable scale for me. It was off-season there, so I knew we would be two of the few foreigners there. We got off the train in Ito, threw our backpacks in a locker at the station, and headed out on foot. We stopped at a local shoe shop to buy me new tennis shoes (my soles decided to separate from my shoe that very ...

... Lake Ashi for a boat cruise. The cruise once again had views of Mt.Fuji and also a temple by the lake complete with torii on the water's edge.

People then had the option of taking the bus back to Tokyo which could take three hours or taking the Shinkansen fast train back to Tokyo. As we had a rail pass we took the train at no extra cost and were back in Tokyo within the hour. It was exciting to take our first ride on a Shinkansen!