Continued from Hakone Day 2 Part 1.

They’ve got a box of throw up supplies in the gondola.

There are patches of dead trees here, I believe from a more recent minor volcanic activity maybe 10 years ago?

There’s Lake Ashi. Mt. Fuji is supposed to visible from here…but…as you can see, it’s hidden behind clouds. Poop. We were all disappointed.

Created by a volcanic crater.

Apparently you can build a lot of golf courses inside a volcanic crater.

There’s an empty gondola, I am guessing this is the one for the service crew?

Here! Look at the crowd of people trying to get on the other direction though! I guess they did the Hakone loop the other direction than us.

Now we’ll take a short stroll to find some lunch. Overall, Hakone is much less inhibited and lively than I thought. I guess the heydays are past them like much of the countryside in Japan.

Lunch spot.

Or not….we’ll try somewhere else then I guess.

Lunch spot…or not. Apparently the restaurant has been reserved.

Fine…lunch spot. Seems like a newly opened place taking over for another restaurant that’s closed…I hope it’s ok.

The pirate themed ships that will take you from one end of Lake Ashi to the other. Seems really odd to have pirate themed ships here? Like…why?

Here comes another one. We elected not to take a ship to the other side and then have to connect to a bus to take us back to our ryokan. We’ll just take the same way back as we came.

Food comes. We’ve ordered schnitzels!! They were really good actually, pounded really thin like it’s supposed to be. Yum. The kids took some convincing to try it though.

At one point, one of the kids, I think maybe PL asked who this was. I said it’s Shohei, the current best baseball player in the world right now and he’s Japanese. Now every time we see Shohei on an ad, we point it out to show how famous he is. He’s in tons of advertisements in Japan, from drinks to skin care.

Back to the station then back to our ryokan the same way.

The long line that we saw earlier has all dissipated after the time it took us to have lunch. Yay!

Such a red Japanese maple.

Look at that long line of cars heading up to see Owakudani.

Wait…I think that may be Mt Fuji far in the distance? Maybe?

Made a quick stop here at the Owakudani station.

Cute, they smell like farts too.

Another ride with just us back to the funicular station.

This is all about riding public transportation.

Typical two car funicular setup.

Now, the last train with the switchbacks to take us to the train stop for our ryokan.

Nice, it’s not crowded and we get to sit down. Even though we didn’t do too much today, still tired.

Back at our station.

Pretty steep steps if I’m honest.

Unfortunately, the bar of our ryokan isn’t currently open. I guess maybe it only opens when it’s at full capacity. It’s not very full at the moment.

Let’s feed some koi.

And let’s take advantage of the onsen. I’m going to take Little KL to the “male only” public bath while RL will take the girls to the “female only” public bath. PL was really embarrassed about being naked in front of strangers, but we told her this was a cultural experience and that this is pretty normal here. In the end, all that worrying was for nothing. No one else took baths during the time that we were there and we had the space to ourselves.

Time to chill at our ryokan after a nice hot soak.

Flip flop socks.

Kids are chilling too.

Then, it’s dinner time.

And once again, the spread did not disappoint. So many fun and new things to try….well, RL still doesn’t like kaiseki that much.

Between the first service of dishes and the second, Little KL was running around like a crazy little punk. Time to torture him with tickles….or time to rile him up more…

No, don’t scream with laughter here as the walls are made of paper.

Dessert. Look at that super thin rind on this Japanese watermelon!!

Alright, it’s time to put the kids to bed.

Things were going smoothly with putting the kids to bed. They were in bed I was about to turn off the lights, then someone noticed a giant cockroach crawling around on the ground by their futons. Fuck…I did not need this. My first attempt to crush it missed, and it hid under a TV stand. We moved the TV and then the stand and it scurried out. Everyone screamed. RL handed me this little rectangular saucer (like for receipts?) and finally I crushed it. That was close. If I hadn’t killed it and it was able to scurry away into some nook that I couldn’t get to, it would have been a terrible night of sleep for everyone. I washed the murder weapon and took a photo of it to remember this incident.

To be continued at Tokyo Day 1 Part 1.