Odawara and Hakone

This morning we packed up our belongings and sent our main suitcases off to “who knows where” while we carried our other bags with us through the subway station to Tokyo Station (major hub) to catch the train to Odawara.  The subway has 12 lines, while other train lines going through Tokyo number 20.  It’s crazy!  But it moves people...and there are lots of those.  Fortunately, today is Saturday here in Japan, so the station wasn’t as busy as it could have been.  I said to our tour guide, “I can’t imagine what it’s like during the week at this time.”  He said, “No, you can’t imagine.”  It’s organized chaos.

Even a woman organizing people with a loud speaker.


We arrived at our train’s platform.  Here’s where we’re going.


There are lots of choices for drinks in the vending machines.

When our train arrived, the first thing that happens is a crew gets onto  the train, spins the seats around to the direction we’re going to be going, and cleans everything.  It’s amazing.  They have 7 minutes to get all this done.  I’ve posted a couple of short videos on Facebook as videos don’t work very well on this blog (actually, they don’t work at all).  And the trains here in Japan are exactly on time.  And I mean EXACTLY.

So our not-so-high-speed, but high-speed train took us to Odawara, southwest of Tokyo.  There are 3 levels of high-speed train here, and ours was the 2nd fastest.

Our first stop was at Odawara Castle.  It’s pretty much the same as any castle you can think of in terms of design, but it looks different.  It was just a quick stop to see the castle.


Next, we took the bus to Hakone and Lake Ashi.  This is a crater lake in the mountains.  Quite an impressive lake, but the low cloud kept us from seeing much.  You could see Mt. Fuji if it was clear.  By the way, here’s a shot of Mt. Fuji that we saw from the train.  Yeah, that’s what we saw of it...nothing.

This was our cruise, from the right side to the left side.


And here’s what we could have seen from the lake, but we didn’t.

While waiting for the cruise boat, we wandered around the large shop.  Here were some treats to buy.


It was a short cruise and the bus picked us up and took us to the outdoor museum in Hakone.  When we arrived at the outdoor museum, the first thing we had to do was get some lunch.  We were all starving.  They actually had some western-ish things on the menu.  And of course a local beer.

Then we toured around the outdoor museum.  Some really cool and interesting sculptures.



They had a whole building dedicated to Picasso.  I guess they bought a lot of his works - mainly sculpture - from his family.

Then we saw these 2 dudes with their feet in the natural springs water.  


It was a short drive to our hotel for the night.  It’s brand new and one of the things they do is outfit you for a yukata (like a kimono but lighter - and worn more in the summer).  So we all wore these to dinner in the hotel.
 
Dinner was quite the spread, with a few more options, but I think I’m still losing weight.


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