Category: Trip

Romancing The Hakone

June 8, 2013

We got up very early today, and waited at Shinjuku station for the train to Hakone.

The trip took about 90 minutes in a very nice train, and before we knew it we had arrived at the popular vacation town in the mountains.

We were doing the ‘freepass circuit’ and the next leg of our trip was the Hakone-Tozen railroad which utilizes 3 switchbacks as it rises to nearly 500m elevation. This in turn was followed by a cable car…

And then a rope way…

…over sulfur-spewing mountainside to the top of Owakaduni mountain.

The rain had come out by this point, but I was prepared (after a quick Y500 stop at the shop!)

The commode in the facility behind me had perfectly understandable instructions on how to use the robotoilet:

At Owakaduni you can walk further up the mountain to the hot springs where a local specialty is sulfur-boiled egg. Here’s the crowds eating said eggs:

The pool in the bottom left is where the eggs are boiled in cages:

Lunch was simple…

….and followed by a treat…

….a quick unintentional use of an employees only crapper…

…and then the trip on the next leg of the rope way down to a volcanic crater lake.

The next leg of the trip was on this:

And we were all silly tired by now:

And after I ate a Hot Dog…

And regretted not buying SFL an ear-cleaner…

We started the journey home, ten hours after we’d started! Bernard’s feeling a lot better, but all of us are aching and painting a bit now!

Another great day in Nippon 🙂

Happy Life With Rilakkuma

June 7, 2013

Firstly, Bernard is actively blogging the trip, so be sure to visit his blog as well.

Today we had plans for Skytree, but changed them due to potential rain to a day in Shibuya. The idea was low impact activities due to Bernard’s feet, but it seems – happily – he is on the mend 🙂

His friend in the above shot is the side of a print club photo machine. They promise the world now: despite how you look the machine will make beautiful photos of you. Hrm…

That’s the (terrifying) controls for the toilet in Tokyu Hands. The seat was heated and possibly slightly vibrating already, but I kept my hands far, far away from those buttons since I’m not yet at the level of using a robocrapper.

Lunch was Subway, but for second lunch, we had the limited time only Super Potato at McDonalds, which is the biggest serving of fries they have ever done:

It cost Y490 (about $5) and contains about three large fries. Between the three of us, we soon had it looking like this:

That’s 1,000,000 calories well spent I reckon!

We visited a few stores, bought a bunch of stuff, played some UFO catchers and had some laughs. Before we knew it 7 hours had passed! Our last stop for the day was this place…

OMG you can almost see the fries in my belly! The Kuma store was even crazier than you could imagine. Products for every aspect of your life were obtainable here and it was difficult to choose what to buy! For instance, while wearing your hat…

…you could clean the house…

…before having a snack…

…then making some labels…

…and possibly ending your day with a visit to a throne like the one described above 🙂

I’ll end today with some shots of my dessert. It’s a cream sponge cake purchased for a song from the convenience store, and it’s delicious!

Tomorrow we’re getting out of the city for a day trip. Oh, and we all kind of love Nameko the mushroom now 🙂

Welcome To The Sun

June 6, 2013

The sun rises before 5 am here, and I wake with it every morning. This means I’m not getting enough sleep, perhaps, which will certainly catch up with me eventually?

Bernard is a bit broken so took a day off yesterday to heal. KLS and I headed to the famous Nakano mall for a low impact day of more shopping.

Lunch was great! I have no idea what the restaurant was called but we got a massive amount of food for only $13. Here we are eating like dogs:

I was a bit disturbed that my ‘100% not fake’ eating face is a bit deformed…

Nakano is a normal mall connected to another that specializes in hobbies (games, manga, toys etc). KLS spent time perusing the cosmetic shops before we ascended into the otaku madness of the upper floors.

The shops are many and varied, but one of the more unusual was selling ‘transparent animals’.

Here’s a giant prize in a UFO catcher:

And no, even standing right there it didn’t seem possible to remove one if you won!

We got tired early in the afternoon and headed back for some R&R and dinner with Bernard. Depending on our energy, I had something planned for the next day (in other words, later today!)

Robot Claw