Totally Tokyo

Hakone- Exploring Mountain Side

So this past weekend 25 of us from Temple University traveled to Hakone. Hakone is a mountainous region 2 hours outside of Tokyo and near Mt. Fuji. The bus ride to Hakone took off at 8 AM Saturday morning, so that meant I slept the whole way there, that is until we stoped for lunch at a Sobe Noodle house. Yum. We then stopped at one of the coolest museums I have experienced. It is called the Hakone Open Air Museum, and the name can tell you about it for the most part. There are sculptures and displays outside, most of them modern pieces and some were even interactive. Imagine: Beautiful, fun, interesting, extoic pieces of art on the side of the mountain. The landscape contrasted these exotic pieces of art with endless hills and mountains and trees of green. There were pieces you could slide down, climb, and go under ground with. There was a stained glass tower you could climb, and a giant plastic sculpture you could go inside and crawl (it reminded me of Leaps and Bounds from elementry school birthday parties!). In addition to the outside pieces, they had a Picasso Collection! My favorite. It was a lot of pieces I haven't seen much of, like is pottery, and it was exciting and new. From the Open Air Museum we headed to the base of the mountain and took a rope-way car up (like some ski mountains have, but so you can sit and stand take in the view). We climbed up and up and passed over beautiful green landscape and saw Mt. Fuji in the distance (it truly is a BIG BIG mountain!), and then when we passed over the other side of the mountain we crossed natural sulfur gases. (Stinky!) We got out around this point, and climbed farther up. On this mountain they boilded egss in the natural springs, which would turn the egg shells black. So when in Japan, you eat black eggs! They were wonderful, and we all said they tasted different, but maybe the sulfer was getting to us. After these adventures we headed to our wonderful wonderful hotel room. We had two rooms, a balcolny (views only of the mountain, we woke to a woman doing taichi in the morning on the mountain side, oh japan!), tatami (reed mat floors), legless chairs, futons,a nd of course tea. We changed in to our robes and sandals and headed to our traditional meal with oshibori (hot towels that are give to you before the meal at most places you eat at) gohan (rice), sushimi (raw fish), vegtables and meats we cook ourslves with our personal flame, and more and more! And of course during the meal we had sake and ashai beers. After the meal, still in our robes, we Karaoke-ed until we had enough blackmail for everyone. After our embarassment we headed to the onsen, natural hot springs, that were apart of our hotel. Beautiful and relaxing after a day of sightseeing and fun, it was truly an amazing day. The next morning we left the hotel and headed to a Castle, which was exciting, but it was also all rebuilt with in the last century, but was orginally built during the Edo period. However, it was still amazing, and I got my picture taken with samerai as well as went through the zoo that belonged to the castle. And then we headed to Daiyuzansaijyoji, a buddhist village that was huge and deeply embedded into the mountain. Many temples and stairs and places of worship. I found out later you could even spend the night with the monks and follow their every move. The village was createdin the 600s and is still active. it was beautiful. After a second day of sightseeing, we headed back on the bus to Tokyo (everyone wanted to stay longer in the peaceful beautiful place of Hakone). Ah, another weekend for the books!

posted by Stephy-ru @ Friday, October 06, 2006