Hi, everyone!
Grandma and Grandpa and I went with Bill-kun and Karin-chan’s family to a mountain resort, Hakone. The mountains there are parts of old volcanos, and there are lakes and hot springs. On Tuesday, we had a very busy day!
We started the day with breakfast in our room. We stayed in a traditional inn or ryokan, where you sit on the floor at a low table in your room to eat breakfast. Look at all the food they served! We ate a lot of fish and pickled vegetables.
When we went out the ryokan entrance to get the bus up the mountain, Bill-kun and Karin-chan stopped to feed the koi in the pond by the door. Koi are really big goldfish! After that, we rode the bus up a winding mountain road to Motohakone, on the shore of Lake Ashi. Guess what? The ferries that cross the lake all look like pirate ships! I was a little worried about being on a pirate ship, but Bill-kun and Karin-chan made sure I was OK.
After we crossed the lake, we got right on a cable car to go up the mountain. It was a very smooth ride, and we could see all around. In the winter, it’s easy to see Mt. Fuji from this cable car, but in summer Mt. Fuji hides in the clouds. We only saw a tiny bit of the side slope all day!
We got off the cable car at the second stop to visit Owakudani hot springs. Steam and hot water come right out of the ground, and the air smells like sulfur! There was a man cooking eggs in the hot spring water. The sulfur in the water turns the egg shells black by the time the insides are cooked! It was a hot, smelly climb to the top of the hot springs trail, but we all did it! Afterward, Bill-kun had shave ice and Karin-chan had an ice cream cone. It was so hot the ice cream was melting faster than Karin-chan could eat it!
We took another cable car headed for Gora, and we could see where workers are putting up walls so the side of the mountain doesn’t slide down on the valley below. After we went over the Otome pass, we switched to a funicular — a train that is sort of like a San Francisco style cable car. When we got to Gora, we took the narrow gauge mountain train back to our ryokan. The train has to switch direction twice as the tracks zigzag down the mountain valley. Karin-chan and Bill-kun fell asleep on the train, but I waited to take a nap until I got back to the ryokan.
After nap time, Karin-chan and Bill-kun took a bath and got ready for dinner. At the ryokan, we dress in kimonos to have dinner, and the food is very fancy! So is the bath — it’s really an outside pool of hot mineral spring water. At the end of our busy day, the ryokan staff spread out the futons, so we could all go to bed.
Bus, boat, cable car, funicular, mountain train. That’s a lot of ways to travel for one day! And all of that traveling was included in the price of the train ticket to get here from Karin-chan and Bill-kun’s home!
Love,
Lion-san
Looks like you had a very fun and exhausting day!