Family Trip 2003 to Japan
DAY 4: Hakone Tour

Kodama Shinkansen

Today is going to be a long day. We are going to do the Hakone circle trip in one day. We left the hotel at 7:45am to board the subway to Tokyo Station. We take the Chiyoda line to the Marunouchi Line. Once we get through the JR turnstiles we head to a reservation window to get Shinkansen Green Car reservations to Odawara.

Hakone-Tozen Tram

Our Kodama train left Tokyo at 8:30 arriving in Odawara at about 9am. We purchases Hakone Free Ticket from the Odakyu Line which will cover all the transportation modes we will use today. We are hungry so walked into town to eat at a McDonalds for Breakfast. After Breakfast we boarded an Odakyu Line train to Hakone-Yumoto, the end of the Odakyu Line. We waited for the Hakone Tozen train to continue our journey. This line is an small interurban/Tram line that climbs very steep grades up the mountain. It includes 3 switch backs and goes through some very beautiful scenery. We did not board the first train that arrived as it was very crowded. 15 minutes later another train came in using vintage rolling stock. We took this train up the mountain. It was a great ride up to end of the line at Gora.

Hakone Incline

At Gora we boarded a cable counter-balance line for a very steep grade further up the mountain. The line uses two cars that are connected to each other via a cable and pass each other in the middle. There are a few stations between the two terminals. 

Hakone Ropeway (new)

At the upper terminal, we transfer again. This time to the Hakone Ropeway. The first leg uses large gondola suspended from two cables. We go further up the mountain passing over a valley with sulfur mines. At the next station we transfer again. This time to another ropeway. This one uses much smaller and much older cars. Now we are heading back down the mountain to Ashi Lake.

Pirate Ship

At the lake terminal we must wait for our boat to cross the lake. We had nearly an hour wait to cool our heals, eating a Japanese version of M&M's. At 12:00 we boarded our "pirate" ship bound from Hakone-Machi. This was a 20-minute boat ride across the lake. There was some recorded tour guide in English pointing our the sites. One interesting statement that they made was the boat we were riding on was designed by the Swiss 380 years ago as a British Man-of-War Pirate ship. We got a kick our of a diesel boat made of steel being designed (not a replica) over 300 years ago.

We disembarked at the second stop at Hakone-Moto. We were going to go a restaurant listed in Frommer's Guidebook, but it was permanently closed. We walked around town and ate at a small family restaurant. A point of interest is that we should have seen Mt. Fuji several times by now. That is one of the big tourist draws. However, as normal Mt. Fuji was not to be seen because of cloud cover.

Cedar Street

After lunch we walked to Cedar Street. This old street is part of the old Tokaido Highway built during the Tokugawa shogun period. The Shogun had the Cedars planted to provide shelter from the hot sun of the summer and the snow of winter. We then checked out the Tokaido Hwy Hakone Checkpoint museum. Here everybody on the Tokaido Highway has to be stopped and searched to ensure that they would not threaten the city of Edo. After the museum be went souvenir shopping. 

Hakone ropeway (old)

We decided to reverse our course back towards Tokyo instead of taking a bus back to Odawara. So we boarded the Pirate Ship to the Ropeway to the Incline and finally to the Tramway. As it happened the Hakone-Tozen train we boarded was a through train to Odawara.

At Odawara we obtained seat reservations on the next Kodama Shinkansen to Tokyo. It was getting to be 7:00 when we arrived in Tokyo. We hopped on a Yamanote train to Ueno where we went to the Hard Rock Cafe for Dinner. We had a long wait, but once seated we had great food. We of course stopped at the Cafe Store to buy more souvenirs.  Now it is really late and we have walked over 7 miles. It was time to take the Ginza Line subway back to the hotel and crash!

Continue to Day 5

> Kavanagh Family > Trips/Vacations > Japan > Trip 2003  > Day 4

Page last edited on: 03/25/17