Day trip Hakone

Today we had planned to have a day around Tokyo based on the fact that the Imperial Palace should be open and that would be the morning and there were a few small places we wanted to go. However, when we got to the palace it was closed, so we had nothing to do for the morning.
A quick decision to swap our days around, we went back to Tokyo station and hopped on a Shinkasen for a trip to the mountains to hopefully see Fujian. we had great views of Fuji on the train on the way back from Kyoto so we were hoping for a repeat. See my entry on transport to see how we got there. The mountains were pretty, some autumn colours left and even a few cherry blossoms. On the sky rope we went over sulphur hot springs, experience with nose and eyes! The mountain lake was beautiful. There were little orange Japanese gates around the shore showing entry points to different places. When we got off the fancy three masted boat, we walked along a cedar path for a couple of kilometers. They were planted a few centuries ago to protect the traveler from sun and snow. We felt like we needed the snow protection today. It was freezing up in the mountains. However, we got our view of Fuji. If you want to sit through 1000000 photos some day, they are there! It is a spectacular mountain and we were looking at the snow covered face. Very nice. On our way back we stopped at another amazing japanese castle at Otawara. The kids had fun feeding coi and the white caste stood proudly against the setting sun. When we got back to Tokyo we went and found yakatori alley and had some yummy skewers. Then we found ice creams and came home. It was a long full day, but really pleasant and interesting. Merry Christmas everyone. It feels strange here. There are lots of lights and santas, but it certainly doesn't feel like christmas.


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Location:Out of Tokyo