Weekend trip to Hakone

Hello,

This past weekend, I went to Hakone with Xueyao. Herewith a small map for you to have an idea of where Hakone is:

Getting to Hakone takes a while... And loads of different kinds of public transport. First we took the subway from our place to Shinjuku and from there we took a train to Odawara, With 2 hours in the train, we had time to take the first picture of our trip :p

We changed trains in Odawara to get to Hakone-Yumoto. We had lunch there and tasted a traditional Tofu sweet there. You might not think so due to my crazy look on this picture, but it was actually really good:

From there, we took a mountain train (going from right to left to right along the mountain flank) to Gora, and from Gora we took a funicular to Sounzan where we were supposed to have a great view of the valley, but unfortunately, we weren't very lucky with the weather:

We then took a cable car to Owakudani which is popular for it's natural onsens (Hot springs; Hakone in general is famous for it's natural hot springs), the onsen-baked-eggs (which were sold out when we got there) and for all the sulphur:

The sky cleared up and the sun even shone a little when we were there:

After we had breath in enough Sulphur while walking around we took a cable car down to Togendai from where we would take a "ferry" to cross lake Ashi:

(Do you understand why I put the word ferry in between quotation marks?)

While on the ferry, we passed by the toori of the Hakone shrine:

And then got off at Hakone Machi:

When the weather is good, you are supposed to have a great view of mount Fuji from lake Ashi. We had a great view of fog...

The area is still very beautiful and I have to admit the fog added a special atmosphere to it. After walking around, we took a bus to get to Sengoku, where our Ryoukan (traditional Japanese hotel) was located. We had a traditional Japanese room and there was an onsen, so we enjoyed the onsen in the evening:

Tatami room:

 Yukata:

 Onsen:

 Our futons:

During the night, it started raining very heavily, and that went on during most of the day. We were very happy we didn't slack of the previous day, because we couldn't do to much on Sunday due to the bad weather. In between heavy rains, we got to walk around Moto-Hakone-Ko and go to the Hakone shrine:

 Above picture is just to give you an idea of how big the Toori is.

After going to the shrine, went back to Moto-Hakone-Ko and had lunch there. Mine was Katsu-don, or Don-katsu, I always mix both up...

Since the weather was better, we decided to take a bus up to the mountains, from where we would then do a nice 30 minutes walk to a waterfall. However, once we arrived to our bus stop, up in the mountains, a huge storm (with heavy rains and thunder) hit us so we took the first bus back down to the lake and then went to Gora where we visited the Hakone Gora park. 

We then took the funicular back down to Gora from where we would go back to Tokyo. This is the last picture of our trip, shot while waiting for the funicular:

All in all, we had a lot of fun, despite the bad weather.