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Hakone
Find leisure, pirate ships and “romance” just a stone’s throw from Tokyo
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©Daniel T. Yara
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Sometimes it’s nice to play tourist for a day. Hakone, just two hours south of Tokyo, is the perfect place to do just that.
Rushing out of Shinjuku, passing the resigned faces hustling to workaday jobs, has a raffish feel to it—especially leaning back in one of the high-backed seats on Odakyu’s “Romance Car.”
Suggestive as the name sounds, the actual reason that the train is named so is deliciously practical. “Romance seat” is a Japanese-English word for “love seat,” referring to two-person chairs with no armrests. C’est la vie. Couples in the seats near me seemed to be in good spirits either way.
One of the most convenient aspects of traveling to Hakone is the Odakyu line’s “Hakone Free Pass,” which allows visitors to use any mode of transportation (except Seibu buses) in the Hakone region for two-three days. And there are a lot of ways to get around Hakone. While penny pinchers can save a few yen by taking a direct bus from Shinjuku to Lake Ashi, the far easier option is to take the Romance Car, bus, pirate ferry, cable car and toy train combination loop. (All are included in the Shinjuku to Hakone-Yumoto fare.)
After reading for 90 minutes, I arrived in Hakone-Yumoto and sniffed the air. Forest. I then took a short walk around the station, past a chef snoozing in the alley and a rickshaw driver waiting for customers, and caught the bus headed for Lake Ashi. The road wound up and up through the switchbacks. In the ravines beneath the bus windows, delicate puffs of budding Japanese maples covered the folds in topography like tender green gauze. On the bus, tourists munched snacks and snapped photos. It took 40 minutes to reach Lake Ashi.
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Unfortunately, Mt Fuji was veiled by clouds when we reached the southern end of the lake, but there are many other sights to enjoy. Near Moto-Hakone-ko is Hakone Shrine, and south of that is the “Ancient Cedar Tree Avenue,” a 2km stretch of towering cedars planted in 1618. Near Hakone Machi is the old “Hakone Checkpoint,” a re-creation of the one in place during the Tokugawa regime, which attempted to control the flow of people in and out of Edo in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.
I explored the shrine and strolled among the trees before walking to the ferry dock to wait
on a boat to take me across the lake to Togendai. Lake Ashi’s boat traffic can be described as incongruous at best: three pirate ships and a faux paddle ship with a plastic deer head mounted on the top deck. I boarded, and as we pulled away from the pier, passengers took turns posing with the plastic, vaguely French-looking commodore mannequin and the kitschy pirate brandishing a matchlock. Up in the replica rigging near the counterfeit crow’s nest, a GPS boom revolved slowly. A fact-filled recording in English and Japanese playing over the speakers told about the “fairy tale-land pirate boat cruise.”
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| ©Daniel T. Yara |
After 30 minutes, the vessel deposited its passengers in Togendai, where most of us caught the Hakone Ropeway to Owakudani, an area famous for volcanic hot springs and black eggs. Boiled in the sulfuric waters, the eggs are rumored to add six years of life for every one you eat. A bag of six costs ¥500, and most tourists gobble 36 years worth on the spot. I bought a bag, read the rather stern consumption guidelines, and decided to save them for later—the pungent fumes belching from the volcanic vents were starting to get to me. I headed back down the path to catch the ropeway down to ounzan.
Fog surrounded the gondola for most of the ride, so much so that at times it was difficult to tell if we were going up or down. Occasionally, when a clearing materialized to reveal a spanning chasm far below, everyone would gasp.
In Sounzan, I transferred to the Hakone Tozan Cable Car—which made four stops without gaining or losing a single passenger—then in Gora I transferred to the bright red Hakone Tozan train.
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| ©Daniel T. Yara |
As we started down, it began to rain, so I skipped the Hakone Open Air Museum and vowed to return again to peruse the artworks.
By nightfall I was rushing back toward Tokyo. The dejected faces I’d passed in the morning were now headed the opposite direction. Some looked happy, while others looked simply tired. A steady rain was falling. At some point I dozed off, and when I awoke we were arriving in bustling Shinjuku.
Hakone, although just a few hours from Tokyo, feels decidedly disconnected. Sometimes just a day away is all it takes to forget about the rush.
Trip Tips
Getting to Hakone is easy. The trip from Shinjuku takes about two hours. The Hakone Free Pass costs ¥4,700 from Shinjuku (Mon-Thu) and ¥5,500 (Fri-Sun). The “weekday” pass is valid for two days, the “free pass” (weekends) for three; you can buy either at any Odakyu line station. Riding on the “Romance Car” costs an additional ¥870. There is also a direct bus from Shinjuku to Lake Ashi, which will cost you ¥2,000 each way. Hakone is well known for its onsen, the quality of which are usually reflected in the price of accommodation. Some of the hotels welcome day-trippers. For more information on transportation, tours and hotels, see www.odakyu.jp/english. |
The Conrad Tokyo (www.conradhotels.com), which celebrated its second anniversary last month, got some good news when it snagged two spots in the prestigious “Tablet 10” list. This influential ranking features the top ten hotel performers in a range of categories, from “Best Hotel Escape” to “Unusual Hotels.” Closely monitored by industry insiders and travelers, the ratings are renowned as the independent and reliable guide to excellent service, food, design, location and value (hotels cannot pay to join and are added only after passing a rigorous anonymous review). The Conrad Tokyo was voted fifth place in the “Tablet 10: Best of Asia” and also appeared on the “Tablet 10: Best City Hotels”—the sole property from Japan to be included in the selection. The hotel was lauded for its “modern-classic Tokyo style” with a foyer that is “a monumental space with sweeping views of Tokyo Bay” and guest rooms that are “even more impressive,” boasting “novel modernist fixtures and furnishings somehow seeming utterly serious and calmingly conservative, in a way it seems only the Japanese have a handle on.”
Sunrise Tours is offering a 10-hour adventure excursion for the foreign community through October 26. A bus leaves Hamamatsucho station at 9am and transports you to Tokyo station, where you board a bullet train for Jomo-Kogen station in Gunma Prefecture. Upon arrival, an English-speaking instructor will meet you and, after a barbecue lunch, you can choose between either a half-day of whitewater rafting action over 12km on the Tone River, or a half-day of canyoning at Fox Canyon. Canyoning (also sometimes called canyoneering) gear like wetsuits, life jackets, helmets, gloves, harnesses and boots (up to size 30cm) are included. The train gets back to Tokyo at a very reasonable 7pm, for what is sure to be a good night’s sleep. The total cost for the day is ¥23,900. For more information and reservations, call 03-5796-5454 or see www.jtbgmt.com/sunrisetour. |
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