Japan Part 2: Final Day of our Big Adventure

As with the initial leg of our trip, our flight returning to the US also included an all day layover in Tokyo, allowing some Japanese bonus adventure. The overnight flight from Bangkok to Tokyo lost 2 hours traveling east across time zones, and the 3 hours of sleep we got on the plane might have been enough at the beginning of the trip, but not near the end. So we promptly crashed for 2 more hours of rest in the Tokyo terminal before heading out for our second, and final, day of Japanese sightseeing.

The first day of our trip was spent in Tokyo; for this last day of our trip we elected to head out of the city, to the Hakone National Park area. It’s about 90 minutes out of the city by train, and within view of Mt. Fuji. Arriving in the town of Hakone, we got lunch before switching trains. We decided to save money on this meal, and picked up prepared microwaveable meals in the 7-11 there. It was good though, mine was with shrimp. And yes, they have 7-11s all over Japan and Thailand, maybe the most common business we saw! Then we caught a little train that zigzagged up the mountains until we got to the little town of Gora. From there we took an incline railway about a mile up to Sounzan, and the views were getting really nice. At Sounzan, we switched to a gondola lift that takes its passengers up and over the exploded remains of the Hakone Volcano Kamiyama. Steam continually escapes the ragged cavity at the top of the mountain.

Then the gondola crests the far side of the mountain top, and Mt. Fuji comes into view in the distance. The top was ringed by clouds at our first view, and the gondola took us down to Lake Ashinoko, a crater lake 4 miles long, formed along the caldera wall of the volcano. The tour boats that traverse the lake are replicas of seventeenth century man-of-war pirate ships! They seem kind of out of place, and the Japanese kid aboard in a pirate costume really didn’t look quite right, but it all added a fun aspect to things.

At the far end of the lake we chose to walk a section less than a mile long before catching a bus. Along the way we walked the path of the old Tokaido highway from the 1600’s, built in the Edo period (photo below). It was lined by Cedar trees, and those same cedars still line the road today. Reportedly, the road appears today just as it did in the 1600’s . . . though the trees would have been shorter the first few decades!

Finally caught the bus, then the train, and returned to Tokyo’s Haneda Airport with a couple of hours to relax, eat, and get online before boarding our overnight flight back to LAX and home.

Our whole trip has been a great adventure. But then international trips always are. :)

(Accessing the internet at Haneda Airport, with our airplane and jetway in the background)