Hakone

After a few days of being in Tokyo, we headed to Hakone, a countryside full of hot springs. We took JR from Shinjuku to Hakone Yumoto station on the Odakyu line, the ride took about 90mins. There is a day ticket to cover all travel from Shinjuku to Hakone and then all the bus, trains, cable cars etc once you're in Hakone, but as we want to be flexible with our schedules, we did not buy the day ticket. Instead, after lunch, we took another train to Gora, and then the cable car across to Owakudani. We wanted to take the cable car to catch a view of Mount Fuji but when we reached the station, it was drizzling and with the misty weather, the ticket operator said that we will not be to have any view of Fuji-san :( so sad.

We then check-in to our guesthouse Ichinoyu HonKan, a popular hotspring guesthouse. They have quite a few guesthouses in Hakone and Izu, more information here: http://english.ichinoyu.co.jp/.

This is our 1st 'japan hour' type of onsen, and the package comes inclusive of dinner and breakfast, we paid about 11800 yen per person.













A river runs through it, all rooms overlook this picturesque river














Our room comes with its own little hotspring.













This is our room, complete with wooden sliding doors, really authetic like what you see in Japanese movies, at night we have to push the table aside to make space to lay out the tatami bed.






















Lest you think we are having dimsum for dinner :), what's actually in the dimsum basket are toufu, pork, bean sprouts, unagi, and some Japanese style kind of wanton and meatballs










Looks like chicken hor? But it is actually sweet potato with egg plant.










Think this fish is ang-gor-li or red snapper










The ladies public bath entrance, identified by the red cloth













The men public bath entrance, identified by the blue cloth













Tried both the public as well as the private ones. The onsen very shiok with the cold weather but cannot dip for too long.