RomanceCar to Mt. Fuji - Hakone

Day 3 (5 March 2011). Yup! Finally.... Mt. Fuji!

Where do I start... I can't rant enough about how magnificent Japan is, in all ways.

OK! Let's get my brain in order and tell you the story of my Day 3 in Japan.

We have to meet Andrea's cousin in Shinjuku in order to catch the Odakyu train to Hakone. Hold on! Let me brief a little bit about Hakone, basically most of the town is within the borders of the volcanically active Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park, centered around Lake Ashi. YES! It is where you get to see Mt. Fuji at it's best view. Bottom line is - IT'S A MUST GO! MUST MUST MUST.

OK! First we walk over to Odakyu Counter to purchase the train ticket as well as the 2days Free Pass (you can enjoy all the 7 rides freely in Hakone). We decided to buy the RomanceCar tix to give it a try, the train kinda look like a Shinkansen (bullet train), but pretty sure it is not. It is more of an express train which cut short the journey by 30mins or more.

The train? Very well maintained and CLEAN... it even comes with food cart (I felt like riding in Air Asia for a moment!). One thing that fascinated me was that the chair can turn 180 degree. WHY right? Well, once it reaches the last station, the train has to face the opposite direction to head back to Shinjuku hence, it will turn/swivel so that it is facing forward direction. AMAZING!!! (Or perhaps it was me that is ignorant).

From the train station we took a bus (using our super duper free pass that gave us multiple free access to ALL THE RIDES in Hakone! Am boasting here!) to Lake Ashi to catch the pirate ship (You hear me right alright! Wait till you see the pics, you'll be green with envy).

While waiting for "OUR JOHNY DEPP PIRATE SHIP" to arrive (show off again, muahahahha), we managed to snap few pics at the pier. That's when I saw the big & famous red gate or Torri that can easily be found in Japan of which I told myself TO & MUST take a pic of it.

Ahoy! Our ship has arrived.

We when straight on; getting ourselves busy with loads of pics taking as we catch a glimpse of Mt. Fuji/Torii/cruise boat - postcard PEEEERFECT pic. Let me tell you that the view is AWESOME, AWESOME & AWESOME. I have never seen anything so pictureque; I mean... Hakone is super clean, Lake Ashi water is crystal clean, the ship is spotless clean... I can't find fault (why even bother LILY!). It's like LOVE AT THE FIRST SIGHT! And if you can remember my Sweden blog entry, you know how much I LOVE ships!

As we reached the last "port", guess what is waiting for us? Jeng Jeng Jeng..... CABLE CAR!!! Or here they call it ROPEWAY. The view? BREATHTAKING... you practically can see Lake Ashi from the hills (or is it mountain?!) and the tiny town below and but of cause... Mt. Fuji.

At the end of this Ropeway, a VERNACULAR TRAM was waiting to take us down (they calls this CABLECAR - utterly confusing for us).

And what amazes me is that NO ONE sits on the priority seat (kid you not!), unless you are super old and duper frail, you should stand even those of 50+ of age. Very very cultured country.

Oh! I almost forgotten, we left our huge luggage in Tokyo hotel and what we brought was a hand-carry bag of WHICH, we have been lugging the past half a day. This is when we decide to check-in and dump the bag at the Onsen guest house (more story on this in next entry).

Next... Venetian Glass Forest. Impress with the name? Us TOO! It's 5 mins walk from our guest house, apparently our guest house is less then 15 mins to almost all sight seeing. Thank you Lee Hann for recommending. OK, I have to apologise in advance for this, I hyperlink most of my stuff but for this Venetian Glass Forest, it's in English but not the actual site at is in Japanese (sigh..).

You'll be wondering what is this right... it's actually a garden with European houses where you sip you afternoon coffee kinda place, then there's glass museum (LOVELY!!!) and this area is build in such a way that it compliments the landscape.

According to Andrea, it's a Rapunzel tower.... ahhahha... Well, there's much more to see but day light not to our advantage at winter tail. So, we have to call it a day and Arif (Andrea's cousin) needs to head back to Shinjuku, Tokyo.

Credit hyperlink : Venetian Glass Forest, Wikipedia, Odakyu