Checking out the ticket conductor

On our way back to hotel after Hakone Round Course

Post-Hakone:

The service at Hotel Okada is VERY GOOD. Better than SG! (then again, I've never checked into a good hotel in SG...so that might account for the biasness.

I would LOVE to come back here again.

I think next time, if I were to go Japan again, I'll do a Hakone/Izu tour.

Post-trip:
Oops, looks like I kind of missed something in between Hakone and post-Hakone (posted on the 7th day I think). Well, this post will be kind of long, because it will have to cover the rest of the 2nd day as well as half of the 3rd day.

So the boat/ship docked at Motohakone (town) pier. We kind of cut the tour a bit short. We were actually supposed to go for a 20min walk between Hakonemachi and Motohakone. But we took a boat to Motohakone and took the bus back to our hotel.

"This is the Hakone Touzan bus station"

Shockingly, the bus actually went to Hakonemachi pier first, then looped around to go back to Hakone Yumoto. So not much of time saved there.

Nope, no weird vending machines.

Neon Genesis Evangelion seems to be on a lot of merchandises there though. Feels kind of weird.


Hakone Yumoto station from across the road.

So we went back to our hotel, and finally checked in (actually, just grabbing the key). I was looking around for our bag when I realised that one of the employees (the same guy who helped with our correct change) was already standing outside the counter with our bag hanging off his arm (woah. seriously, how on earth did they stand by so fast? AND know which is our bag?). I asked for the bag, but he insisted on showing the way to our room.

He asked us for our size so that he can give our yukata to us, and left.

While we were excitedly exploring our room, he was arranging the shoes on the way out.


He also shut the inner screen door so that we won't see him arranging the shoes...I guess...

This is the rough floorplan of the room.

Before he came back, we were actually debating on whether to tip him. So I did a quick look up and apparently not. We actually hadn't finish debating when he already came back...

Welcome drink at the lobby after unpacking.

After unpacking and the welcome drink, we decided to try out the hotel's hotspring footbath. Complete with mountain view, fresh air and...our first view of sunset in Japan!

Our day was not done yet though! Because there was still the...

Hotspring bath!

We booked the "family bath" for 1050JPY. When we stepped out of the bath it was still alright. When we stepped out to the night air, it was horribly cold!
Next time, I shall gather my nerves and try the outdoor bath in the morning...

We got the hotel staff to set up our futon while we were out bathing so everything was ready when we came back.

Thus our second day finally ended.

Mission Checklist

1. Hakone round course
   
   
1. Eat sulphur eggs.


2. Take pic of mount fuji FAIL orz


3. Lake ride at Lake Ashi


2. Hotspring at Hakone

3rd day

Another footbath in the morning after breakfast.

And then it was off shopping for souvenir at the hotel shop. I thought that the hotel souvenir shop was selling stuff more expensive, but when we went back to the station, the souvenir costs the same. :/

Well, at least the hotel's shop came with 5% discount.

After checking out, we took the ryokan bus back to Hakone Yumoto and walked around for a bit while waiting for our train to come.

We thought that we'd have a lot of time to spare, but there was really a lot of things to see. I sent a postcard from here :)

There was a little river behind the shops, which was quite a gem for a find. There was quite a number of people fishing. We wanted to go down, but the steps were too steep :(

Writing a postcard home.

We kind of hesitated when we saw the post box, since it had only a single slot! An old woman came out of the shop to see what's going on, so we asked her if we should drop our postcard there. She told us that it's okay to drop it even if it's to foreign country. We thanked her and mailed the postcard.

This was our ride back to Tokyo. The cleaning staff would greet the people on the train with a low bow as it pulled into the station. After everyone got off, they would then proceed to clean the train. When I first saw the staff as we pulled into the station, I went "woah, how did they get there?" (well, rather dumb of me, but I thought that they were the same people at Shinjuku.)

Interior

There some photographs of the scenery on the way back to Tokyo, but we sort of zoned out after the previous day's excitement.

Back at Shinagawa station, one of the few places that have escalator.

We re-checked into our hotel in Shinagawa, the Shinagawa Prince hotel, which was about 5 minutes away from the station. This time, we were checked in at a slightly lower level, which was level 23.

Random side note, this particular room offered a better view of Tokyo tower but the vanity table only had one power outlet instead of two which was kind of inconvenient. For your reference, room layout and size was about the same as the chalet at Downtown East.

After unpacking (again), we were off to Odaiba to go up to Hachitama at Fuji TV. We switched from train to the Yurikamome monorail into Odaiba at the Shimbashi station. I attempted to put in a live post there, but the mobile internet failed me, so the next post during the trip was on Day 4.

"Next destination: Hachitama"
On the monorail, on the way to Odaiba.