Nagoya and Hakone

Everyone had agreed to meet at the castle for 2pm to look around it together and most of the group succeeded in making it on time. Elly and Ruby, however, were 45mins behind schedule by the time they arrived, having stopped for cheese on toast! The rest of us passed the time waiting for them by swapping stories of what we'd been up to that morning and Fallon and Sam showed us what they'd bought on their individual outings. 

Once Ruby and Elly had joined us, we headed into the castle complex, where we discovered that an event was being held in the grounds. As all the information was in Japanese, we tried our best to guess what was going on and came to the conclusion it was some sort of fete, with tables holding bonsai or flower arrangements grouped in categories waiting for judging and a small stage where actors dressed as samurai were interacting with the crowd. We stayed and watched for a bit, before wandering through the tables and picking out our favourite bonsai trees. 

After picking up our luggage from the train station, where we had left it in lockers earlier, we checked into our hotel. This is the first time we've stayed in a hotel so far on the trip and everyone was looking forward to some of the luxuries hotel rooms provide (such as more than one bathroom between us and western style mattresses instead of futons)! 

For dinner we went to a food court and because it was so busy, we split up into two groups to queue for different restaurants with the hopes of getting a table easier. Will, Fallon and I chose an Italian restaurant and we had our first Western food, to match our Western style accommodation! 

The following day we were booked onto a full day trip and needed to be at the coach station early to meet our tour guide. However, 5mins after we'd agreed to meet in the hotel lobby, there was still no sign of Fallon and Elly. Ruby volunteered to go to their room to check how much longer they were going to be, as we needed to leave immediately to get to the station on time. Turns out Elly's alarm hadn't gone off and they were still asleep when Ruby knocked! We made the decision to go ahead without them to the station and try to hold the coach for as long as possible in the hopes they would be able to get dressed and get there before it had to leave. Luckily, we were able to wait for them, as Elly and Fallon arrived only 5mins late, having jogged the whole way to the coach. 

With the whole group on board, we headed off on our day trip. The first stop was at Gujo, a small town with a beautiful castle overlooking it from the nearby hill. Unfortunately it was raining pretty heavily when we arrived and everyone got quite wet on the walk up to the castle. 

By the time we reached the second stop, Takayama, we had all nearly dried off. Takayama is a bigger town, with lots of shops and places to eat so we grabbed lunch before browsing the street side stores. The town is known for having the most beautiful street in Central Japan and we appreciated the traditional architecture of the buildings as we wandered. As the rain was coming down heavily by this point however, we were soaked through by the time we needed to return to the coach. 

Our last stop was at Shirakawa-go, a UNESCO world heritage site. The village is known for its thatched roofs and is protected, with no modern structures within the village boundary. We walked around and took in the traditional architecture, but not before I had finally bought an umbrella as it was still pouring down with rain! Will had previously bought a folding umbrella in Osaka (he loves an umbrella!) so he was a little envious of my clear pop up umbrella. We visited a house museum, which we could go inside and see the internal layout of the traditional houses and were allowed to climb up all the stairs to reach the very top of the attic. The houses are way bigger in the inside than we expected, with three floors within the roof space for storage and work spaces. Then it was back to the bus and on to our return trip to Nagoya. 

On Monday it was time to move on again, but as our next stop at Hakone was only for one night, we decided to pay to have our main luggage transferred to Tokyo. With only an overnight bag, we caught the bullet train again. As I was travel sick each time we had taken the bullet train previously, I successfully managed to take my anti-sickness tablets in advance enough to actually work this time! 

We spent most of the day on the move, taking various different travel methods including the bullet train, a bus and lastly a pirate ship! The pirate ship sailed us across lake Ashi and we had a glimpse of Mount Fuji, peeking between two mountains. When we disembarked the pirate ship, we had a steep walk to our accommodation, which was set halfway up a hill overlooking the lake. We reached the accommodation and were pleased to discover that our room had a clear view all the way to Mount Fuji. When the clouds were cooperating, we could see the iconic mountain clearly and it was already snow capped for the winter! 

As well as having an amazing view, the accommodation also had private Onsens (Japanese hot springs). We had to separate by gender to go in and we observed all of the instructions given by the hotel regarding Onsen etiquette, including bathing naked! Once we were all relaxed from our hot soak, we had to cook our own dinner. The hotel provided all the prepared ingredients and cooking equipment for us to make a hotpot. After our hotpot experience in Tokyo, we were far more prepared and knew what to do this time!

The next day we set off once again, this time travelling by cable car, funicular and then romance train. The cable car gave us great views of the lake again and we went over Hakone Mountain, which had billows of steam coming from it's slopes. On the ride we learnt from the audio information that the mountain is actually a volcano, with the last erruption being around 10 years ago. The sulphur that was escaping the mountain has a definite eggy smell and none of us wanted to hang around too long when we switched to the furnicular that took us back down the other side of the mountain. Our last leg was on the romance train, which seems to just be a normal train that takes a slower route with beautiful views. 

We arrived in Tokyo in the late afternoon and were able to pick up our luggage before checking in to our final accommodation of the trip. Having spent the last couple of days in rural settings, being back in the busy city was a bit of a shock, but we were all keen to explore the parts of Tokyo we missed the first time.