10/10 Hakone field trip

I really shouldn't stay up so late every night, even though I know I have to wake up early the next day. But somehow, I always manage to convince myself that it's okay to sit another five minutes in front of the computer. Five minutes become ten, and then fifteen, twenty and... you see the point.

The night before the field trip to Hakone wasn't an exception. Despite the long day (classes starting 09:00 and then coming home around 23:00 after the baseball game) I just seemed to get drawn to the computer. As a result, when I woke up the next morning I only had five hours of sleep. Wouldn't make for a very photogenic face-day, but oh well!

So what is this Hakone place? To put it short, it's two hours from Tokyo and has very, very beautiful nature. Yeah. Ask Mr. Wikipedia for more information!

For this field trip, every JLSP:er got paired up with their own Buddy-san, a Japanese volunteer with whom you would spend the whole day with. I was a bit nervous upon knowing this fact, because:
1) Spending a whole day with someone you don't know just screams awkward silences.
2) You know how social I am...
3) I could only communicate in Japanese with my Buddy.

But he (SN-san) turned out to be a really nice guy, he could even speak Chinese. But alas, since my Mandarin Chinese sucks we couldn't communicate that way. It was kind of a bizarre feeling though, a Chinese not knowing Chinese and a Japanese who knows "your" language. I have to note this down, might be fun for a short story...

1. Around 0730 in the morning, all gathered around the bus that would take us to Hakone.
2. Äkta field-trip känsla! A had let everyone know to bring their DS:es for the bus ride, so we killed time by playing Mario Kart, a group of 8 people or so. I thought I was good before but I got totally beaten out all the time...
3. Bathroom break halfway through the bus ride.
4. Me and my Buddy SN-san! Our glasses match.

Once you get out of Tokyo, past the highways and express ways, another Japan steps in. Fields and forests everywhere. Very pittoresque and lovely. And the closer we got to Hakone, the more nature we saw. Deep valleys covered with trees, small, Miyazaki-esque roads and houses, no sky scrapers as far as you could see, great cloud views... it was too beautiful! You could almost touch the silence and peace with your hands. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures from the ride, I didn't sit beside a window and pictures taken inside a bus wouldn't be very interesting to look at anyway.

Our first check point of the day was the Hakone shrine.
1. A small torii (gate) a bit to the side from the main entrance. Had a feeling of fakeness over it for some reason. Like something you would see in an amusement park.
2. Oyasumidokoro - a place to rest. An ice cream cone breaks the atmosphere.
3. Me and Amy doing our lion impression!
4. I really like the contrast between the reds and the greens.
5. Tall, mighty trees. The air was very clear and fresh, I remember.
6. Another point of view.
7. And we're here!

I don't think I need to say it but Hakone shrine and its surroundings was an extremely beautiful place. Except for the torii in the first picture, the shrine had this peaceful, unpretentious, still feeling to it. And how come the Japanese can make red and green work so well together?

1. There was a wedding ceremony, of course.
2. Big spoon and I.
3. They sold fortune strips (omikuji) here! At most, if not all Japanese shrines, you can buy a strip of paper with your fortune written on it. The fortunes can be bad or good, and it has advice and such written on them regarding several topics, like health, love, travel and financial situation.
4. I bought one! Guess what I got? 大吉! The best fortune you can get. :D Now I can feel safe for the rest of my trip here.

After the Hakone shrine, we moved on to the next check point, the Sekisho. In the Edo area, you had to get through the sekisho (immigration checking point) in order to enter or leave Tokyo.

This gate was probably constructed not long ago, it had this new-ish feel to it. Didn't feel very genuine. @_@

We got to check out a museum where they had torture devices used on the people who where prohibited entrance on display. It wasn't all that interesting actually, so let's skip it and move on to lunch and beyond!

1. What we ate. The university paid for everything!
2. Meaaaaat!
3. We went to ride a pirate-sightseeing-boat after lunch. I can't say I liked the boat itself very much as it felt like some kind of amusement park ride. Total opposite from the atmosphere at the shrine.
4. This is what you get for not listening to the pirates! Yarrr!
5. Two glasses-eyed pirates. My buddy looks like he's plotting some evil plan on taking over the world...
6. Oooh look out Satoko-san!

After this, we went to ride a gondola to reach Owakudani, where they sell smelly black eggs. We saw Mt. Fuji on the way up! Everyone was saying how it was zannen ("unfortunate") that the top part was covered in a cloud, but I was happy because it was the first time I sighted a cap cloud (also known as Altocumulus Lenticularis)! Yay!

1. Not a very good picture, but here's my proof! And what's a better match than Fujisan itself?
2. What in the world... Is that... Hell?! (Turned out that there was some construction work going on there. Or is that where the black eggs areborn?)
3. We had to stop halfway to ride another gondola to reach the top. The placed where we stopped at was called 早雲山, Sounzan, beautiful name! If only the place looked as nice as it sounded though...
4. The view was breathtaking.
5. My favorite picture of the batch. That's Mt. Fuji in the background.
6. One more!
7. And another one, posing with the mountain!

After spending some more time walking around, we headed for our bus and went to the last checkpoint, which actually got changed to somewhere else due to mysterious circumstances. They drove us to a tourist mall place instead, which wasn't very interesting. By this time, everyone was tired and some of them skipped looking in the mall altogether and just went back to sleep.

And so, we took the bus back to Shinjuku. People were much more tired compared to the morning trip, I think most of them slept the whole way back. Must be nice being able to sleep in a bus! ;_; I would've loved to catch a few Zs as well.

Getting of at Shinjuku, I picked E up (who had been waiting for an hour for me! >_<) and she was very thoughtful so we agreed to make it an early night, so home we went. On the way back, we bought yummy yummy ice cream and E introduced me to anpan! I'm totally in love with it! So yummy! :D

Next post, TOKYO GAME SHOW