Hakone

Last weekend, I went to Hakone. It was amazing. Let me explain...

The tour bus left at ungodly o'clock in the morning. Good: It left from right outside a Starbucks! Bad: The Starbucks was closed. Yeah... that was salt in my very sleep wounds. I fell asleep on the bus. BUT - when I awoke, to what did my wonder eyes did appear? A Japanese highway stop... that had a bakery in it! It was what I imagine a Sheetz/Wawa is in Japan, but a billion times nicer. I got milk tea, a donut-thing, an a baseball sized onigiri for the road.

Our first destination - the Hakone open-air museum! I had not known what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised. I'm not necessarily an art buff, but when you combine that with woods, and winding paths, and hills... yes please!

 This may be the best picture I've ever taken

There are a ton more pictures in the link at the bottom; check them out!

Anyway; back on the bus, and to the volcano! Hakone has an active volcano that pumps out sulfur and natural hot springs. We made our approach via hanging cart things.

Our card looked like that, but with a dozen tourists pressed against the side.

Magma dome. Made of once molten hot mag-ma. You are reading this in Doctor Evil's voice.

We stopped here for lunch. The local specialty are eggs which are hard boiled in the boiling springs (see above). The eggs end up black on the outside, on account of the sulfur in the water. They looked awesome, tasted normal, and supposedly add seven years to your life. Here's to an underutilized life insurance policy...

 There was a boat ride on a pirate looking ship. We couldn't see much out of it on account of the fog.

Shrine! We ended up at an amazing waterside shrine. The Torii was gorgeous. I could honestly just spend hours at places like this, soaking in the quiet majesty.

Afterwards; we headed back. I was exhausted. My camera was dead. My kindle even bit it on the ride back. I slept well that night.

All the pictures!