Land of the Rising Sun Day #6. “Another Day in Paradise”

As you might recall I left you last night after Patrice and I had spent a relaxing evening in the hotel onsen (spa). We both slept like babies and when we awoke this morning in this incredibly picturesque and romantic environment we both had the same thing in mind…………… BREAKFAST!

OMG does not do justice to the breakfast buffet. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. If that is the case let me cash in with these.

That was not all. They offered Japanese omelette (very good I might add), fried horse mackerel (not my favorite but I did give it a try), coffee, juices, cereals (I guess if you travel with your 6 year old), flan, yogurt, and a host of other things too numerous to name. Actually too numerous for me to remember.

After recovering from breakfast we met our guide, Hiro, for a day exploring Hakone. Hiro is a retired mechanical engineer and a great guide. He introduced us to our driver, Yoshi, telling us he is a very good driver (“He didn’t have an accident all day yesterday”). Our first stop was the Hakone Ropeway. When we approached the area we could see the cable cars traversing high above what is a dormant volcano. Hiro reassured us that the volcano has not erupted in 3000 years. Well except a small eruption about 8 years ago that destroyed a large portion of the hillside. That was comforting until I saw the line to get on the cars. See below.

Once we entered the car Hiro told us the best place to sit and asked if we where okay. I said I was fine except I have a tremendous fear of heights. The ride was very smooth and we got some great views.

In addition to Mt. Fuji we were able to see the famous Hakone Black Eggs. Apparently these are just normal eggs but they are cooked using the local water which has a very high sulfur content. This results in giving the shells a black appearance while everything else about the egg is perfectly normal.

After some more touring it was time for lunch. Unfortunately we went to two places that were both very busy. So we shifted gears and did some more sightseeing before heading to lunch. Patrice expressed an interest in having soba noodles since we had already had the other two popular Japanese noodles, udon and ramen. With our failure to find a table at two prior locations, Hiro was cautious this time and sent Yoshi in to see if the next place could accommodate us. Yoshi gave us the okay sign and we were on our way. When we entered we saw that the entire restaurant consisted of two tables, yes two. The owner, chief, hostess, waitress, and cashier was this sweetheart of a woman named, Tsuchiya. We ordered shrimp tempura with soba noodles.

I waited for the food to cool down before I started to eat and I think Tsuchiya must have misunderstood my delay and brought us two forks. Although I politely declined the forks (I am getting darn good if I don’t say so myself) I did ask for some napkins, Tsuchiya brought us this.

We finished our meal and then it was off to continue our adventure but not before we said one more goodbye to this delightful lady.

Our next stop was the Open Air Museum. This is a must-see stop if you visit Hakone. In addition to a plethora of outdoor sculptures it has a Picasso pavilion with an incredible collection of the master’s works. They have some of his early works when you can see his amazing talent rather than his cubism phase when his works looked like he had a visual deficit.

The focal point of the outdoor exhibits is a bronze by Auguste Rodin of the French author Honoré de Balzac.

That was supposed to be the final stop of our tour but Hiro wanted to show us an exhibit of 500 stone buddhas. It was a little out of the way so he needed to check with Yoshi and before you knew it we were on our way. At the entrance we took walking sticks. I was exhausted at this point but made my way throughout the exhibit while Hiro was bouncing around effortlessly. I asked him how old he was and found out he is only 2 years younger than I am. Hiro was definitely a colorful guy. He had no problems asking complete strangers if he could take a picture of them with us.

I would love to write more but it’s dinner time and you know what a feast that is. Tomorrow we are off to Kyoto.