Thursday - day to trip to Hakone
Jamie joined us! And came along for the trip to Hakone. The scenery on this trip was interesting and very worthwhile, but the transportation is actually the main point. The route up the mountains features a whole series of custom cable cars, switch back trains, a ski style gondola, etc. This trip shows you what a densely populated country with a deep dedication to public transportation can accomplish. The rural mountain towns that would be difficult to access with cars, WILL be connected to Tokyo by easy transport, no matter how many built to purpose methods of transport are required.
Hakone is famous for it's views of Mount Fuji, but the clouds were out in force all afternoon, so no Fuji for us on this day.
The Hakone Open Air Museum was a highlight of the journey. The museum sets a wide range of sculpture art against the lush mountains of the area. Many of the pieces are human scale and explorable. They have an excellent (indoor) Picasso exhibit that is worthwhile as well.
We didn't quite make the final leg of this trip, which was supposed to be a sampling of the sulphur cooked eggs at the top and an additional gondola to a lake with pirate ships below. But on a positive note, this spared us a winding bus ride back to the Hakone, which Naomi vomited on 12 years prior.
We took the more civil rail and cable lines back to Hakone, and eventually back to Tokyo.
We tried to score Ramen at this amazing joint in Meguro ... but they had just run out of noodles! After a bit of drama, we found an excellent local yakitori spot.
