Fun in Hakone

Saturday we took a trip to Hakone, a small town in the mountains about 60 miles from Tokyo.  Hakone is especially known for its vistas of Mt. Fuji; unfortunately for us, it was cloudy.  We still had a great day. 

This tori gate stands in the water.  It is the entrance to a shrine where, according to the guidebook, samuri came to pray.  You'll notice the swan paddle boat and the pirate ship in the background.  Both seem incongruous with a mountainous Japanese town, but I must admit, I was quite excited to cruise across the lake in the pirate ship.

Then we took a cable car up the mountain and into the Owakudani valley, an "active" volcano site.  There were bubbling sulphur springs-- similar to what you would see at Yellowstone.  It also smelled like Yellowstone.  According to Anthon, that is "totally stinky."    According to my sister, Rachel, it smelled "kind of good."

The thing to do in the Owakudani valley is eat eggs boiled in the bubbling sulphur pots.  The eggs go into the water white and come out as black as can be.  Everyone but Anthon thought the eggs tasted like normal boiled eggs.  Anthon, who won't even touch a boiled egg, thought the black eggs were "totally delicious" and ate an entire one on his own.  Hmmm... maybe I should try Easter egg dye as a strategy to get my kid to eat.

Because there are lots and lots of natural hot springs in Hakone, it is also known for onsens.  Onsens are very popular here-- kind of the equivalent of a spa in the states-- and characteristically involve naked bathing.  They separate the men from the women, then you strip down and go soak in the hot water surrounded by the beauties of nature.   I'm not up for bathing in the nude with other people, especially because I've been told by other foreigners that our pink skin gets lots of stares.  Anyway, I was happy to discover that there is a family onsen in Hakone that requires swimsuits.  (That's much more my style).  So after seeing the beauties of Hakone, we spent the rest of the day relaxing at the Yunessun.

 

Here we are soaking in a tub of green tea (which is apparently very good for your skin).

Here we are in a bath of red wine (which is apparently very good for your skin).  

While we were soaking here, one of the Yunessun employees came down with a huge bottle of red wine and started pouring it into the pool.  It was complete madness-- people were pushing, children were screaming as the crowd smashed into them,  and everyone was holding their hands out to have wine poured into them.  We, of course, had to join in the fun, so we made our way to the front of the crowd and got handfuls of red wine.  Then we looked at each other and said, "What do we do now??"  We weren't going to drink it.  So we just rubbed it on our skin.  (Apparently it's very good for that).

Soaking in coffee (which is apparently really good for your skin).  Is anyone else noticing a common theme here??

In a charcoal bath and a sake bath.  (You guessed it-- good for your skin).

The one bath that we weren't able to enjoy was the Dr. Fish bath.  It is a pool filled with tiny fish that eat the dead skin off of your feet.  Kind of weird, I know, but I must admit, I was intrigued.  The Disneyland-like line to get into that pool kept us away.

We left after almost 4 hours looking like prunes.  But I woke up the next day and my skin felt very soft, so maybe it was the green tea or the red wine or the sake.