Continued from Kyoto Day 3 Part 2.

Today is travel day, gotta get a good breakfast in. RL cut up fruits for the kids. It’s hard to get fruits and vegetables in while traveling. As far as we can tell, the Japanese don’t seem to eat much vegetables at restaurants other than cabbage.

Japanese Breakfast. This is more or less what me and RL have each morning here in Japan. The egg sandwiches are sooooo good.

Love the later 11am checkout times that seems to be the norm here in Japan. We booked an Uber to take us to the train station, but I didn’t look at the pickup location carefully and it’s actually a few blocks away. I think the Uber app here automatically defaults to pickup at a larger road.

Alright, hauled all of our heavy bags 5 minutes away in the heat. This is exactly what I was trying to avoid by calling an Uber to take us to the train station…doh.

In our Uber/taxi, time to go to Kyoto Station and buy some Shinkansen tickets. I’m a little stressed that it’ll be sold out or have limited availabilities. Google Maps also gives multiple alternate ways to get to our next spot in Hakone. And based on the algorithm that Google chooses, it gives different options almost every time in query it…really annoying. Just give me the one best way and stick with it!!! I’ve had to revert a little bit back to old school of not taking advise from Google Maps and just trying to decide on the train connections that makes the most sense to me.

Kyoto Station ahead close to the tower.

Almost amazing to me how this giant monstrosity of a station is here in Kyoto.

Alright, let’s go to the ticket line…and get someone to help me. Of course, everyone here speaks English now.

As I’m waiting for my number to be called, I checked Google Maps one more time on routing and saw this….I guess someone got hit by a train…suicide? Or maybe just maintenance?

Alright, got the tickets without trouble. Got some time for us to grab a quick lunch here at the station before we need to get on the train.

Looking for restaurants for lunch.

We see this sign, but it seems like we need to take an elevator and not an escalator during this very busy lunch time to get there. There has to be another way, right?

RL thought there must be another foodcourt close by…so we are waiting while she goes to investigate. Both RL and I are hangry and frustrated. We both think the food is in different areas and want to try different directions. It’s hard when we’re both hangry and frustrated with each other, yet still have to watch three young kids and make sure they’re taken care of.

Nope, seems like this higher level dining hall accessed via an elevator is it. We’ll just have to haul all of our bags and take up space on the elevator…not a big deal. It’s the train station, half of the people have luggage. It’s one of those marriage moments where you both look at each other over the tops of your children’s head and your eyes say to your spouse…..HA! I WAS FUCKING RIGHT!

Up the elevator to the very top. The kids are becoming a big fan of tonkatsu now since being in Japan. Duh, it’s so yummy.

Got about an hour to eat. The wait staff here are more Japan as I’ve remember. Super courteous, helpful, and polite.

Sesame to ground up and put in our tonkatsu sauce.

They offered the kids each a free toy from their basket of goods. Nice.

Too bad this tonkatsu restaurant is located centrally in the building, some of the restaurants on the perimeter have nice views of Kyoto.

The kids are crazy.

Yummmm!!!!

Alright, let’s get some snacks and head to our train platform.

Train 650 for us, only 4 stops to get to Odawara and then we’ll make a transfer there.

Even though we just had lunch, I figured I’ll get a bento box for the train just in case the kids get hungry…which they will.

Plus, they are so pretty. I love Japanese train bento boxes.

The choice, for the 3 pieces of tamago that the kids love.

We debated, but ultimately didn’t get any. RL said I’ve been to gassy to eat any more puddings or dairy…I guess so.

Big school field trip group. School is still in session here in Japan.

Kyoto Station just seems so incongruent to the rest of the city.

The kids are crazy. Crazy kids on travel days with lots of heavy backpacks makes for even crazier times.

Here comes our train. Hopefully the track delays that I saw earlier on my phone won’t affect this train…it didn’t seem like it would.

Seriously kids, calm down and talk softer. We are so loud (but not that time in Taiwan where some asshole asked us to move), let’s try to be “not” the loudest people on the train.

Good thing we got snacks and drinks, because no snack/drink cart ever came by.

I want to live with a little mountain in my backyard.

Free internet, a little spotty. Also this new wordpress version keeps trying to put my screenshots in a different format than the rest of the photos.

Also, ran into some stressful wordpress image upload problems in Kyoto. All the image uploads all of a sudden wouldn’t upload when I got to Kyoto. I tried everything and even updated to the latest wordpress(which is always a gamble). Nothing worked, so finally contacted support to webhost, and it was a firewall issue on their end. Solved within an hour after I sent an email, thankful for the quick resolution.

Little KL, calm down please. Everyone, calm down please.

Here kids, eat some tamago.

Eat some food, then you can get on your ipads. It’s so hard to find the right balance between getting the kids to behave for the other travelers and not giving them way too much screen time.

I believe this is Nagoya.

Kids didn’t want theirs, so I ate it. It’s so good and this is why I’m fat. I do feel less bloated and fat now that I’m in Japan though. All those miles of walking everyday is starting to have an effect on my metabolism.

It’s too cloudy today to see Mt. Fuji. The kids were disappointed, I’m disappointed too. Maybe the clouds will lift tomorrow and we’ll be able to see it from Hakone?

In a little over 2 hours, we’ve reached Odawara where we’ll make a transfer to another train that’ll get us closer to our Ryokan in Hakone.

Now I need to connect to an Odakyu Line train. I will say, since not having JR Passes, I’ve taken more non JR trains than ever on this trip in Japan. In fact, the Shinkansen has been the only JR transportation I’ve taken this entire trip in Japan.

Those eyes says it all, them kids are crazy. Little KL has been a menace, it’s been exhausting. He talks nonstop and jumps around nonstop. Just, everything x10 nonstop.

Smile and pretend it’s been easy peasy lemon squeazy.

At the Hakone Yumoto station, we’ll need to make one more connection, for only one stop. Blah…annoying having to connect to another train just to go one more station. We would walk, but it’s mountainous and we’ve got heavy packs on. But mainly, it’s the kids. Me and RL would just walk the one station’s worth of distance if it was just the two of us.

We just missed the train. So now instead of walking up hill for 15 minutes, we’ll wait for 15 minutes so that we can go one station and walk downhill for 5 minutes. This has not been a very efficient trip with the 3 different train transfers.

I think we are going the right way. Haven’t mentioned this yet, but almost everywhere there’s English there’s also Korean. I guess Koreans have been visiting Japan a lot as of late.

Kids, we are almost there. Doesn’t CL look so cute with her travel day hat? She’s gotten many compliments on how cute it is. She does make it look really really cute.

Hakone is more of a region than a single town.

Well, we were in time for the above average heat during our time here in Japan. We did also manage to avoid much rain during the rainy season, and we are here in the middle of hydrangea blooming season that’s along this Hakone train line. Some are planted and some are more wild it seems.

Just blooming hydrangeas of all different colors all along the tracks.

Lots of stuff to carry around, almost there. My left heel has been hurting every day, and it’s the worst after a travel day where I’m walking around carrying heavy packs.

Excited to be almost to our ryokan.

Reached our station.

It’s a small station, and seems to be in the middle of no where. There isn’t even a ticket machine for me to adjust my ticket fare (I owe one stop worth of money)…It’s just an open platform with a Suica card machine, but I don’t have a Suica card to tap for payment…oh well, I tried.

Let’s see, where to go.

We are in the middle of a mountain over here.

This is the only way, and Google Maps says this is the way.

The unmanned and ungated station.

A few abandoned buildings here. I did some research and apparently the population of Haknoe peaked in the 80s and it’s just been in decline since. A little sad for Japan.

Must be a country with lots of water resources, just a tap running water nonstop, spring? tap? Who knows.

We see these pipes suspended across canyons here. Hot Spring piping?

To be continued at Hakone Day 1 Part 2.