off we head to hakone! whee. once again.
hakone seems very country-side ish, a lot of old houses, quiet quiet quiet neighbourhoods surrounded by lots of trees and slopes up and down. pipes were strung across through trees, pretty cool but… yea. we bought the hakone freepass, giving us unlimited travel through a bunch of trains and bus lines in the hakone area. our first stop was a hot spring and garden. which ended up being… not worth it. so we headed back to the train.
our next stop, chu somethinsomething where the hakone open-air museum was located. the lady was nice and gave us the student discount without the card :D! and the museum was very insanely awesome. the main three artists were rosso, picasso, and moore. several of the sculptures are placed throughout the area outside and the effect is amazing, contrasting the sculpture with the ultimate, wide open space. (paraphrased from some quote on a wall…) i’m not sure how to describe the place. it was pretty big but if u just take a look at every thing, it’ll take about an hour and a half. if u actually want to -look-… it’ll take a lot more time. there really was a LOT there, and so interesting too. i couldn’t really pick out a favorite, but i’d recommend it in a heartbeat.
next stop was motohakonemachi where we got off and walked through the ‘ancient cedar avenue’ where the cedar trees are hundreds hundreds of years old, extending from motohakone to hakone after about 15 minute walk. we strayed off course and ended up in a park with great views of lake ashi and a bunch of paths leading around. i ended up on a lakeside path which led doooown with wooden log-stairs that seemed like they’d give way any minute. the sun was out so the day was nice and bright. apparently leon and michelle were looking for me cause as i emerged from the path, i was on a bridge and they appeared underneath. we had to go.
reached hakonemachi port and tried to find the ‘cruise’ that was included in the hakone freepass. unfortunately, we were about 10-15 minutes too late. most of the buses stopped running around 430/5ish T_T. it was a depressing and sad trip home on a bus, trying to work out alternatives to either get to the ropeway or see it the next day, since its a two-day pass. but the problem lay in we were to check out the next morning and we’d have all of our luggage with us. our plan turned out to be… get to tokyo station, lock up our luggage (if it fit) and go through the cruise/ropeway/cablecar and come back and head to kyoto afterwards. we took paper out of my notebook in order to measure the lockers 😛
although it was all pretty depressing, masaki was around and the four of us walked around, fighting the temptation of karaoke, and ended up at the batting cages again. i hit most of them, but only got two or three good hits out of… 4 sessions. it’s pretty fun actually o.o masaki’s a great guy, cheered us all up. after a crappy day. it was the first time he heard of a group going to hakone and not seeing mt. fuji – -;
back at the hostel, we watched a couple episodes of southpark and experienced a small earthquake. yea. earthquake. it was actually pretty cool. it wasn’t strong enough to knock anything over, but you could easily feel it.
and that was our last night in tokyo. whee.
within an installation at the hakone open-air museum
landscape from the lake ashi observation park
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