Day 17: Hakone
Day 17: Hakone
29 May 2017
Up relatively early this morning to check out of the hotel and catch the Romancecar we’d (eventually) managed to book last night. Since it wasn’t leaving until 10:30am there wasn’t a huge amount of hurry and we’d got a decent idea where we were going after the last nights’ nonsense at Shinjuku Eki.
Took both suitcases down to reception and the ever helpful staff measured it all up so they could work out the cost of getting it Takkyuubin’ed. For the record it’s Length + Depth + Height = Price Bracket: they have a specially colour coded tape measure for it and everything! Again can’t praise the staff or the Takkyuubin (TA-Q-BIN) service too highly. It cost about £25 to have both sent on to the next Tokyo hotel (Ginza) and meant that we only had to take a few carrier bags with us. Win.
Takkyuubin and checkout done we got ourselves another sterling breakfast, complete with the usual huge caffeine/melon soda injection, at Jonathan’s before wombling up the street to the Ninth Circle of Hell’s station. Two of the carriers were full of sake, breakables and other things “not needed on voyage” so we found a coin locker just inside the station entrance to leave them until tomorrow. The locker was nowhere near the Odakyu line but we thought we’d have a better chance of finding it again if it was in a relatively obviously spot rather than some featureless hallway. Turned out to be not a terrible idea. And the lockers take Passmo cards too so no rootling around with coins and tickets etc. You just scan and pay per day on pickup.
Dumped two of the carriers there and then, as we were quite early (not like us eh!) we thought we could mooch round the shops. However apart from a couple of small cafés most didn’t open until much late so we binned that idea and trekked across/down/round the station to the Odakyu/Romancecar line itself. Actually found it with only a tiny, weeny, infinitesimally small divorce. So that’s a good thing.
Grabbed a coffee each from the Romancecar line café and then sat on a seat watching the world go by. Really interesting seeing the amount of stuff that gets loaded onto each train – bit like watching airlines loading up their cargo bays.
Once our Romancecar rocked up we found our seats, availed ourselves of the food trolley when it came round (ordering the usual healthy juice drinks and isotonic water, which the young lady had skilfully disguised as white wine and sake) and settled in for what turned out to be a very leisurely 2 hour trip out into the mountain and Hakone National Park. Coming out through Tokyo we were struck, not for the first time, by how ridiculously close the tracks are to the houses. In the UK you’d usually have a garden or something but in parts of the line the backs of houses couldn’t have been more than 6 feet from the track. The train was really just pootling along but even so – must drive you daft until you get used to it. Bit like Elwood’s apartment in The Blues Brothers. Anyway, once we were outside the city proper the views became very stereotypically Japanese, to the point where we actually even saw Mount Fuji. Albeit from quite a distance. And on the wrong side of the train for us to take pictures. Well, at least without rudely leaning over the other passengers which wouldn’t have exactly been polite.
Arriving at the final destination of Hakone itself we decamped and went to find the hotel to ask if we could leave the admittedly small amount of luggage we had brought. Found it after the usual “help” from Google maps had lead us the wrong way for a bit and were met by the jolliest hotel manager ever. Not a word I’ve had to use much in my life but it’s the only one that fits.
Really friendly and incredibly complimentary about my Japanese “skills” - a word I use quite wrongly. His compliments were not even remotely justified but did make me polish my halo for a few minutes. Then I remembered I’m crap at it and came back down to earth. He checked our booking and let us leave our bags but apologised that the room wouldn’t be ready until after 2pm. No problem – we knew that. We just wanted to make sure we actually had a room and to dump the gear for a while. A quick 「ではまたあとで」and we were back out bumbling about the main street of Hakone.
Hakone itself is perfectly pleasant despite the main street being tourist central. Even second shop is a souvenir shop and the quality does vary hugely between cheap plastic “tat” right up to really very high quality, massively expensive stuff. We spent the next couple of hours checking out every single shop and buying a few souvenirs for ourselves and people back home, including some wooden figures from a genuinely lovely man in a showroom. Entire conversation in Japanese and managed to get a shot of Pochi in a display cabinet! お土産 indeed!
After quite a lot of this bumbling about we returned to the hotel (actually a large ryokan) to again be greeted by the jolliest manager ever. He checked us in properly, booked us in for our evening meal and breakfast the next day then showed us up to our room personally. Perfect. Completely perfect room.
He asked us to change into our yukata and someone would be up to serve us a welcome tea. So we changed (picture Mr Benn in the fancy dress store!) and we checked out the room and especially the bath until there was a polite knock on the door. We opened the door to a tiny older Japanese lady who had obviously been with the hotel forever. She bustled about preparing and pouring the tea then checked the fit of my yukata.
“NONOnonono!”
She promptly disappeared and returned in a minute with another yukata for me. Mine was unacceptably short apparently (L size) so it was replaced with LLL size. Yes thank you. Diet starts….well not today anyway. Again I’m a terrible person and I wished I had taken note of her name. ごめんなさい。
After the tea and sorting ourselves and our meagre luggage out we had several hours until our evening meal so we decided to go explore the local area away from the street. We changed (can’t really go full samurai and womble about in yukata) and checked out the other side of the river from the hotel. Lots and lots of signs that I could at least interpret to mean "please help the conservation of wildlife" but the details were a bit hazy. Later note: turns out they were asking people not to capture fireflies. You could only walk along the valley a little way before the path stopped so we decided instead to follow the signs to the Sōun-ji temple. This involved a hike up a mountain rock face complete with crampons and a team of Sherpas. Yes I know it looks like a path up a hill. Whatever. I maintain that it WAS a mountain and it WAS a rock face*
Long sweaty hike over the MOUNTAIN, down the other side and through a few streets and we found the temple. Had a good old poke about and very interesting it is too. Extremely pretty garden round the side and some historic graves of local feudal lords to boot.
All this was followed by another long walk back up and over the MOUNTAIN along the road. Not so vertiginous and certainly surer under foot. Walked round past the (impressive) local council offices, across the bridge over the river and back to the hotel, stopping only to pick up a surprisingly cheap but very very nice bottle of Dai Ginjo sake from the combini. Knackered.
Perfect time to try out the outside bath then! We’d deliberately paid the extra to get a room with its own spa bath and it did not disappoint. Un-flipping-believable. Very deep and as hot as you like, with a view overlooking the valley though louvre panels (you need some privacy from the tourists on the other side of the river). Fairly sure it would be against UK building regulations but we could at least try knocking out the side wall of the bathroom at home and installing one of these! And it kept the sake warm as we let the bottle bob about in the water so all good.
We had the longest soak ever, drinking the entire bottle of sake and watching episodes of Netflix’s “Samurai Gourmet” on the iPad.
One of the best memories of the trip. Really.
Yes I know - it's only a bath. Get in, soak for a little while and get out. But to quote the captain of the Golgafrincham B Ark "Why stop while you're enjoying it!" **
Once we'd turned into prunes, and more importantly finished the sake the same lovely lady from the hotel knocked on our door and it was time for THE MEAL! (The capitals are fully justified.)
We were led to one of the private dining rooms across from our room and presented with an evening meal that would have made an emperor blush. There was SO much of it, all exquisite (there is just no other word) with an unbelievable range of tastes and textures. Late note: unless I’ve researched it wrongly it’s traditional Japanese fine dining called 懐石, Kaiseki. Much attention drawn to not removing the lid of the fish steamer for 8 minutes – our hostess was adamant that we understand that, as it was being cooked in situ. Then she reminded us to use the phone in the dining room to phone reception if we needed anything or to let them know we were finished. Then with a request for us to take our time, she left us to get on with it.
I have never had a meal like it. Normally I'm not a fan of overdocumenting food on holiday as it's a bit of a tourist cliché. By all means take a photo, maybe two and then move on people. However in this case I make zero apology for showing every single last aspect of it.
Look at it. Just LOOK at it!
After a very long time of eating the most amazing food ever and filled almost to bursting we phoned down to reception and the lady duly reappeared. Much effusive (and probably incredibly badly constructed) Japanese from your truly on the subject of it being the best meal ever in the history of the universe ever OMG amazing superb etc etc. I think she got the gist. She certainly understood 「本当にお腹がとてもいっぱいです」(Honestly I’m really full) as it was accompanied by the full pantomime of “I am currently smuggling a beach ball here”. She agreed that there was a lot to eat and with no discernible pause decided to pat my distended belly and ask “Where’s the fishy?” and “Where’s the beefy” accompanied by a fit of giggles from both her and Tracey. With anyone else you’d never accept the invasion of personal space but by a lovely little old Japanese lady? Yeah ok then love, here’s where the fishy is! Yes, the beefy is here too!
Tracey’s funniest moment of the trip apparently. Certainly it’s become a running joke. Thanks then. :-)
Several minutes of this plus several more minutes of heartfelt thank yous and requests to tell the chef how incredible it was and we stumbled back to our room (where dessert of all things was waiting!!!) and crashed out on the futons that the staff had made up while we were eating.
I don't remember the next two hours. I’m pretty sure there were dreams of fish though.
Did get up again at 9:30pm to have another very long bath though. Rude not to.
This place is honestly just the best ever – worth every single penny and more.
Night campers!
*Ok, it’s a hill. But the path is really bloody steep!
** Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. No? Ok, you need to catch up on your classic literature people!
Overview
Hotel
Food
- Wine and (for once, not particularly nice) sake on the Romancecar
- The most amazing Japanese meal in the world
Overview
Food
- Wine and (for once, not particularly nice) sake on the Romancecar
- The most amazing Japanese meal in the world