Vacation part 2: Hakone and Mt. Fuji

Hakone is a mountain town located in Kanagawa prefecture, and is known as a very popular tourist site for viewing Mt. Fuji and a nice getaway from crowded Tokyo. That's exactly what it was for my family and I, who found it to be one of the highlights of our trip. It's also fairly cramped; the roads and all the houses are built around the slopes of the mountainous terrain. We constantly wondered how people could live here or even drive here; it just didn't look physically possible for larger cars and busses to make their way around the area without hitting some other car or crushing some poor pedestrian, but somehow they manage to do it. We experienced it firsthand, travelling by bus when we were going back to our hotel. A few times I was sure we were going to scrape the side of some building or hit some person walking by, but we never did. It really gave me a newfound respect for bus drivers in Japan!

From Hakone, we took a special train up the mountain to get to the Hakone ropeway, which would give us a view of Mt. Fuji. The train itself was very impressive, essentially scaling a mountain. At a few points I realized just how dangerous a position we were in--the train was going up the mountain at an angle, and if it got too steep I imagined that we might very well start sliding down and crash. But if this trip has taught me anything, it's that Japan's tourist business is impeccably designed and the country's engineering capabilities are exceptional. There's a lot of work that goes into maximizing the tourist experience both in terms of spectacle and safety.

After the train, we got off at a small rest point with a few shops, before getting on the funicular to get up to the ropeway. At the ropeway, we got into these small lifts that would take us across vast expanse of land to take us towards our view of Mt. Fuji.

At first, our view was blocked by mountains. The peak over which the lift would eventually pass loomed before us, and we waited to get to that point, eager to see what awaited on the other side.

I'd say it was worth the wait! It was just so cool to see Mt. Fuji in person; I'd been looking at it for half of my life: I saw it in anime, in the countless images of The Great Wave off Kanagawa painting that proliferate the internet and various consumer goods (a friend showed me a picture of that painting but with the waves replaced with pugs), and in other art besides. It was even better in person. 

If you look very, very closely at the picture, you can also see Japan's largest structure, Tokyo Skytree, off to the right of Mt. Fuji. It's this almost imperceptibly tiny line jutting up from behind a slope in front of Mt. Fuji. The fact that you can see it from all the way out in Hakone is impressive enough, but seeing it stand side-by-side with Mt. Fuji is even more so. It's just funny how something that looks so tall and imposing from close up can be made to seem almost insignificant in the face of something even larger.

Of course, Mt. Fuji is known more for its beauty than its size, and it was absolutely beautiful. On paper, it's just a mountain with a snowy cap, but something about it just touches the imagination.

It's easy to understand why so many Japanese artists spend their lives painting all the various different views of the mountain; The Great Wave off Kanagawa is just one in a series of 36 different paintings of views of Mt. Fuji--by a single artist! Here are some more pictures, cause words really can't do it justice.

The ropeway also took us over Owakuzawa, a crater created about 3,000 years ago. In 1910, heavy rains caused a landslide from the crater that took many lives. The Kanagawa prefectural government has thus been undergoing erosion-control work, and has been lining the mountainsides with stones and other materials to keep it stable. Even when we passed by it, we could see the vague shapes of people walking around along the paths and buildings built into the side of the crater, likely continuing that work. All around those paths, there were large clouds of gas containing sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide, which are poisonous gasses according to the information bulletin we read. The people down below were probably wearing lots of protective gear, but seeing it from above we just marveled at how incredible it looked; probably from the sulfur, a lot of the area around the crater was this bright green color, and the gas made it look like 'the fires of industry' Saruman was talking about in the Fellowship of the Ring. It gave off quite the Mordor vibe (although he was referring to Isengard).

I can see Frodo and Sam climbing up that to get to Mount Doom.

That impressive display of gas and green mountain made it almost as fascinating a sight as Mt. Fuji itself, and we spent a lot of time checking it out and speculating about what kind of work was being done there (until we read about it).

Later that day, after descending from the mountain, we got to our hotel, which was a traditional Japanese inn (which are called ryokan). There, I got to experience my first onsen! It was very relaxing, and if I believed in that kind of stuff I would call it spiritual, but a better word would be serene. Hot springs are something else I had heard about and seen often in anime, and finally got the chance to experience, so it was almost cathartic in a way to be able to bathe in one. And for those who are familiar with onsen but have never tried one, the nakedness issue isn't really an issue at all. No one cares what anyone's wearing (or not wearing), they just want to relax! Sometimes people will just casually strike up conversations, too: a Japanese man and his two sons started talking to me and my dad, probably because he wanted them to practice their English and I don't think you get too many opportunities to do that in Japan.

I didn't get any pictures of the onsen because bringing my phone into a super wet area full of steam would have been a bad idea, especially without pockets to put it in, but I found a cool video about onsen rules and etiquette that was very helpful. Here's the link!