Tokyo 2016 Day 6

We had an ad-hock breakfast at Mike's house, then he walked us to the subway station to buy our tickets. 

On the way, we stopped at our first konbini, a 7-Eleven, and withdrew money from the ATM. And the boys got a chance to buy some konbini food, for example, Talmage got a tray of sushi rolls for 250 Yen--about two dollars. They were so fat Tal said that he could not fit them in his mouth. I asked him how he ate them, "I unhinged my jaw."

We navigated the subway system just fine to Shinjuku Station where we bought our 2-day Hakone Free Passes, which were about $200-not free for our whole family. With the passes we would be able to use eight different kinds of public transportation between Tokyo and Hokone National Park.

First, we took the train for an hour to Odawara. Clint and I were amazed that the boys didn't pull out their devices at all-- they just took it all in. Cole said, "I'm going to bring my kids to Japan, but by then I'll know Japanese." Japanese trains are so clean. You know you're on a Japanese train when you're totally stressed out when your seven-year-old eats Cheezits and gets crumbs all over his clothes and the seat around him. I'm thinking that in Philly, I wouldn't care. At Odawara we walked across the platform to continue by train to Hakone-Yumato station.

Jack took this pretty picture there.

The bus ride was a windy 50 minutes through lots of green mountainside.

We got to Hakone Machi and had just enough time to withdraw some cash from the ATM at the 7-Eleven, when we saw the pirate ship pulling in at the dock on the lake Ashi. We did not know how frequently the boat would come and so we had to abandon our plans of eating at a bakery recommended by Mike, and we hopped on the ship.

The ship was immaculate! There was an earnest man in a uniform cleaning the windows, and it looked like he did it once or twice a day. It was Disney clean!

We were going to get on a gondola or ropewsys next, but we had missed the last one, and many of the ropeways, had been "suspended because of volcanic activity." We thought it was pretty funny because rope ways are always suspended :-). There were a couple of places where the mountain looked like it was on fire because of so much steam coming out of the greenery. We got some treats, including coconut and green tea flavored ice cream-Yum!

In lieu of the ropeway, we took a bus ride to a funicular or cable car down the mountain into Gora town. Mike had hooked Clint up with some dropped pins on a Google map so we began our walk to our hotel. It turned out to be a mile and a half straight uphill. After sitting all day, the boys really needed that exercise! Trace entertained us by making ridiculous exaggerated grunts as if he was going to die the whole way. After a bit of a turn around, we found our hotel.

I highly recommend this little gem, the TPK Hotel and Resort Lectore Hokone Gora. I found it on Agoda.com for only $91 per room including breakfast! It is super clean and the owner is very nice and accommodating. The moment we walked in, we had to remove our shoes, put on slippers and put our shoes in plastic bags. We put our bags in our rooms and then we headed back down the hill for dinner. The rest of the night was quite the scramble as we knew the last funicular up the hill was an hour from the time we left our hotel. We walked halfway and took the fenicular the rest of the way down to Gora. When we looked around, we saw that nothing was open except for a tiny restaurant around the corner from the station that was full. It only had about five tables. After 20 minutes waiting outside, the lady open the door to us and asked, "How many?" I said and signed six, to which she imitated a faint and laughed hysterically. She had the same reaction every time we ordered! I guess four kids is a lot? She was the hostess, waitress, cashier and dishwasher, and her husband was the cook. You pay in advance and there are no tips at all in Japan. I love that! It removes so much stress and guilt. The price was cheap, in my mind--$45 for all of us. The boys all got fried rice, I got Curry and Clint got Katsudon (The dictation software just spelled that: cat suit on!). It was delicious and warming on a drizzly night, but we only had 10 minutes to eat it-no fun. Then we ran to the cable car station with what we thought was three minutes to spare, but it had already left, early. So we got a taxi and it only cost five dollars--again, no tips. If we had known that, we would've just relaxed and eaten and taken the taxi when we are done.

It was very easy to settle the boys down to sleep at 8 PM, even. Jet Lag, I recommend it!

I woke up at 11:30 p.m. And ahain at 1:30 a.m. At 3:00 I decided to explore the hotel. The public bath was open and deserted, so I took one! There was a funny sign that explained the correct behavior expected at an onsen. "Do not make behavior that other people cannot watch" and "Talk calmly and do not to other people impolite." The cartoons illustrating these gaffes were as funny as the Jenglish. The clandestine middle of the night bathe was so relaxing, I'm pretty sure it makes up for the sleep I lost. And I'm counting on the claimed benefit to poor circulation from the sulfur-gypsum bath. When I got back, Clint was awake so I told him to take one too. The men's side was not deserted, so I convinced him to join me in the woman's side-heck it was 3 am, who was going to catch us? But we were nervous, so we only stayed about five minutes, but still it was relaxing and rejuvenating at the same time.