My pillow has beans in it. I'll leave a couple of minutes for that to sink in. Beans. In a pillow. Why? Surely feathers cant be that expensive, even cloth! Heck something smaller and more pliable. Sand! Ok, maybe not sand. I have a crook neck time and slept with a sheet over my head only because there was a mosquito that bothered. Breakfast was simple but surprisingly decent. Bread. Plenty of baked items, croissants, snails, puffs, tarts. Carb me up for our day trip out at Hakone. Weather update, more overcast deary grayness, hopefully we'll be able to see Mount Fuji.
Ended up walking back down to Odewera station, the cabbie suggest we just catch a train (or bus) to the Owakudani Cable car depot. Nice view that the cable car, boy these things move at an incredibly slow pace. We travelled over the hot springs gushes of hot sulfuric air escaping from the earth. This place bites. Made our way to the hot springs, mmm sulfuric goodness. Smells like eggs, rotten eggs. For some reason there were a million Chinese tourist around. Took the customary photos and tried some 'special black eggs' the sign claims if you eat one of these eggs it will go far in extending your life span by 7 years! Get out of town! 7 years per egg! Of course they only sold the eggs in batches of 6, I see what's going on here, they're trying to breed a group of naive tourists with extended lifelines. That's the last thing we need, naive people living longer! We ate two eggs each and gave the remaining two to some tourists. Tasted like a normal overcooked egg. Oh the novelty...
Caught a couple more cable cars and explored about, found ourselves down at Ashino Ko, the famous lake of Hakone. Where "on a good day" Mount Fuji can be seen with opportunity to see the reflection off the lake. It wasn't a good day. No Fuji sightings. Apparently these "good days" frequent only a handful of times a year. Thanks Lonely Planet, for nothing! The boat trip set us back around 30 bucks, we didn't get off at any of the stops, each time they announced an upcoming stop we quickly referred to the Lonely planet to see if it was worth disembarking... Consequently, we found nothing worthwhile to get us off the boat. It's not even lunch time and Ive spent close to 90 AUD. ON what?! Some black eggs, a mediocre boat ride and all the cable cars a sane man can endure in one lifetime! Yea not a huge fan of Hakone, although we maintain to this day that it would have been excellent if we had seen Fuji.
Stopped by one of the local eating houses, the Gyzoa Center Gyzoa for lunch. Was a nice little establishment with friendly staff. Food was basic but quite tasty. After lunch headed back towards Odakyu the main station. This place absolutely sucks. And we still have another night here. Found a TIC and decided we might as well check out one of the Onsens. The TIC ladies giggled when they told us that you have to be naked for them. As per usual the queried our nationality. Australia!
We walked out and fried to find the bus stop for the Tanzen Onsen, apparently one of the more upper end Onsens. The guy at the bus stop pointed at the bridge. "Uh, ok"... we walked to the bridge, there wasn't a stop there. We consulted the map handed to us by the TIC ladies, she had put a dot in the middle of the bridge. How odd. Surely enough a bus stopped in the middle of the bridge, a couple of older Japanese men climbed aboard and soon we were speeding round the mountaneous roads.
Tanzen Onsen. We were handed a 'modesty' towel and proceeded to enjoy an outdoor bath. Being naked and all we opted for the bath that was the least populated. Turns out it wasn't populated for good reason. It was 50+ degrees. I sat there feeling every inch of my body slowly braise in the spring water. Mmmm, I couldn't hack it I jumped out into one of the onsens that was more moderately heated... I tried to obey the rules of onsen-ing and enter without disturbing the water. Yea disturb it like Sumo on a 10 metre board. Not very discreet, ah well. I sank into the pool in all nakedness and placed the towel on my head. Relaxation does have a price. Thing about hot water though is it be becomes irritable, stuff this! I'm going to find a cooler pool. Not just a cooler pool, the COLDEST one. So I jumped in! Almost immediately I felt my legs go weak, probably not the smartest idea, I tried to get out. I felt my head spin. Uh oh, what have I done? This is trouble. I left the onsen and showered myself. No towels, how am I going to dry myself. With an express blower that's how. Upstairs they had an meditation area where people lay down on tatami mats and listened to tranquil music. Ah, I wanna give that a go, too bad we have to catch a bus at 4. Missed the bus.
The day, not the most strenuous of our trip has still managed to exhaust me. Not feeling so well, I can feel myself getting sick. Tried a Thorpedo drink, mm diluted yakulty goodness.
Ended up finding out that there was an amusement park Yunessun right underneath our noses. Found a nice looking Japanese restaurant for dinner. Food wasn't terribly great although the photos don't agree with our thoughts. The host gave us a nice curtain. Right.
Jumped back into the local bath house, I couldn't hack another hot tub, I just sat and scrubbed myself, It's so therapeutic sitting and cleaning yourself, hosing water. Something so primitive yet so essential.
Mosquitoes! Huge, blood sucking mozzies, just perched all over the ceiling waiting for us to go to bed. I came back from the communal bathroom to find my companion on his bed with a tissue in one hand smacking at the mosquitoes. 10 minutes later we had rid our room of all visible pests.
