Today we woke up early and started getting ready.
We ate, packed everything, cleaned the apartment and left. We kind of left late. We went to the Yamato Transport building to forward our luggage straight to Tokyo. Well, it was closed because of Golden week… Fuck… So we turned back and went to Shinjuku immediately. There was a FamilyMart right at the station, which apparently could set up the forwarding, but we wasted too much time going to the other building, so we actually had to kind of hurry to Shinjuku.
We had our Romancecar tickets for 10:25. When we arrived, we started looking around for the correct platform, which apparently was directly above us, so we took the elevator. There was like 10 minutes left, and I couldn’t figure out how to log in on the site, and the app for some reason didn’t display our tickets… Started worrying a lot. I saw the Romancecar train, and decided to get on it. When we found our seats… they were taken, and we talked with the person there who apparently had tickets for the 10:20 train…
We got out and saw that on opposite platform there was another romancecar, and decided to get on, despite me not properly getting the tickets. I had an email with confirmation, but no QR code or anything… █████████████ kept saying that we shouldn’t do it, but I told him that I’ll figure it out on the go and it’ll be fine. Once the train started moving I finally managed to log in on the site… and it just showed the same info as on the email, meaning my hurry to login was pointless… It was fine from the start.
Goodbye, Tokyo… It was an incredible city. Best one I’ve ever been to, although I haven’t traveled that much yet. It was actually quite incredible how green it is. When you look at it from the above its just concrete, but when walking around it’s literally filled with trees and parks and nature. Transportation stopped being confusing on the second day and just fast and convenient since.
We arrived at the Hakone-yumoto station, feeling tired and sleepy. On the way there I saw mt. Fuji for the first time… Everything was beautiful, but I felt like I was too tired to appreciate it. We found the Tozan Bus stop and got on the bus.
We still had 1.5 hours to kill, so we went to 7/11 and bought stuff. God, egg sandwich is too amazing. I also got tuna mayo sandwich and it was also incredible… Tuna in general here is sooo much better for some reason. Back home I don’t really like it.
We had to wait for like 30 minutes near this river, and then finally checked in… Honestly, in a bit of a bad mood.
The room is pretty nice, but the view… There’s just some kind of construction going on just outside. Thankfully you could avoid looking at it if you look from below, as you only see the mountains.
I thought we’d be going to public onsen, but apparently we got private onsen for free, which was very nice. We got 50 minutes of it. When I saw it, I thought that 50 minutes would be too little, but I was very wrong lol. It’s plenty enough. At some point it’s practically impossible to stay in the water. In general, being in such water kind of feels like a work out. You feel so tired, although relaxed after. I learnt of drinking milk after onsen tradition, and it was super good…
We got our kaiseki. There was so much stuff coming in, it’s crazy. We didn’t really know what to srart with, and we sort of fucked up, because apparently we were supposed to put some of the stuff and make our own soup, oops. I think we also shouldn’t have eaten the 7/11 stuff, as it left me satiated for a while. I drank sake (alone), and it’s very tasty. I wouldn’t say I felt super awesome after this meal, but it was definitely my fault for the most part.
My dream finally came true - I finally got to sit under the kotatsu. It’s almost summer, but we keep our AC very cold, so it was still very comfy to sit under.
I felt so tired, I fell asleep quite soon after. Didn’t go through the photos or written the diary today.
