After a bit of searching in the morning, we found the Odakyu Railway Line travel center at Shinjuku station, where we bought a Hakone Free Pass which was going to take care of all the travelling back and forth to Hakone. A very service minded and very good English speaking travel agent adviced us that we probably should not try to eat on the car (the next Romance train will be leaving in an hour and as it was not that much faster, so we opted instead to take the normal train. They look like a standard JR Tokyo line train.) and that turned out to be good advice (we had wolfed down the sandwiches that we had bought while waiting for the train instead) as it was really filled up in the beginning.
Arriving close to 2 hours later at Odawara station, we changed to another train to get the final distance to Hakone-Yumoto, at least on conventional trains. From Hakone-Yumoto we took the Hakone Tozan Railway the picturesque route to Gora, which was a pretty interesting experience, unfortunately the cars were packed and we ended up standing up again. The route was a zig zag route where the train changed between going forward and backward, as it was going up a mountain.
Arriving at Gora we decided to take a small break and go to a park that was a few hundred meters from the station. It turned out to be up all the way, and the park was really just a park, not a garden, so pretty ordinary. Going up to the park, my foodphile travel companion had noticed a restaurant selling gyoza close to the station. We decided to eat there on our way back to the station. The restaurant was small and nearly full but we found a table (again the option of chairs and no-chairs was possible) and my travle companions ability to understand most of the Kanji helped us out again, as there was absolutely no English possible, so my companion wrote our order down. After a few minutes the most delicious gyoza arrived, I sincerely regretted just ordering 5 after eating them. The gyoza seemed to have a larger content of vegetables than usual, which gave them a very light and melting sensation in the mouth. If we ever go back to Gora, we definitely have to visit that restaurant again.
After lunch we went back to the station to get into queue for the Hakone-Tozan cablecar at Gora station. The cablecar was going to bring us up to ropeway station at Souzan. As usual on this trip, the cars were filled to the brink, mostly with local tourists. We soon found out that our rather slightly exhausting walk up to the park, could have been reduced as there actually was a station on that level.
At Souzan we quickly switched to the Hakone Ropeway station (the mass of people was going in that direction) for the next part of the trip in a ropeway car to the Owakudani station (famous for its sulphur eggs).
After a short stay at Owakudani, it was cold and foggy so it was no possible to see Mt. Fuji, we continued on the next ropeway car towards Togendai where our boat would be ready to ferry us across Lake Ashi.
It may be noticed in the picture below that although there is a splendid view of Lake Ashi in the car, my foodcentric travel companion is fully focused on the just purchased sweet potato.
At Togendai was the base of the fake pirate ships that we took across the full length of lake Ashi to Hakone-Machi.
We passed several torii's along the way.
Arriving at Hakone-Machi we reasonably easy (because we followed some of the locals, as there were no signs at all for guidance) found the bus that was going to take us back to Hakone-Yumoto. We were now beginning to get tired, fortunately we were at the front of the queue so got us some seats for the rather lenghty trip in the mountain roads.
At Hakone-Yumoto we gave up trying to find the right shuttle bus and instead opted for a local taxi, that took us for a very short drive to the ryokan. The Kansuiro ryokan turned out to be quite close by, as we never got over the minimum fare. Arriving there was a bit of surprise. We had both imagined that the ryokan would be a bit away from the small road (which turned out to have quite a lot of traffic) but the entrance was directly at the road side. There was a slight stress as we had the full attention of all the employees, the reason for that became apparent during the evening and which I will write about in a later blog entry.
Finally we could rest.
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