Hakone- Day 1

My friend Atsuko and I went to Hakone for a couple days. Thank goodness I stayed in Odawara the night before. There's no way I would have been able to meet her at 9am at Odawara station if I had to travel all the way from where I live. Correction. It's physically possible. Just not without my being extremely unpleasant. We hopped on a bus and went to the sekisho (en), which is a little fort that was built to check the "passports" of those traveling through. People had to travel through these when they went between Kyoto and Edo. 2 things were not allowed out: weapons and women. Those who were caught trying to flee were killed in a way to discourage others from attempting the same. I was hoping that some original parts of the buildings would be left, but it appears that those have been fully excavated and the replication was built right on top of the original site. 

Our snacks after our self-guided mini tour: 

Tokoroten- agar noodles

Mitarashi Dango- sticky rice balls with a light teriyaki sauce

We then walked along a road that lead us to the beginning of the Old Hakone Highway, which was used for a long time before stones were laid to create a road of sorts. There was even a sighting of Mt. Fuji!

Here's what the path looked like. There was wet moss covering many of the stones on the path and the stones were placed pretty far apart so it was surprisingly difficult to walk along this path. I wonder how the people way back when in their straw shoes walked this? The trees and other form of brush were really relaxing to walk through and cooled the temperature down for us so besides the lack of foothold, there was little to complain about. There were signs once in a while with tid bits of information about this path. It even talks about how it was created in a way that wouldn't obstruct or interfere with the watershed. I wish that more consideration would be taken concerning the integrity of natural ecosystems in modern day construction and urban planning.

We came along a torii (typically red gate in front of shrines) on the side of this path that led to a set of stairs. Curious, we went up the stairs, which led to another torii and set of stairs. We then hurried up those, a little impatient now to get on with our walk. At the top of the little hill, we were finally rewarded with the sight of the shrine (below).

Yes. We walked out of our way, with our backpacks, to see this. As we were walking around, trying to figure out what this shrine was for, we realized that it was cold just in this vicinity. Creepy. We promptly turned around and left.

We had talked about hiking all the way back to where we were staying, but since it was taking what seemed like forever to get to a tea house that was supposed to be about a third of the way, we changed our minds and went with the busing the rest of the way option. We finally came upon the tea house where we got some snacks and my friend tried the shiso juice. Shiso isn't something that you see people make juice with often so it was interesting to see it on the menu. It was much tastier than I thought it would be. Most of the hike after the tea house was downhill and along the road. A lot of stairs were involved. Right when I thought my weak, old knees were going to give, we found our bus stop. Yay!

We checked into our hotel and went straight for the hot springs.

Our room was HUGE and had floor to ceiling windows. (First picture is the view from our room). It was amazing. That yellow couch was also very, very comfortable. We spent the rest of the day laying around, going to the hot springs multiple times, and otherwise relaxing. Hot springs tend to be much hotter than public baths and are therefore way too hot for me, but I could tough out the roten-buros (outdoor hot springs). 

Dinner was, of course, amazing. Drool alert!