Odawara

I had planned this day trip with a couple students a while ago. When I mentioned it to my friend that I was going to Hakone with for the 2 days after that, she suggested that I just stay at a hotel in Odawara since it's right next to Hakone... I should probably look at a map once in a while.

We were hungry so we stopped by to get some soba (buckwheat noodles) on the way to the castle.

I got the eggplant, fried lotus root, and yuba one. 

Stomachs full, we head across this bridge to the castle grounds.

View from the top floor of the castle. There was a sign pointing to Hakone, my next destination.

One of the gates

We then found a little children's theme park over to the side of the castle... tickets were 80yen each.

The teacups were awesome! It was just the three of us so we all got to sit in our own and the employee went over the whole spiel even though it was clearly intended for small children. 

After 3 minutes of solid spinning in the teacups, we rode the train. It went around the whole park (this park is clearly not large).

Our conductor was adorable. Actually, all the staff here were. They were all clearly retired or homemakers who just want a job for fun. The conductor pointed out all of the wooden animals that they had all made together. We all agreed that this park was our favorite part of the day.

For some reason, whenever I go somewhere with these girls, we find horses of some kind. (right: picture from the time we went to Saitama to see Tumuli.)

We found a store called "Hana Ringo," meaning "flower apple" that looked really funky so we went in. I thought that the store would expand once you got beyond the entrance, but I was wrong. This place was tiny and crammed with stuff. My favorite was that they had eraser stamps. I don't know if this is just a Japanese thing, but I feel like every child in Japan has made a stamp out of either a potato or an eraser. These brought me back to my days of Japanese school so I bought some stickers that they had made using the stamps. Maybe some of you will be lucky to see one as the seal on your next letter :)  

We saw an advertisement for this cafe out on the sidewalk and it was right next to flowerapple so we decided to give it a try. Too bad that the sign hanging town by the gate says "open" but as you can see, the shutter was definitely down. False Advertisement! I really liked the gourd and basket hanging in the tree, though.

We still wanted dessert so we went to mall attached to the train station and got waffles at some Hawaiin Waffle place. Waffles as a dessert, not IHOP style.