Acty Jogasaki Ito

Day 167 - Decided the best thing was to head to the tourist information place and ask them to book me accommodation in Odawara or Hakone. Unfortunately they were shut when i arrived but opened later. I headed off to the Imperial Palace which i was looking forward too - it was closed. There were a few bemused westerners milling around shrugging t...

Day 162 - Not the greatest day in my travels, but worked out OK in the end. The day started fine and i had arranged to travel South to Hakone to see Mt Fuji up close. Unfortunately, and not for the first time, the weather was against me and there was no visibility. I decided then to head to Lake Ashi, but when i got there it started snowing heav...

December 15, 2009



So I did decorate my apartment, just a little. You can see my cute little tree and some mirror decorations…not much but it's festive enough for me. And I had to get some stuff up before Jeff arrived. He’s here!!! It’s great to have him with me again – five weeks is long enough!
Hakone, Kanto, Japan mark820

On Monday we wanted to go to see (or at least get close to) Mount Fuji. Apparently the warm sunny weather we experienced the previous day was unusual for this time of year. As a result the day was freezing, overcast and we had occasional rain. After a subway journey to Shinjuku station to figure out how to catch the train to Hakone, we bought th...

Today we had a great day exploring outside of Tokyo at the Hakone National Park. It is about 80 km outside of Tokyo. We took a bus to the park where we took the ropeway (gondola) up to the area where there are sulfur springs due to the volcanic activity in the area. We had beautiful views of Mt. Fuji, who had had her first snow the night before....

Hakone wreszcie pozwoliło nam odpocząć od świątyń i uciec od betonowego Tokio. Jest to popularny górski kurort położony dość blisko stolicy. Cały teren to wnętrze wielkiego, starego 40 km krateru wulkanicznego. Główną atrakcją oprócz samych gór są onseny – japo...

Museo del kimono de Itchiko Kubota - vale la pena.

Fuji-san: subida hasta la septima estacion. Me gusto que todo el mundo se saludase "Konichiwa!". Mucha niebla y mucha subida pero me gusto la excursion. Al bajar, perdimos el autobus de las 6 e hicimos auto-stop con un par de japonesas majisimas.

Five million hours and as many trains later, we finally arrived at dusk in the beautiful Hakone National Park (the site of Mount Fuji) where after taking in the breathtaking scenery we caught the local bus up the steep road to our guesthouse. Following the ‘no shoes inside’ rule, we were proudly given our guesthouse slippers, and sho...

Ahhhh Fuji-san I pre-booked the Romance Car Train prior to arriving in Tokyo, and managed to reserve the Observation Carriage – which really is a fancy name for the front carriage. The Romance Car commences at Shinjuku station and arrives into Hakone-Yamato. I had seat 3A allocated but moved myself to the vacant 1A when the train started t...

Day 6 of our two week trip to Japan we packed up and boarded the "Romance Train" to Hakone. Other than the train being pink, I'm not sure what was supposed to be romantic about it.
We stayed at Yoshiike Ryokan, which is a traditional style onsen (hot springs) located about ten minutes from the main station at Hakone. All around were beaut...