In Japan, the week starting April 29th and going into May is known as Golden Week. There are four holidays in this single week, three of which are strung together: Showa Day (April 29th), Constitution Day (May 3rd), Greenery Day (May 4th), and Children’s Day (May 5th). It is like Spring Break in America and is the perfect opportunity to take a quick vacation somewhere.
I took a three-day trip to Hakone, Kanagawa. Hakone is a small town in a volcanically active mountainous area near Mt. Fuji. It is a popular tourist destination due to its beautiful views of Mt. Fuji, its large number of hot springs, and more. Hakone is also home to yosegi woodcraft, a traditional craft that uses alternating dark and light-toned woods to create geometric patterns.
I plan to spread Hakone over three posts, one post per day spent in Hakone.
My first half of my first day in Hakone was spent traveling, first from Yachimata to Tokyo, and then from Tokyo to Hakone. I was traveling light with only a backpack with the essentials, and plenty of room left over for stuffing in souvenirs. I left Gareth at home, worried that he would be damaged by some of the places I went to. The weather was very windy and threatening to rain most of the time, so Gareth was fine with staying at home.
My first stop on my trip was the Hakone Venetian Glass Museum. This was a fun and beautiful first stop on my adventure to Hakone. Please enjoy the gallery of pictures below.
Once I finished touring the Hakone Venetian Glass Museum, I headed to the town center to check into my hotel and get dinner. The attractions in Hakone are scattered in several different locations in the mountains, and you need to take the train or bus (or car, or taxi) to navigate between the different zones. Because it was Golden Week, traffic was absolutely horrendous. All of the roads were two-lane mountain roads, and I constantly worried about a wreck happening and blocking off one or both lanes, thus making travel in one or both directions impossible. Thankfully, this didn’t happen while I was there.
I stayed in K’s House Hakone, a dormitory-style that required me to hike up a steep hill to access. I sure got a lot of exercise while I was in Hakone! It had its own hot spring too, which was very nice for a cheap hostel. I could not take any pictures of its onsen facilities, however, because cameras are not allowed when people could be using the baths. Because, of course, everyone is naked. (An onsen is a Japanese public bath. Nowadays, they are almost always separated by gender.)
I accessed the following images from the K’s House Hakone listing from booking.com:
Very pretty and picturesque for a dorm-style hostel! And the view was gorgeous.
After checking in, I went to go get dinner. I was very surprised: most of the restaurants closed by 5pm! And the remaining ones were, of course, swarmed by other hungry tourists. Luckily, I finally found a place to eat with a reasonable wait time. I was definitely hungry and irritable by that time… traveling works up an appetite.
After dinner, I returned to the hostel and went to the onsen for the first time. It’s a very neat experience! Definitely very different from anything in the West.
And that was the end of my first day! Coming up next on day 2: Gora Park, the Hakone Open Air Museum, and Yunessun Hot Springs Resort.
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